Replace it with fatty foods or rap music. The point is it's a racket with both supply and interdiction being ran by the same people. The Constitution is more impotant than their monopoly.
Your definition of crime is wrong. Can you assault yourself? Can you defraud yourself? Can you press charges against yourself for damaging your own property?
The initiation of force or fraud upon another or his property is a crime. Nothing else. When Johnny breaks into your car to pay for his drug use, it is the action of theft that is the crime, not his drug use. What if Johnny goes to work every day to support his drug use, the same as people work all week and go to the bar on Friday night.
This is the definition of crime. An action may be "bad" or "immoral" or even "sinful" but until that action is the initiation of force or fraud against another person or their property, the action is not a crime.
Call off useless war on drugs
This fight has become a war on people and the Bill of Rights
DANNY BROOKS
Special to The Observer
As most Libertarians agree, the best way to win the so-called war on drugs is to end it once and for all. Not partially, but completely. As long as there are any drugs that are illegal, there will be people willing to risk prison in order to profit from them as well as use them.
It's a classic no-win situation.
You would think that someone would've paid attention to that old adage about being doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past if we don't learn from them and draw a correlation between the current drug war and alcohol Prohibition. But, for a non-Libertarian politician to apply a little common sense to this multibillion dollar-a-year fiasco would be political suicide.
In what has become a war on people and the Bill of Rights, millions of nonviolent high school and college kids have had their lives shattered by prison sentences that are not at all proportional to their "crimes."
Ironically, many of these "criminals" were caught doing the very things that politicians have been accused of, and even admitted, doing. In the 2000 presidential campaign, both George W. Bush and Al Gore decreed that the punishment for doing what many believe they themselves did should be a minimum of 10 years in prison. Former Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne wanted to ask both Bush and Gore, "Would your lives have been better had you spent 10 years in a federal prison for your youthful indiscretions?"
The debate over the war on drugs has people firmly entrenched on both sides of the issue. Some people believe it is no business of our government if they want to partake in moderate drug use, not unlike smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol, in their homes after a hard day at work. If they don't hurt anyone else or break any laws then they should be left alone. By contrast, I'm sure families who have lost members to drug overdoses would like to see all drugs destroyed.
But when are people going to start being held accountable for their own actions? Yes, drug addiction, like alcoholism, is a disease. But unlike cancer, it is 100 percent preventable. If the inflicted person had chosen to not start abusing drugs in the first place, there would be no problem. But there are always people who are going to be addicted to something and willing to risk their very lives for some sort of "high."
Suppose that every drug in existence were legalized tomorrow. Would people still die of overdoses? Absolutely. Would children still try drugs? Sure. But how would that be any different than what goes on now?
For starters, legalizing drugs would remove the criminal element much the same way that ending Prohibition cleaned up our streets of gangs fighting over territories. These thugs would not be able to compete with pharmaceutical companies that produce affordable, safe, nontoxic drugs.
There will always be crime, but legalizing drugs would remove the black market and allocate resources to fight violent crime instead of being used to go after people who may harm themselves but are no threat to us.
Our own government has used the drug war to check out bank accounts, perform strip-searches at airports, monitor e-mail and even take property without even charging a crime because of asset forfeiture laws that state that property, unlike people, is not innocent until proven guilty.
If you give a police officer the OK to search your car, he can disassemble it completely and does not have to put it back together. Think about that the next time someone's argument is, "Well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"
Drug use is a moral decision, and you cannot legislate morality. When people break the law, whether on drugs or not, they should be prosecuted. Otherwise they should be left alone if they aren't hurting anyone else. Making drug use illegal is wrong. Legalizing drugs would solve more problems than are caused by this insane war.
Danny
Brooks
Observer community columnist Danny Brooks of Davidson is a computer programmer/analyst and member of the Cabarrus Libertarian Party. Write him c/o The Observer, P.O. Box 30308, Charlotte, NC 28230-0308, or at
lbrooks2@carolina.rr.com.
Not everything that is a sin should also be a crime. In fact, there are many things that are sin but not crime. I'm sure you can think of several, some of which you yourself practice, just like we all do. Not even God Himself criminalizes every sin. We should follow His lead.
If we don't follow His lead then eventually nearly everything will be a crime: being fat, eating the wrong kind of food, having a non-pc thought.... See what I mean?
It's amazing how many people say, 'Drugs are bad, they cause you to lose your job, ruin your marriage, make you go broke, destroy your family. Therefore, because we 'love' you and don't want bad things to happen to you we will outlaw these horrible drugs, and if you are caught using them we will throw you in prison.' Of course being thrown in prison will cause you to lose your job, ruin your marriage, make you go broke and destroy your family. So, the WOD does as much or worse than drugs themselves. If you really want to help the druggy then we need to treat them like alchoholics, not bank robbers, murderers and rapists.
Taking drugs may be really stupid but should it be a crime?
Really? Is that the only way? We can and do, as a culture, frown on different behaviors without making those behaviors a crime. That's how we need to handle drugs.
Also, the WOD is good for what group of people? The lawyers and the cops. Those who arrest, prosecute and defend. That right there speaks volumes. The WOD is great for the cops and lawyers and a disaster for everyone else.