Thirty years later, every one of my predictions have been realized.
In a nutshell: YES. What we have done aint workin’—we need to try a new approach. All we have done is make drug cartels rich and financed death. Like the ban in alcohol in the 20s, all it did was give us organized crime. Strike it down.
Yep. The article read like something I wrote long ago, with registered users having limited professional options, taxation, and regulation of sales/purchases.
Sadly, the GWOD has been used to numb people to the ideas of 'random' searches, no-knock dynamic entry by militarized police units, checkpoints, etc. Other agencies are joining in, such as the TSA, and we are hurtling headlong toward the Police State, if we aren't already there. Even ideas once broached for the Drug War that did not pass muster have been resurrected in the War on Terror (Read THIS you NSA PUKES!), and all our communications are subject to summary recording and scrutiny, whether we have ever had so much as a speeding ticket or not.
Most of society has been lulled into somnolence, by thinking they have "nothing to hide". Yet the ever changing legal landscape renders even the most innocuous act a grave violation of some regulation or law, making no one safe.
Every "War" declared on the domestic front has been declared on all of us, not just the people the government claims to be the targets, yet so many are bamboozled into sacrificing their freedoms thinking it somehow only applies to "the other guy", for the sake of the illusion of security.
Yep. You were right. The War on Drugs is a better threat to personal freedom than it is to illegal drugs.
Back then, I was giving a tour to newly-hired DEA agents to our police laboratory. Each agent was from NYC.
I’d attended the University of Miami, so I became the interpreter: None impressed me, so I thought the WOT was already a lost cause. :(