A Reason to Protest

Courts are so jammed that innocent people plead guilty to avoid waiting years for a trial. Lawyers help rich people get special treatment. A jail stay is just as likely to teach you crime as it is to help you get a new start. Overcrowded prisons cost a fortune and increase suffering for both prisoners and guards.

It hasn’t worked. More people now use more drugs than before the “war” began.

What drug prohibition did do is exactly what alcohol prohibition did a hundred years ago: increase conflict between police and citizens.

“It pitted police against the communities that they serve,” says neuroscientist Dr. Carl Hart in my new video. Hart, former chair of Columbia University’s Psychology department, grew up in a tough Miami neighborhood where he watched crack cocaine wreck lives. When he started researching drugs, he assumed that research would confirm the damage drugs did.

But “one problem kept cropping up,” he says in his soon-to-be-released book, “Drug Use For Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear,” “the evidence did not support the hypothesis. No one else’s evidence did either.”

After 20 years of research, he concluded, “I was wrong.” Now, he says, our drug laws do more harm than drugs.

Because drug sales are illegal, profits from selling drugs are huge. Since sellers can’t rely on law enforcement to protect their property, they buy guns and form gangs.

Cigarettes harm people, too, but there are no violent cigarette gangs -- no cigarette shootings -- even though nicotine is more addictive than heroin, says our government. That’s because tobacco is legal. Likewise, there are no longer violent liquor gangs. They vanished when prohibition ended.

Hart blames the drug war for that, too. Yes, opioids are legal, but their sale is tightly restricted.

“Of course,” he responds. “People die from opioids because they get tainted opioids. … That would go away if we didn't have this war on drugs. Imagine if the only subject of any conversation about driving automobiles was fatal car crashes. … So it is with the opioid epidemic.”

Drugs do harm many people, but in real life, replies Hart, “I know tons of people who do drugs; they are public officials, captains of industry, and they're doing well. Drugs, including nicotine and heroin, make people feel better. That’s why they are used.”

President Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. America’s drug war funds a prison-industrial complex. Hart says his years inside the well-funded research side of that complex showed him that any research not in support of the “tough-on-drugs” ideology is routinely dismissed to “keep outrage stoked” and funds coming in.

America locks up more than 2 million Americans. That’s a higher percentage of our citizens, disproportionately black citizens, than any other country in the world.

“In every country with a more permissive drug regime, all outcomes are better,” says Hart. Countries like Switzerland and Portugal, where drugs are decriminalized, “don't have these problems that we have with drug overdoses.”

In 2001, Portugal decriminalized all drug use. Instead of punishing drug users, they offer medical help. Deaths from overdoses dropped sharply. In 2017, Portugal had only 4 deaths per million people. The United States had 217 per million.

“In a society, you will have people who misbehave, says Hart. “But that doesn't mean you should punish all of us because someone can't handle this activity.”

He’s right. It’s time to end the drug war.

BTW, you wanna legalize pot?

Okay, tell me what the intoxication level for THC in drivers should be. We have one for booze, a nationwide standard.

What should it be for pot?

Until we have a nationwide standard for weed, don’t talk legalization with me.

you will render most Americans legally defenseless against their murders, thefts and other schemes.

Why? Lot less incentive for them to steal, because drugs would be cheap.

Impaired crimes would still be crimes.

The "war on some drugs" has created huge problems.

Has it helped?

I know people who are alive because they were forced to dry out in prison.

So, it has helped some drug addicts.

Others? Not so much.

Pay to feed them.. Pay to clothe them.. Pay to house them.. Pay to bury them... So, do we now turn them loose and pay for their narcotics..? It's either that or they'll rob, steal and murder in order to feed the monkey...

"Portugal decriminalized all drug use."

Portugal and the US. don't have the same kind of people...

I agree with most of this. It’s a lost cause, and our “war on drugs” is causing more harm than good.

Don’t think we have a “war on drugs”? Then tell me why, here in Louisville, Police were executing a “No-Knock” warrant at 1 am in a residential apartment complex? Maybe you heard about it? Police were looking for drugs, and a drug dealer.

They knocked down the door, came bursting into an apartment, with guns pulled. One of the residents thought he was being burglarized, so he fired his legally owned weapon in defense. Police opened fire and emptied their weapons, killing a fine young lady who moments before was sleeping peacefully in her bed.

THAT, is war.
And, it’s time to end it.

If the extreme profit go away, so will most of the bloodshed.

Punish people when they threaten others, like by going out on the road... similar to DUI laws. Except, do it in a serious way, not just a cash-generating way, as we do now with DUI.

This not a forum that supports freedom. This is, mostly, the lock down loving forum were posters place their personal safety above all. The same mindset that bends the knee for everysort of wuflu hysteria and tyranny will also support locking up people over using drugs not controlled by the state.

“ There’s no war on drugs.”

I would modify that to “The war on drugs is not being fought to win”.

The police want to manage it in a way that maximizes their power and finding. Politicians on both sides want it managed and not ended so to extend their hold on their constituents.

“You’re free to get strung out on whatever you want to invest...”

Maybe-but unfortunately children with parents on drugs will have the deck stacked against them.

That is a costly and devastating social problem for the children and for all the rest of the non-drug using TAXPAYERS in the country.

Once again-taxpayers don’t go to the party but will have to pay for the party.

I personally know a person, busted with less than a gram of pot..... not enough to roll a joint...

tens of thousands of dollars in court costs and fines, 14 days in jail, probation for 2 years, and a permanent record.

All this for less than a joint. And no, no prior criminal record..

The state runs an entire organization that gets paid, counselors, probation officers, court personnel, etc. Just more big government designed around a victimless “crime”..

"Why? Lot less incentive for them to steal, because drugs would be cheap."

No drug will be that cheap.

There was a young man--one evil piece of crap--using meth while working in a local restaurant, as nearly all of the other employees and manager were. He did so for nearly a couple of years. I wonder how many customers were poisoned.

A few weeks ago, he did the meth zombie shuffle in a Walmart store. He's no longer working. He's completely government and community (thefts, etc.) supported, as are millions of others like him.

Upgrade your policy formula to include mandatory, random, final solution hot shots (no peeking by anyone), and I might agree with it. But the secret, private, hidden hot shots must be mandated before the rest of the policy, or there will be no trust.

Or maybe concentration camps with 24/7 public web cams on every inch of them for public education. They can have all of the drugs they want and more in those places. Government wouldn't need to pay for much more than the walls and extra front end loaders and dump trucks.

Or open zombie season.

No drug will be that cheap.

How about alcohol or cigarettes? We don't see drive by shooting by alcohol dealers, or boobytrapped black market tobacco farms in the national forests.

Yes, people using drugs do lots of damage. I get that.

There are lots of people who do drugs who do very little damage, but feed the criminal networks because the drugs are illegal.

I do not see any examples of a successful "war on drugs" where the cure wasn't far worse than the disease.

Perfect is not an option.

I prefer drug criminals to the totalitarian state necessary to reduce the use of illegal drugs significantly.

That State will be far more dangerous to you, your family, your freedom, and your property than the drugged up criminals if the laws criminalizing drugs are repealed.

"We have entire industries telling Black people they are justified in committing crimes."

And if entire industries tell people they are justified to abuse drugs? That's already happening to some extents, and we've seen the results over the past couple of decades.

Reagan started what he called the war on drugs. It was mainly an information effort. Drug abuse in students decreased, especially among college students. Drug abuse increased again during the '90s and skyrocketed more recently.

The state runs an entire organization that gets paid, counselors, probation officers, court personnel, etc. Just more big government designed around a victimless "crime"..

Everything government does these days has one purpose, to increase the power of the State. All of the evil consequences simply do not matter, as long as the power and money goes to the 'right' people. The 'drug war' should have ended 30 years ago as a bad job, but since it feeds the power of the State, there is no desire to stop it.

You are exactly right about President Reagan, he and Nancy probably made the most positive effect ever on drug use.
I was just referring to the war on drugs moniker. Based on the positive effects of Reagan’s policies I have to ask if education not prosecution is a better plan.

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