Posted on 12/17/2002 9:39:06 AM PST by Joe Bonforte
In a little noticed hearing of the House Government Reform Commnittee last week, Indiana Congressman (my homeotwn's Congressman actually) and longtime drug warrior Dan Burton made some stunning comments. In a hearing entitled "America's Heroin Crisis, Colombian Heroin and How We Can Improve Plan Colombia," Burton stopped just a hair short of advocating the decriminalization of drugs. Watch the video here (cut forward to 1 hour, 18 minutes into the hearing). Here's the transcript:
Dan Burton: I want to tell you something. I have been in probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty hearings like this at various times in my political career,. And the story is always the same. This goes back to the sixties. You know, thirty or thirty five years ago. And every time I have a hearing, I hear that people who get hooked on heroin and cocaine become addicted and they very rarely get off of it. And the scourge expands and expands and expands. And we have very fine law enforcement officers like you go out and fight the fight. And you see it growing and growing, and you see these horrible tragedies occur. But there is no end to it.
And I see young guys driving around in tough areas of Indianapolis in cars that I know they can’t afford and I know where they are getting their money. I mean that there is no question. A kid can’t be driving a brand-new Corvette when he lives in the inner city of Indianapolis in a ghetto. You know that he has gotta be making that money in someway that is probably not legal and probably involves drugs.
Over seventy percent of all crime is drug-related. And you alluded to that today. We saw on television recently Pablo Escobar gunned down and everybody applauded and said “that’s the end of the Medellín cartel. But it wasn’t the end. There is still a cartel down there. They are still all over the place. When you kill one, there’s ten or twenty or fifty waiting to take his place. You know why? Its because of what you just said a minute ago, Mr. Carr, Mr. Marcocci (sp). And that is that there is so much money to be made in it there is always going to be another person in line to make that money.
And we go into drug eradication and we go into rehabilitation and we go into education, and we do all of these things... And the drug problem continues to increase. And it continues to cost us not billions, but trillions of dollars. Trillions! And we continue to build more and more prisons, and we put more and more people in jail, and we know that the crimes most of the time are related to drugs.
So I have one question I would like to ask all of you, and I think this is a question that needs to be asked. I hate drugs. I hate people who succumb to drug addiction, and I hate what it does to our society. It has hit every one of us in our families or friends of ours. But I have one question that nobody ever asks, and that is this question: What would happen if there was no profit in drugs? If there was no profit in drugs, what would happen. If they couldn’t make any money out of selling drugs, what would happen?
Carr: I would like to comment. If we made illegal... what you are arguing then is complete legalization?
Dan Burton: No I am not arguing anything. I am asking the question. Because we have been fighting this fight for thirty to forty years and the problem never goes way...
....Well I don’t think that the people in Colombia would be planting coca if they couldn’t make any money, and I don’t think they would be refining coca and heroin in Colombia if they couldn’t make any money. And I don’t think that Al Capone would have been the menace to society that he was if he couldn’t sell alcohol on the black market and he did and we had a horrible, horrible crime problem. Now the people who are producing drugs in Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia and Colombia and everyplace else. They don’t do it because they like to do it. They don’t fill those rooms full of money because they like to fill them full of money. They do it because they are making money.
At some point we to have to look at the overall picture and the overall picture and I am not saying that there are not going to be people who are addicted they are going to have to be education and rehabilitation and all of those things that you are talking about - but one of the parts of the equation that has never been talked about because politicians are afraid to talk about it this is my last committee hearing as Chairman. Last time! And I thought about this and thought about this, and thought about this. And one of the things that ought to be asked is “what part of the equation are we leaving out?” And “is it an important part of the equation?” And that is the profit in drugs. Don’t just talk about education. Don’t just talk about eradication. Don’t just talk about killing people like Escobar, who is going to be replaced by somebody else. Let’s talk about what would happen if we started addressing how to get the profit out of drugs.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if, twenty years from now, we could look back at law-and-order Dan Burton's conversion as the "Nixon goes to China" turning point of the drug war?
I never claimed that. You would be more than disingenious if you maintained that. Don't stoop just because you are looking childish. Don't feel the nned to prove it.
As to the origin of rights, you cling to the infantile notion that I need to show you one of your beloved documents in order for rights to be legitimate. It's back to the childish idea of proving a negative.
There is no paradox in the fact thet someone has the right to do anything that doesn't violate anyone else's right.
This other idea that you have some legitiamte power to violate my rights just because YOU deem something to be threatening is past ridiculous. I haven't addressed it because it is so dumb. But you force me to show how dumb it is and embarrass you so I shall.
A person who is very tall and dressed in tattered clothing and wearing a certain facial expression is walking down a street on the same dark night as I. I feel threatened. Therefore I have the legitimate power to use force to restrain him. That is the preposterous notion you advance.
Please don't lie, it's beneath even you. Damn I hate it when people lie.
You are unable to specify the 'danger' in private acts of 'drug' use. -- or in witchcraft, sodomy, etc. -- You never have. -- Until you do, your 'argument' is specious, at best.
You are telling me that the founders saw no harm in sodomy or witchcraft yet STILL supported STATE laws against those things? Wow, you must think our founders were real losers.
Read the above. I 'told you' no such thing.
-- Once again aggie, you are making a fool of yourself because you cannot argue to support your positions. -- Thanks.
Where do rights come from?
Oh com'on! I thought you were a man of logic. In order to establish the rights in which you test another right against, you must ask youself if that right violates another right, but to know if THAT is a right you must ask yourself if it violates another right, but to know if THAT is a right you must ask if THAT violates another right. It is never ending. Everything rests on other rights that rest on it.
IMPOSED danger, at a certain level is a violation of one's rights. correct? Or do you argue that I may put you in as much danger as I wish up until the point I actually cause damage to you?
Please learn the difference between rights and powers. Only individual human beings possess rights. Groups of people do not have rights. The government is nothing more than a specific group of people.
By smoking crack, or crystal meth, or any other hard drug, my neighbor willingly gives up his ability to be a resposible citizen. Risking me and my family with the posibility of acting out in a harmful way. Devalueing my property by reducing the appeal, being that a crack user lives next door.
My state has established that this is a violation of my rights.
MEANINGLESS! Because once you legalize pot the rest will follow. Give an inch and they will take a mile. Legal marijuana is their Trojan horse. Same happened with affirmative action, which was originally just for Blacks and American Indians. Now everyone (except white males) has hopped on board that gravy train. Including women (51% of the population!) and fresh off the boat immigrants.
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