Tuesday, March 31, 2009

• War On Drugs – Time For A Change

There are no viable, or wise reasons for drug use to remain on the illegal side of the national judicial ledger. Legalization of drugs, starting with marijuana, will be a major step toward society getting back in control of its streets, and its sanity.

The violent circus that is the Mexican drug industry currently arrests the attention of the mainstream media herd which is reacting with “deer-in-the-headlights” amazement. In its stupor, it fears taking a politically incorrect position on the nonsense making up the current laws surrounding drug use. The answer, if one believes the current Administration’s response, is to spend additional taxpayer money and provide other support to Mexico in order to strengthen its own drug war efforts.

Following recent news headlines, one might perceive “drug wars,” as being a Mexican problem that only requires some of our attention and reaction. Not so. Even Canadians are becoming numb to the accumulation of bodies dropping daily from bullets flying through the streets of once docile cities like Vancouver. Vancouver has of late established its presence at the top of an infamous list. It is now home to more violent gangs than any other city on the continent.

The billions of dollars to be made from the traffic and sale of illegal drugs are worth the risk to armies of well-armed criminals. Drug lords from Miami to Toronto have accumulated powerful armies, and vast assets, including legal businesses and expensive real estate. In many neighborhoods, some of the largest gated mansions belong to the kings of the drug business. On our neighborhood street corners, the pushers at the bottom of the drug distribution hierarchy are visible and obvious as they ply their nefarious and toxic trade. We are all being affected by the crimes their clients must commit to raise money for the next hit. Our homes or our neighbors’ homes are subject to “home invasion,” a new crime that has become so common, it has made its way into our daily vocabulary. Everyone you know has been affected negatively by the current and failed war on drugs.

Well beyond our shores, but affecting us very directly, is the wealth that our laws on drugs have provided groups like the Taliban. In Afghanistan the billions in revenue received from feeding the costly demand for its principal export, finance the daily attacks on our soldiers, fund expanding terrorist networks around the world, and finance the growth of Islamic Sharia law governance. Whole countries are now under the control of well-armed, well-connected international drug lords. Dictatorships in countries in West Africa, for example, find themselves particularly attractive to the cocaine supply chain. Their vulnerabilities succumb readily to drug sourced billions. Countries such as Guinea-Bissau have become narco-states, providing convenient launching points for South American cocaine shipment distribution into Europe where a kilo of cocaine sells for about $50,000. In Guinea, diplomatic pouches expedite drug shipments under comfort of Presidential protection. Drug money is establishing a new order in countries like Niger and Mauritania. Drug cartels have become powers unto themselves. North America is their preferred market.

It should now be evident to anyone not blinded by ideology, that the present twenty five year archaic policy on drugs is not only NOT working, it is stimulating and energizing the decay of our society. Our policies positively affect the street price of all drugs, and induce the pusher to action. Prohibition itself, while dissonant with the Constitution, has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry as the never-ending war on drugs continues to fail, but its costs keep increasing. The impact of our policies on our own society is that we pay for the drug trade in lives, in international instabilities, in tax dollars, in personal loss, and in anxiety.

First on the agenda should be legalization of marijuana, reversing misguided laws that were supported by twisted racist social perceptions in Congress with funding from special interests. Allow individuals who decide they absolutely need it, to grow two plants for personal consumption for example. This action alone would vacate thousands of jail cells, but more importantly, it would remove justification for the pusher, and would end the massive inflow of cash into the hands of the drug hierarchy. Marijuana would have no street value.

Let’s take a page from the early ‘30s; defer to the reasons which led to the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, and the repeal of federal prohibitionary laws that unsuccessfully attempted to smother the consumption of alcohol. Ask Al Capone’s ghost how he felt about the repeal of prohibition. It would also be enlightening for anyone on either side of the argument to research the depraved process through which the government brought about the abolition of marijuana. Society has moved on from those very backward percepts, and very peculiar special interest groups.

Legalization of other drugs can be brought under the control of state governments in time, but the lessons learned from the legalization of marijuana and alcohol, will guide the unraveling of laws governing use of cocaine and heroin. Collection of taxes on sale of drugs will be just a beginning. The objective should be to minimize the value of street drugs. There will always be individuals among us seeking alternative levels of consciousness through substance abuse. Our objective as a society is to reduce the impact that these people’s self-abuse has on the rest of us. It is time for a paradigm shift in attitudes and a reversal of the failed Control Substance Act governing the war on drugs.

9 comments:

  1. Amen. This War on Drugs is hopeless. Why can't the members of Congress see it for what it has become. A war on it's own people.
    Repealment of the Controlled Substance Act needs to be the first step. Return the control of drugs back to the states. Shut down the DEA. Not original thinking of my own.
    But, the thoughts of people who still think.

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  2. Anonymous,

    "But, the thoughts of people who still think." ....Absolutely, that probably includes the majority of taxpayers, though not a majority of Congress or the Administration.

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  3. A friend of ours discovered that the higher up in government she rose to work on the problem of children using drugs, the less it was "don't do drugs", but "how to do drugs safely". This was true even in the Mexican government who asked her at one point to work with their "czar". She was only window dressing.
    Before we get rid of the laws on drugs, marijuana being the worst because hemp cannot be grown here and it is such a valuable product, we must teach our people that drugs of abuse not only destroy the genetics of future generations, as in causing Klinefelter's and Turner's syndromes, and weaken the immunity and health of our people, causing conditions ripe for AIDS infection, they can also cause what Delamer Duverus calls "dissimulation" where the mind is opened up to the alien mind, what the religions call Satan without really understanding what it is. "religious experiences" while on drugs, even supposedly technical information received while on drugs like Kary Mullis, is from the alien mind, which has, as its only goal destruction of humanity. That is why the war on drugs is being allowed and why drugs are allowed to continue. It's big business and many of our professional men, including law enforcement agencies, are involved with it. We must teach our people what it does to them and then by not voting for drugs with our pocketbooks, they will have no reason to be.
    Jenny/Delamer Duverus

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  4. None of us would deny that drugs are a massive life destroyer...

    The trouble is that our war on drugs has also become a massive life destroyer.

    I have experimented with enough drugs in my youth to understand the attraction but I will never comprehend the dependency; and I have no comprehension of something that is 'recreational' becoming so absolutely destructive.

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  5. The Ganjawar is a product. It is totally fabricated to make money. The factory workers wear badges and follow blindly. I don't think most are evil. Just do evil deeds in the name of what they naively believe is good. The means used to perpetuate it and the results of it are evil but, very profitable.

    Black Water subsidiaries of DEAth, Dyncorps spy gadgets and technical support shooting down Missionaries or local Federally paid toys for SWATs to shoot mothers holding their babies and lil old ladies awakened then shot in their beds 39 times. Tom and Rollie shot for their property. Putting sick people in cages for treating their illness, is evil.

    Private security for the Al Gore Occidentals or Exxon and Condi's Chevron OIl pipe lines and wells in Plan Colombia. No one snorts a coca leaf, takes corporate labs and eequipment, sold on the stock exchange and taxed for the politicop to fund more Iran Contras.

    Private prisons and the Haliburdon paraphernalia companies feeding, clothing and bedding 2 million caged Americans. Keeping a free medicine from seniors and a staple from the poor so the International synthetic markets can thrive without competition.

    Corporations now utilize the substandard fossil fools and tree materials for cellulose for plastic and paper instead of Hemp's greater yield, tensile strength and nutritional value of the seed. Hemp has greater tensile strength for wood products and fiber for clothing while the hurd for buildings and bridges are still standing 1400 years in Europe.

    A staple for Mexicans to grow as Canadians do, a home grown deterrent to the illegal immigration problem. Home grown cash crop for farmers instead of selling out to developers and chemical ag corporations pushing nothing but abortion causing poisons.

    The lie of Nixon haunts the country and its zombies carry out the lies in forms of policy. The walking DEAth has no victims of Ganja use. Just futuristic theories that never pan out. Same as the previous liars and gossipers spreading fear. Devastating the Treasury and the Constitution for a paycheck or a tidy fortune. Pitifrickinful!

    The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority;
    it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
    -- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

    Myths and Facts About Marijuana
    http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/factsmyths

    Recommended Reading
    http://www.csdp.org/news/news/books.htm

    Drug War Distortions
    http://www.drugwardistortions.org/

    Calvina Fay vs. Jack Cole
    http://drugwarrant.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4142#4142

    "...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
    - Harry J. Anslinger - America's 1st Drug Czar (FDR - JFK)

    bush ganster wod working
    http://i37.tinypic.com/2s38n.jpg

    1890s Popular American “marriage guides” recommend cannabis extracts for heightened marital pleasures. Women’s temperance groups, lobbying for alcohol prohibition, suggest cannabis as a suitable substitute for the “demon drink.”

    Blessed is the Police State?
    Exporting DEAmocracy
    http://drugwarrant.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4115#4115

    Many Veterans are the Enemy in the Bush D.E.A.th War
    http://www.drugwarrant.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=62

    corp wod sponsers
    http://i38.tinypic.com/142zaz9.jpg

    Endocannabinoids
    http://drugwarrant.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1272
    cannabinoids modulate immune cell function

    872,721 marijuana arrests in 2007 Inhaling or Not
    http://drugwarrant.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4122#4122

    "We have spent over a trillion dollars trying to eradicate the world's most beneficial plant off the face of the earth. Imagine what a better world this would be if that money had been spent on treatment, education and studying the medical benefits of marijuana."
    -- Steve Hager - High Times Editor (1988 - 2003)

    Ganja/Hemp
    http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1092

    The Elkhorn Manifesto
    http://gatewood.com/shadv2.html

    nixon shredder
    http://www.njweedman.com/evil_nixon.jpg

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  6. Good article, and great comparison to the repeal of prohibition and "How would Capone feel?"

    Unfortunately, I don't see prohibition becoming a reality for a long time, due to the stakes so many have on continuing this destructive policy.

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  7. Josh,

    "...this destructive policy" ..... indeed. Change starts with recognition and acknowledgement.

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  8. Nice post. I really liked it.. Don't forget to update it regularly. I am looking for new updates dying to read more stuff from you.

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  9. i admire the article and the comments.

    The latest treatment data indicate that in 2006 marijuana was the most common illicit drug of abuse and was responsible for about 16 percent (289,988) of all admissions to treatment facilities in the United States. Marijuana admissions were primarily male (73.8 percent), White (51.5 percent), and young (36.1 percent were in the 15–19 age range). Those in treatment for primary marijuana abuse had begun use at an early age: 56.2 percent had abused it by age 14 and 92.5 percent had abused it by age 18.


    Research clearly demonstrates that marijuana has the potential to cause problems in daily life or make a person’s existing problems worse. In one study, heavy marijuana abusers reported that the drug impaired several important measures of life achievement including physical and mental health, cognitive abilities, social life, and career status.11 Several studies associate workers’ marijuana smoking with increased absences, tardiness, accidents, workers’ compensation claims, and job turnover.

    Jobspert Knowledge Center

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