As I become more and more educated about governmental policies, their intent, and their results, I have recently became aware of an issue that I have been very apathetic about in the past. This issue is the war on drugs.
I want to start with saying I have never and have no intention of ever smoking weed. Sad this should even make a difference, as that is not the issue at all.
Why was marijuana made illegal? Most people do not know this, but it was made illegal mainly due to racism in the United States. Due to immigration of Mexicans, Americans were exposed to marijuana (marijuana was popular among Mexicans at the time). A Texas Legislator’s famous quote, “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy." Marijuana was believed to make people insane and cause them to murder among other things. Dr. James C. Munch testified in court that marijuana had turned him into a bat when he tried it. He later became the US Official Expert on Marihuana.
When alcohol prohibition occurred, it is common knowledge that a black market formed that made some people very rich. This also caused a lot of violence to come about. (Hmm. Something being made illegal and therefore causing a huge black market and violence. Sounds like something going on today, doesn’t it?) Let’s look at marijuana versus tobacco. Tobacco is legal and can be bought at pretty much any gas station in the country. Tobacco kills about 390,000 people a year. Deaths related to alcohol are about 80,000. Marijuana kills zero.* It is not a lethal drug. I love this quote from the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy, “All illegal drugs combined kill about 4,500 people per year, or about one percent of the number killed by alcohol and tobacco. Tobacco kills more people each year than all of the people killed by all of the illegal drugs in the last century.”
*http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/LIBRARY/basicfax3.htm
What is the war on drugs costing us as a nation? Well, in direct cost of enforcing drug policy, I again want to use a quote from the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy:
“The cost to put a single drug dealer in jail is about $450,000, composed of the following:
The cost for arrest and conviction is about $150,000.
The cost for an additional prison bed is about $50,000 to $150,000, depending upon the jurisdiction.
It costs about $30,000 per year to house a prisoner. With an average sentence of 5 years, that adds up to another $150,000.
The same $450,000 can provide treatment or education for about 200 people. In addition, putting a person in prison produces about fifteen dollars in related welfare costs, for every dollar spent on incarceration. Every dollar spent on treatment and education saves about five dollars in related welfare costs.”
Why are we wasting so much money enforcing a policy that has failed to curb usage in all its years of law? The costs are astounding. As I am writing this, there has been over 29.5 BILLION tax dollars spent on the war on drugs this year alone. That is your money, taken by the government, to enforce a policy that simply does not make sense. To make the case that these drugs should be illegal for the ‘safety’ of our country, you would have to go no further than the quote about how many deaths have occurred due to tobacco and alcohol in the USA on a yearly basis. To see how much money has been spent so far this year on the War on Drugs, go to http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
I also want to direct you to a very disturbing page that shows those who died in SWAT Team raids. I actually heard about one in St. Paul just this morning. The swat team raided an apartment and a man fled to his room with his wife believing they were being robbed. He started shooting at them through his bedroom door, causing the swat team to shoot back. He had six children present who were all under 18. They shouted to their father and told him that they were police. Nobody was killed and it was the result of a wrong address. Many others are not as fortunate. Please take a look at this page: http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/08/17/drugWarVictims.html
How many must die for us to stop this embarrassing war? I have only looked into this issue for two, maybe three days yet I already have a barrage of information that makes any case to continue this war on drugs pathetic. The most enraging part of this whole issue is the issue of medical marijuana. Mccain, Romney, and Guiliani all say that there is no evidence that marijuana can be used as a medicine more effectively than other medicine and therefore are against legalization.
I’m sure they never saw the movie “In Pot We Trust” see: http://www.medicalcannabis.com/documentary.htm
I read a story a couple days ago about someone’s mother who had some nerve damage due to a surgery. It was constant, nonstop pain so much so that she could not take a regular shower because she would collapse due to the pain caused by the water contact with her skin. She tried all sorts of pain relievers, but none could suppress the pain. She finally tried marijuana, and it was like no other pain reliever she had tried. She could go to sleep at night pain free and could function on a day-to-day basis without having to endure a pain that brought her many times to the brink of suicide. The son of this woman is now a huge activist against the war on drugs.
Just think about this scenario: Our government, elected by us, finds people in extreme pain who grow small amounts of marijuana they use as medicine to relieve their pain. They go in, arrest that person and throw them in jail. What is wrong with this scenario?
This debate is not about the morality of using marijuana or other “illegal” drugs, it is about whether or not our government has a right to tell us if we can or cannot be involved in these activities. If anything, that $600 a second our government spends on the war of drugs should be poured into rehab programs and helping people cope with drug addictions and allow individuals who need marijuana for medicinal reasons have it. I would think most would find it a hard time expressing their reasons against legalizing medical marijuana to someone who has just told them the intense struggle that they have had with certain diseases.
It’s time for us to change these ridiculous prohibitions and stop being hypocrites who allow tobacco to kill well over a quarter million people a year yet arrest people who smoke a plant to relieve their pain.
Monday, August 25, 2008
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The following was posted as a bulletin on MySpace by Jack Herer [ www.jackherer.com ] on 10/17/08 -- attributed to "Ol Bill" -- and is worth sharing here
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Law-makers, sign on now, to repeal the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA). Without this authority, the ill-conceived War On Drugs (WOD) stops in its tracks. No one has talked about the War On Drugs for a long time. It has not gone away. We still squander scarce resources on the fight against ourselves, at a time when foreign enemies are at the gate. Enough is enough, too much is too much, and more of this futile war would be the height of fiscal irresponsibility. Do now, for the War On Drugs, what the 21st Amendment did for the 18th, and with it, alcohol prohibition. Stop throwing good money after bad.
We should have learned a lesson from alcohol prohibition, namely that it doesn’t work. Isn’t there enough blood in the streets already, without continuing to shoot ourselves in the feet? Do we really need to ruin the lives of so many of our own children, perhaps on the theory it is for their own good?
The CSA is unconstitutional. The CSA never had a constitutional amendment to enable it, like the 18th amendment enabled alcohol prohibition. The drug warriors have, so far, gotten away with an end run, subverting the lack of constitutional authority.
An authority over Interstate Commerce provides a pretext of constitutionality. Any excuse is better than none. So, how is that interstate commerce going, these days? Why would a bankrupt treasury distain to derive revenue from its number one cash crop? The anti-capitalist policy inhibits small farmers from cultivating for a taxed market, and gifts a tax-free monopoly to outlaws, some of whom may be friends of our enemies. This is not what the founders had in mind when they authorized meddling in interstate commerce. Lets bring the underground economy into the taxed economy. The Supreme Court got it wrong in Gonzales V Raich. Good on Clarence Thomas for noticing that the so-called constitutionality of the law is a mockery.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-1454.ZD1.html
How did we get this CSA? Was there an informed debate on the floor? Did the substances ever get their day in court? What congressman then, or now, would admit to knowing a thing or two about LSD? The lawmakers have never wanted to know more than it is politically safe to be against it. Governments around the world ignore fact-checkers and even their own reports. Forgive them, Lord, they make it their business to know not what they do. Common sense tells us that personal experience deepens the understanding of issues. Personal experience is a good thing. But we herd the experienced to the hoosegow. We keep them out of jobs. The many who avoid detection must live double lives.
The congressmen who passed the CSA probably don’t even get it that they deny freedom of religion to those who prefer a non-placebo as their sacrament of communion. Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religious freedom, says the First Amendment. But they did.
Many of the prohibited substances provide access to unique mental states. You can’t say your piece, if you can’t think it up. You can’t think it up, if you are not in a receptive state of mind. Neither the Constitution, nor its amendments, enumerates a power of government to prevent access to specific states of mind. How and when did the government acquire this power, to restrict consciousness and thought? Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, says the First Amendment. But they did.
What would happen if the CSA was enforced one hundred percent? What if all the civil disobediants turned in notarized confessions tomorrow? That is a double digit demographic. Even after years of spending more on prisons than on schools, the prisons don’t have that kind of sleeping capacity. Converting taxpayers into wards of the state mathematically increases the tax burden on the remainder. Higher tax burdens are not what the doctor is ordering at this time.
None of these substances are alleged to be as harmful as prison is. Granny’s justice is a saner benchmark. A kid caught with cigarettes must keep on smoking them, right then and there, until he or she has wretched. Drugs are sometimes accused of causing paranoia, but it is prohibition’s threat of loss of liberty, employment, and estate, that introduces paranoia. Apparently it is true that some of these substances do cause insanity, but the insanity is only in the minds of those who have never tried them. There shall not be cruel and unusual punishment, says the Eighth Amendment. But here it is, in the CSA.
In the 1630’s, the pilgrims wrote home glowingly that the native hemp was superior to European varieties. Now, the government pretends it has a right to prohibit farmers from the husbandry of native hemp, but it so doesn’t. Could an offender get a plea-bargain, by rolling over on someone higher up in the organization? The farmer does nothing to nature’s seed that God Himself does not do when He provides it rain, sunlight, and decomposing earth. How can it be a crime to do as God does? Is the instigator to get off scot-free, while small users are selectively prosecuted? God confesses, in Genesis 11-12, it was He who created the seed-bearing plants, on the second day. Then, He saw they were good. There you have it, the perpetrator shows no remorse about creating cannabis or mushrooms. Neither has He apologized for endowing humans with sensitive internal receptor sites which activate seductive mental effects in the presence of the scheduled molecules. Book Him, Dano.
Common Law must hold that humans are the legal owners of their own bodies. Men may dispose of their property as they please. It is none of Government’s business which substances its citizens prefer to stimulate themselves with. Men have a right to get drunk in their own homes, be it folly or otherwise. The usual caveats, against injury to others, or their estates, remain in effect.
The Declaration of Independence gets right to the point. The Pursuit Of Happiness is a self-evident, God-given, inalienable, right of man. The War On Drugs is, in reality, a war on the pursuit of happiness. Too bad the Declaration of Independence is not worth much in court.
Notwithstanding the failure of the Supreme Court to overturn the CSA, lawmakers can and should repeal the act. Lawmakers, please get to it now, in each house, without undue delay. Wake up. Who has the guts to put America first and not prolong the tragedy?
We don’t need the CSA. The citizenry already has legal recourse for various injuries to itself and its estate, without invoking any War On Drugs. We should stop committing resources to ruin the lives of peaceful people who never injured anyone. If someone screws up at work, fire him or her for the screw-up. The Books still have plenty of laws on them, without this one.
Without the CSA, the empty prisons could conceivably be used to house the homeless. Homeland security might be able to use the choppers that won’t be needed for eradication. Maybe the negative numbers that will have to be used to bottom-line our legacy to the next generation can be less ginormous.
Cannabis has a stronger claim to the blessing of the state than do the sanctioned tobacco and alcohol. Cannabis does not have the deadly lung cancer of tobacco, nor the puking, hangover, and liver cirrhosis of alcohol. To the contrary, Cannabis shows promise as an anti-tumor agent. Nor is cannabis associated with social problems like fighting and crashing cars. Cannabis-intoxication is usually too mellow for fighting, and impaired drivers typically drive within the limits of their impairment. The roads will be safer, if slower, for every driver that switches from drink to smoke. Coffee drinkers cause more serious accidents by zipping in and out of traffic and tailgating. To assure public safety on the road, cops need a kit to assess driving competence and alertness objectively. Perhaps science can develop a virtual reality simulator. Hopefully it could also detect drowsy, Alzheimer’s, and perhaps road-raging, drivers.
John McCain should recuse himself on the CSA repeal issue, due to the conflict of interest of potential competition for his family beer franchise. Both candidates have promised to end ‘failed programs’, but neither has issued a timetable, or a roadmap, for standing down on the WOD.
The debate how a crippled USA can manage ‘the two wars’ is blind. Hello, there are three, not two, wars. The War On Drugs has not let up, after 38 years of failure. Its costs are in the ballpark of the foreign wars. There is no lower-hanging, riper, or higher yielding budgetary fruit than to stop this third war, cold turkey. We are making new enemies faster than we are killing the old ones. We are losing old friends. In this national crisis of global humiliation, we should cut a little slack to those who still love the United States of America, no matter what they may be smoking. Stave off national meltdown, by repeal of the CSA, this week, if possible. TIA.
Without the War On Drugs, Americans can come together as a people in ways that are not possible with so many of our best and brightest under threat of disenfranchisement.
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We need to keep reminding ourselves that the CSA and War On Drugs were the offspring of Richard ("I") M ("not a crook") Nixon & Company [note: if he wasn't a crook then why did he need a blanket pardon from his successor Gerald Ford and why did nearly ALL of his inner circle end up going to prison?] Even his very own Shafer Commission recommended marijuana policy reform but he disregarded its findings because pot was popular with blacks, hippies, Jewish psychiatrists, anti-war activists, and others he considered to be political enemies.
http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5049
So there you have it, a small group of REAL CRIMINALS who controlled the US Gov't making criminals out of us "little people" who just want to live our lives in peace and seek respite from pain or relax from the drudgery of life with a NATURAL, eco-friendly HERB.
DRUG WAR = RICHARD NIXON'S LASTING LEGACY.
"Tricky Dick" Nixon, the only US president to have ever been forced to resign in DISGRACE yet his drug policy reigns supreme and his party worships his Sacred Cow to this day as if it were the Gospel of Christ (don't ever forget that all-to-many Republicans are MAKE-BELIEVE Christians to boot! After all, what would Jesus think of locking people in cages because of a plant that His Father put on the Earth? A question the "Christian Right" refuses to answer)
I highly recommend visiting Jack's site for more information on Cannabis/hemp and the origin of marijuana prohibition. Again, the URL is
www.jackherer.com
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