OMG! WTF, War on Drugs? Nancy Reagan may have made it a point to just say no to drugs, but the war on drugs began earlier than her stay in the White House. It was instead Tricky Dick, himself, President Richard Nixon who made drug abuse “public enemy number one.” June marked the 40-year anniversary of the War on Drugs. The idea of ending illegal transportation of drugs from country to country, punishing the people who murder each other for their illicit profits sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately, that’s just not what is happening.
Instead, what we have is a government that is fighting a losing battle. One that has cost, according to the Associated Press, $1 trillion so far. It’ll cost billions more each year to keep it going.
More than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders have ended up in jail and around 10 million of those for possessing marijuana. That drug is legal for medicinal purposes in several states, including our own. Draw comparisons to someone going to jail for possessing Tylenol all on your own. Drugs are within the United States prison system. If the government is unable to secure prisons from the plague of drugs, it is obviously unable to police the world.
It’s not just hippies who’d like to smoke their dope that are for ending the War on Drugs. The Global Commission on Drugs, which includes a wide range of political dignitaries from around the world, released their report that says it’s time to end the nonsense of the “war.” They called for a number of items, including:
End the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others. Challenge rather than reinforce common misconceptions about drug markets, drug use and drug dependence.
(Read the full report here: http://bit.ly/klUvoh)
That report led former President Jimmy Carter to take his computer and write an op/ed for the New York Times calling for the end of the War on Drugs. Carter pointed out that he called for decriminalization of marijuana with a program of treatment in 1977 and cautioned against the imprisonment of America’s youth. (Read his piece here: http://nyti.ms/kpdMDf)
In a world where every political debate includes how much people are paying for taxes, shouldn’t both sides easily agree to cut this massive expense? We’re told time and time again that the government should stay away from our healthcare, but we put the government in charge of rehabilitation for people who have a chemical dependency … and we pay a premium for it. It’s time to retreat from the War on Drugs and focus our attention on actually doing something about the problem. OMG! WTF, War on Drugs?
