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We all know that prohibiting the sale of alcohol was
a miserable failure. In fact, it was such a complete
catastrophe that the Constitution’s 21st Amendment
ensures alcohol never again will be made illegal. Thank
you, FDR! The war on drugs is the equivalent of drug
prohibition. Like its predecessor, it plagues over society,
a veritable war on the impoverished.
Since the inception of the drug prohibition, teen drug
use has multiplied seven times. Teenagers are rebels
without a cause. They want to abuse some type of substance,
and alcohol and tobacco, the only legal drugs, are difficult
to obtain without a fake ID. Plus, they're legal; that’s
not resisting authority. I remember high school —
the preps, the hippies, the clicks and the illegal drugs
running through all of the different circles. I do not
recall even once seeing alcohol or tobacco in anybody’s
backpack.
No teenager is going to slide up scandalously next
to his buddy whispering, “Hey, bro, scope out
the goods,” while he points at a pack of cigarettes.
A sack full of buds, meanwhile, is something that will
get his little veins in his forehead to protrude and
pulsate. Abusing those drugs is against the rules, and
that's cool.
Prohibiting the use of drugs entails losing the ability
to effectively regulate and monitor them by driving
them underground. Absolute intolerance of drugs does
not stop those who want to use them from using them.
What it does do is put a small percentage of nonviolent
drug offenders in jail. Optimistic reports claim that
only 10 percent to 15 percent of the drugs that are
brought into America are found. Eighty-five to 90 percent
arrive untouched, making the war on drugs ineffective
and useless.
Drug-related crimes continue to increase exponentially.
The black market created by the prohibition of drugs
is directly responsible for murders and crimes in many
of America’s inner cities. Think about it: Prohibition
limits supply, not demand. Limiting supply means exorbitant
profits are to be made (just look at gas prices today
— $2.50 a gallon here in Southern California.
Ouch!). Those that have the demand, but cannot afford
the drugs, find criminal means of procurement. Exorbitant
profits create the need to establish your territory.
These territories’ occupants operating in the
black market form gangs to designate and distinguish
turfs. These gangs kill to defend their profits —
primarily black-on-black violence.
Another less elaborate example of how limiting supply
affects buyers is plain old debt. Cocaine is around
$150 for 3.5 grams. If one cannot or does not repay
the seller punctually, the distributor likely will echo
the sentiments of Don Corleone by threatening to make
him an offer he can’t refuse … violence.
The current homicide rate is 10 per 100,000, the highest
it has been since alcohol prohibition. This makes America
one of the most dangerous countries in the world, especially
the Western world. Only our nation has such a thing
as a prison-industrial complex, another significant
consequence of the war on drugs.
Since the war on drugs started, prison populations
have exploded. There are eight times as many prisoners
as there were three decades ago. Police are employed
to capture and detain black marketeers. Users go to
jail for hurting only themselves. Peddlers go to jail
because the government wants to eliminate a competitor
— more on that later. The government has no place
regulating what may go in or come out of our bodies.
That is partly why the 18th Amendment was repealed.
People perceived government as putting its nose where
it did not belong (Iraq is one thing, but your constituents’
bodies are quite another). Religious fundamentalists
pushed the alcohol prohibition through Congress. Racism
pushed the drug prohibition through. Incarcerating nonviolent
drug offenders is unacceptable.
The war on drugs, whether intentionally or not, has
mutated into the war on those living in poverty. Of
nearly 2 million inmates nationwide, 70 percent are
minorities, a particularly alarming statistic when you
realize that Caucasians comprise nearly 70 percent of
the American population. Something is seriously awry
in these Divided States of America.
The war on drugs is masked racism. It is a war on the
impoverished.
Crazy, you say? Then this notion you will find preposterous:
The federal government does not terminate this foolish
war because it is the primary recipient of the monies
collected. It gets the money from the drug busts, it
gets the money for excessive bail bonds, and 85 percent
of the drugs that come into this country go unnoticed.
That's bad for the war on drugs, unless the government
is the principal dealer. I am not trying to start a
conspiracy theory here, but I've heard that those who
stand to benefit the most are usually the culprits.
Ordinary citizens like you and me are losing this war.
If our government were losing it, wouldn’t it
retreat, call a cease-fire, and end the abomination
that it is?
The war on drugs has accomplished its antithesis. Drug
prohibition has wounded America’s psyche. I am
not for an America run amuck with druggies gallivanting
in the streets high on heroin and PCP, looting convenience
stores and vandalizing cars while wearing bras on their
heads.
Holland legalized marijuana and heroin long ago. As
a percentage, it has half the amount of people dancing
with Mary Jane that we have here at home, and a third
of the smack users. I am for a safe America, where I
am free to roam through the streets of Los Angeles,
New York or Atlanta by myself at night, unafraid and
uninhibited; where the rich do not have to barricade
their homes, alienating themselves from the rest of
the world in an attempt to protect their possessions.
Drug abusers have nowhere to go to find information
or treatment. Jail is their only recourse. It is high
time we end this crusade of intolerance. Educate and
rehabilitate, do not humiliate and incarcerate.
Every dollar spent on incarcerating people is seven
times more effective when spent on education and treatment.
Sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry —
just providing for the poor in general — is much
more helpful to society than imprisoning nonviolent
drug offenders. Assistance, acceptance and understanding
are better for the poor and impoverished, and for society
as a cohesive, dynamic, “living” organism.
Taking this angle, our organism is murderous, masochistic,
and hateful — endangered. Ending the war on drugs
will not save us, but it will be one giant leap toward
curing our ailing society.
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