The drugs-hysteria still persists. Some 15 years ago we predicted that it would not take more than 5 to 10 years before all drugs would be legalized. We predicted that people and government would come to see that not only is it impractical to ‘fight drugs’, but also that freedom includes the right to (risk) harming oneself. People do this all the time. People engage in dangerous sports (racing, boxing, even football), engage in betting, unsafe sex, bunjee-jumping etc.
People also engage in overdrinking, in over-dosing themselves with sex-drugs etc. etc. People freely choose to do all these dangerous things. Try telling your son not to ride a motorbike. If he is the kind of guy who wants to ride a bike, sooner or later he will. Many young men and women end up in hospital with serious injuries due to motorcycle-accidents. Motorbikes are dangerous. Nevertheless, would we outlaw them?
Drugs-use is not recommended
Decriminalization of all drugs is not a recommendation to use drugs. The fact that alcohol-use is allowed, is not a recommendation to use alcohol either. We insist that the only way a society can get some control over drugs is by decriminalizing it, i.e. taking drugs out of the criminal circuit. As long as it is there, drugs will not only be used illegally anyway, it will also be actively promoted (pushed!). For as long as drugs are illegal, drugs-dealers have a reason to push drugs, namely BIG EASY BUCKS! No wonder they hang around schools and colleges. More and more kids get hooked, but the hysteria persists …
The public insists on spending BIG TAX-BUCKS on ‘fighting drugs’ and keeping the drugs-pushers around our schools and colleges. Take out the illegality and the whole drugs-trade collapses. If we stopped spending BIG-TAX-BUCKS on fighting drugs, the pushers would not be able to make any easy BUCKS anymore. They would soon stop hanging around schools and colleges. Your children would be safe again. For less money! But the drugs-hysteria persists…
Our prisons are over-full
Prisons are full and cost a fortune, whereas during the last 50 years we have seen a steady increase in drugs-use, despite our all our efforts and money to control it. The ‘war on drugs’ does not and cannot result in any ‘victory’ (whatever that may mean). We need the money and resources for more important things like fighting the crime of poverty. But still the hysteria persists….
We don’t know how we can make these truths clear. We know that eventually the public will come to understand it. We don’t know why it takes so long. Of course, a whole industry – both legal and illegal – has developed around drugs. People in this industry fear job losses, on the legal side customs, police, prison personnel, attorneys, judges and staff etc. and on the illegal side pushers, smugglers etc. Some customs and police officers even fear loss of bribes. So they are all dead against decriminalization. So, the hysteria persists…
Drugs is a public health care problem, not a legal problem. Our money and effort should be spent on rehab and detox, not on prisons and law enforcement. Thank God for a man like Mike Gravel (view today’s video). Maybe he will succeed in breaking the hysteria. He has our blessing anyway.