DRUG WAR’S STUPEFYING EFFECTS

In 1993, Tonya Drake mailed a sealed overnight envelope given to her by a "friend from the neighborhood."

Tonya had some clue what was in there - you don’t often get a C- note for mailing wedding announcements. But she was a working-class mother of four who needed the money, and didn’t count on getting caught with crack.

Ten years mandatory minimum. That’s what Tonya got in a California court.

The judge said: "This woman doesn’t belong in prison for 10 years for what I understand she did. That’s just crazy, but there’s nothing I can do about it."

Nevertheless, until 2003, Tonya remains imprisoned 400 miles away from her children, now supported by Aid to Families with Dependent Children (a.k.a. us).

So it goes with this country’s war on drugs.

You might imagine the politicos at last Wednesday’s congressional hearing on "The Pros and Cons of Drug Legalization, Decriminalization and Harm Reduction" might be concerned about Tonya and others like her - or at least the tax burden they cause.

They should have called the hearing "Medical Marijuana Madness."

"We’re getting rolled in the public arena by very clever people," said retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, White House director of drug control policy. "I want [drug policy reformers] to come out and say what they believe and be subject to cross-examination."
(Marijuananews note: For the record, I would welcome the opportunity, but he seems to prefer to misrepresent my views when I am not there.)
See
The Drug Czar’s Testimony On "The Drug Legalization Movement In America" Has Three Parts:
Lie About The Anti-Prohibitionist Movement; Lie About Marijuana; Lie About The Netherlands.
With A Little Lying About Me.

Echoes of the McCarthy hearings! It might have been scary, had the speakers not sounded so silly.

See
The Miami Herald Does Not Question Prohibitionist Propaganda As It Reports On Hearings

McCaffrey felt the need to state for the record that Americans don’t want their children on heroin and their truck drivers tripping out on acid and crystal meth. So all you drug reform advocates who, in McCaffrey’s words, "want drugs made widely available, in chewing gums and sodas, over the Internet and at the corner store," had better watch your keisters.

Lies and half-truths - that’s how Yale law Professor Steven Duke described many of the "facts" presented at the hearing. Duke is author of "America’s Longest War: Rethinking Our Tragic Crusade Against Drugs."

For example, while it is true that spending on illegal drugs dropped 37 percent between 1988 and 1995, prices dropped correspondingly because of an oversupply due mostly to America’s failure to interdict drugs.

"McCaffrey says the Netherlands has seen increased crime and drug abuse? The Netherlands has lower drug consumption and crime rates than America by far," notes Duke.

McCaffrey also cited a National Transportation Safety Board study of 182 fatal truck accidents that showed stimulants and marijuana were present in more cases than alcohol. They needed a study to figure that one out?

Meanwhile, every major review of car accidents and violent crime reveals alcohol as the single most common co-factor.

Our current means for getting tough on drugs are tough on everyone except politicians, who score cheap, easy points off an ill-informed public.

That’s why Congress takes such pains to keep us that way, reducing an opportunity to improve drug policy into Wrestlemania: The Drug Czar of the U.S. of A. vs. the ACLU (Anarchist Crackpot Licentious Un-Americans).

It stinks of an $18 billion a year setup, which is what the war costs us each year.

Between 1985 and 1995, the ranks of the incarcerated have increased from a few hundred thousand to more than 1.7 million. Eighty-five percent of that increase was drug convictions, the bulk of them nonviolent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

And many of them are children. Between 1992 and 1995, more than 40 states changed laws to make it easier to try juveniles in adult court. In most states they can now be tried as adults even for nonviolent crimes, and some states have mandatory minimums.

Is this what we want? Kids locked up in adult facilities where they are eight times more likely to commit suicide, five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, and twice as likely to be assaulted by staff?

Judges need no convincing. At least 100 at the federal level publicly favor changes in the drug laws - including some measure of decriminalization. They include federal Judge Scott Wright of Missouri, Superior Court Judge James Gray of California, Senior New York State Appellate Judge Judith Kaye and New York Federal District Court Judge Robert Sweet, who has initiated his own petition campaign!

So don’t let your Congress people tell you that there is no middle ground between locking the Tonyas of this land away from their kids, and sticking crack in their candy.

According to law Professor Duke, most heroin and coke addicts willing to register in English and Swiss pilot programs in order to get their drugs for free were able to return to work, take care of their families and lead relatively normal lives.

You eliminate the 60,000 pot smokers who are in jail in any given year, you save taxpayers $1.2 billion. Add what you could save by eliminating 500,000 pot cases that clog up the courts each year.

See
Ten More Years; Six Million More Arrests, Says Czar – Too Long; Too Few, Says Newt.
Actually, the Czar Did Not Mention the Arrests, but No One Ever Does
and
1997 Marijuana Arrests Hit 695,000 -- A New Record; Percentage Of Marijuana Arrests For Simple Possession Ties 1979 Record -- Analysis By Richard Cowan
Who knows how much money that would be?

Or how many people we could save from drugs if we diverted that money into treatment?

Instead of war on drugs, peace for drug users and us all.

Why is that a radical concept?