The Associated Press has begun a series of articles on the abysmal failure of the drug war.
U.S. war on drugs has met none of its goals
I've been saying that since 2002, writing to papers about it, doing local and national media about it, ran for Governor with the main platform plank of ending the drug war in Alabama. And, people call me crazy, a lunatic dope smoker, a druggie and all sorts of other nice things. But, they can call me whatever they want because I am RIGHT and they are WRONG.
See, the drug war wasn't designed to succeed, at least not at the stated objectives laid out in the beginning. What it has succeeded at is destabilizing entire nations (Colombia, Afghanistan, Mexico etc..) and expanding centralized federal government power into rural areas of the US (like Alabama) through the use of BYRNE grants, which gives police departments money for every drug arrest they make....not convictions they get, not major dealers they take down. See, there aren't many major kingpins arrested and imprisoned because if they take out the big fish and there are no little fish to arrest, prosecute, imprison and therefore no justification for these goddamn drug task forces who love to kill family pets in front of children, or murder 92 year old little old ladies then plant cocaine in her house and say she shot first or, arrest nearly the entire black population of a tiny Texas town, or target a mother based on a letter to the editor and make up lies and attribute them to that mothers five-year-old daughter to get a warrant, or demand to search every vehicle they stop and threaten to bring the dogs out on you, even though they have no right to do so.
The list of shit cops and the government could no longer do to the citizens of the US if we ended the drug war is almost endless.
So, let's end it.
Get off your ass today and do something. Write a letter to the editor in response to this article, make a sign and stand on the street corner, talk to your elected officials and show them this news article, show up at campaign rallies and ask what the candidate plans to do to end the drug war. If you keep sitting around waiting for someone else to step up and do what every American citizen who understands the Constitution is morally obligated to do, or you wait until they come to arrest you or get the wrong address and shoot you, your dogs, terrorize your kids and give your elderly relatives heart attacks then, this will rage on forever. If you aren't fighting back against the drug war then you are a major part of the problem.
There are only two ways to handle drugs.
1) Regulate them like alcohol and tobacco, which would reduce the rate of preventable overdose deaths, the spread of deadly diseases, property crimes committed by addicts needing a way to get their drugs, gang violence, the police state the drug war has created, meth labs where children are exposed to deadly chemicals, restrict who has access to them (drug dealers don't ask kids for ID), reduce the funds that terrorist organizations use to blow us up, and use the lucrative billions of dollars to fund things like better education for our kids, treatment for people who become addicted, create jobs, fund medicare, medicaid, and social security, reserve prison beds for the really bad people like murderers and child molesters and rapists and those fuckers on Wall Street.
or
2) Allow violent, criminal drug cartels to control drugs, continue to watch kids and other loved ones die needlessly because they got a polluted product or used too much not knowing the purity, continue the destruction of the family unit, increase the number of people who use drugs, increase the spread of deadly diseases, allow gangs to continue to operate, continue to fund terrorist organizations who use illicit drugs as a way to fund their activities, see more children living in meth labs, have more property crimes, increased availability of drugs to everyone who wants them, more murders, more overcrowded prisons, increase the power of the police state and the federal government intrusion into our daily lives, and make yourself a target for a botched drug raid even if you have nothing to do with drugs. This is what we currently have.
In short, if you support the second option, drug prohibition, then you support the drug dealers and you are responsible for everyone killed by cops or dealers, every pet slaughtered, every granny given a heart attack or shot, every kid who dies from an overdose or from a polluted product, every kid who lives in a meth lab, every dollar that goes to cage someone for ingesting a substance not sanctioned by the giant pharma companies (who really control the government), every new case of HIV/AIDS and Hep C., every gang terrorizing neighborhoods, every property crime committed to get drugs, every teacher given a pink slip because you think it is more important to punish someone for doing something that is none of your goddamn business anyway than it is to give a child a sound education, which reduces the chances that they will use drugs or wind up in prison....and on and on and on.
You don't have to like drugs or use drugs to grasp that the drug war has failed and will always fail. There are far superior and less costly ways, both in dollars spent and in lives destroyed, to deal with drug abuse and addiction.
If you support letting the criminal cartels control all the billions of dollars made in the drug trade then I hope your house is the next 'wrong address' the cops get. And don't think it can't happen to you....even if you are a politician. Most Americans won't accept this truth until some jack-booted drug task force cop kicks them in the teeth. I hope you aren't one of those Americans.
So, what will you do to end this Unconstitutional madness?
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