Talk-Polywell.org

Using the blunt tool of Law Enforcement to deal with complex social and health concerns is counter productive.

Dad,

Steve and I have had this conversation many times. This is a tough issue but here are the facts. I’ve been a recreational drug user. Not now, but in my earlier college years, the years I was on the dean’s list and getting selected to be the commencement speaker at my graduation. Steve has been a recreational drug user for a while, the whole time maintaining an impeccable record in school and work.

Even Jimmy Allison was a recreational drug user while finishing medical school and excelling in his career (he hasn’t used for many years though). The point is, the concepts that people have of drug users is that of the homeless junkie or the woman with seven kids on welfare. All these are racially charged notions, particularly of the black and Latino populations. The reality is that the vast majority of people who use recreational drugs are professionals, educators, and students on their way to becoming leaders (take Clinton and Bush, for example).

I believe that if drugs were legalized, then they could be regulated. Once regulated, the government would nullify the illegal trade of narcotics and turn billions of dollars for stopping the drug trade into billions of dollars earned. They would also be able to officially recognize the problem and start addicts on programs that could help them kick the habit.

Drugs don’t fry your brain. Trust me. I and most of my friends are living proof. The problem is that drugs have been racialized, and just like the notion of the young black man robbing someone causing people to look suspiciously at them as they pass in the subway, this is the same fear that keeps us in the war on terror. We are putting young Latinos and blacks in jail at an alarming rate even though the vast majority of users are not black or Latino. The reason for the disparity of blacks and Latinos in prison is not because they’re the only ones using. It is because police only patrol those areas where they live.

For instance, when was the last time you saw a police officer patrol Stevens Park? Yet people in the barrio see a cop many times a day. I will bet you anything that the four kids who had lived in your house on Live Oak used recreational drugs, but they won’t be going to jail because the cops aren’t targeting them.

This is more than just a drug issue. This is a race issue. I think we should legalize and regulate the recreational drug industry.

Terry

It has been 220 years since the Bill of Rights. Our nation’s founders would be disappointed with what we have done to their legacy in the last 40 years with the war on drugs. By its very nature, the war on drugs is a war on the Bill of Rights. That was most evident in what occurred in Lima, Ohio, on Jan 5, 2008.

Prior to the war on drugs, law enforcement executed search warrants with police officers dressed in their normal, readily recognizable uniforms. They knocked on the front door and announced their presence and purpose. They then waited for someone to come to the door. Only if it was clear that someone was attempting to evade, was present and refusing to open the door, or no one was home did they force entry.

Today, police on narcotic search warrants are dressed in black SWAT uniforms, often wearing ski masks, looking more like military commandos than officers out to protect and serve. Without warning, they set off stun and flash grenades and simultaneously break out windows, knock down doors and burst in with automatic weapons at the ready. As many as 40,000 such raids occur each year in the U.S. bringing unnecessary violence and provocation to small time nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. These raids have resulted in hundreds of needless deaths and injuries, not only to drug offenders, but to bystanders, children, police officers and suspects later found to be innocent. See http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

In Lima, Ohio, police used similar tactics where they knew children were present. The results were that an unarmed Theika Wilson, a mother of 6, was killed and her 1 year old child, held in her arms, seriously wounded. Both were shot by police who had rushed into the home to insure that no one destroyed any evidence, small as it may be.

Chief Garlock said that these dangerous situations occur “when a high risk search warrant is executed.” This was not a high risk search warrant because of some small time drug user, part time drug dealer, who had a small amount of cocaine and marijuana. This was a dangerous situation because the police were uniformed, equipped, trained, and expected to act as if this was a war on people; which is exactly what the war on drugs has become. The Chief and the Mayor offered their condolences. The nation shrugs and Mrs. Wilson and her baby are chalked up as collateral damages in this war.

Milton Friedman said in 1990 that “Every friend of freedom . . . must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the U.S. into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.” His nightmare became a reality in Lima, Ohio.

Since the war on drugs began, drugs are cheaper, stronger, more plentiful, there is more police corruption, our prisons are cramped with inmates convicted of simple possession, and we are killing innocent civilians at an alarming rate. As we did with alcohol prohibition, it is time for the friends of freedom to begin a national debate and admit that the war on drugs is a failed policy.

Russ Jones

He talks about addicts being able to go to a clinic with a prescription to get their drugs. I don't think that will work because it assumes the addict doesn't value his time. Think about having to go to a clinic 4 or 6 times a day for his fix. Possible if there is a clinic is on every corner. What are the odds?

Skipjack wrote:

He talks about addicts being able to go to a clinic with a prescription to get their drugs. I don't think that will work because it assumes the addict doesn't value his time. Think about having to go to a clinic 4 or 6 times a day for his fix. Possible if there is a clinic is on every corner. What are the odds?

I thought drugs did not make people addicted? If that is so, then I am sure he can "hold it up" for a few hours if he really is that busy, right?