Talk-Polywell.org

https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/ethan_n ... drugs.html

The Al Capone X50 comment comes at about 50 seconds in. Total is about 18 minutes.

Twenty years ago, Ethan Nadelmann left his teaching position at Princeton University to become a full-time advocate for ending the drug war. As the founding executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), the largest and most influential organization promoting drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights, Ethan’s vision and leadership have had a monumental impact on public opinion and changed the course of history.

Take a few minutes, as soon as you can, to hear Ethan Nadelmann’s newly released TED Talk that’s featured as today’s lead item at TED.com. There is a good reason for the standing ovation Ethan received at the conclusion. The ideas he presents are provocative, enlightening and becoming more mainstream than anyone could have imagined when he began his activism more than two decades ago.

And yet we have "Conservatives" who have learned nothing from Alcohol Prohibition. The alternative interpretation is that they like supporting Black Markets and criminals. Some "conservatism." Conserving gangsters.

The Drug War was never about Drugs he says. It was about who would be punished. Chinese opium smokers (when grandma used the stuff in the early 1800s there were no laws against it). Mexican pot users. Blacks using cocaine. And this history is not hidden. Just relatively unknown.

At about 10 minutes in he discusses prohibition a a vector for spreading drug use. And "conservatives" who are against drug use love prohibition. Talk about a disconnect.

So why are we legalizing pot? Too many white kids using it and getting in trouble for it. And this is despite the large racial disparity in enforcement.

Utopian progressives, you will never convince them. Why not move all the argument for a police state out of the Federal level and put it back onto the states. That was what was done before. There are still dry counties. 300 million is impossible to manage for progressives, move their utopian efforts to the local level (where people can vote with their feet).

mvanwink5 wrote:Utopian progressives, you will never convince them. Why not move all the argument for a police state out of the Federal level and put it back onto the states. That was what was done before. There are still dry counties. 300 million is impossible to manage for progressives, move their utopian efforts to the local level (where people can vote with their feet).

Those dry counties are slowly going away. And the movement to end Prohibition IS currently a state by state effort.

So things ARE moving in the right direction and are moving away from the Progressive (left and right) vision.

One positive trend is that the Progressives on the right are dying off and are being replaced by a more libertarian electorate. Hell - Newt "Death Penalty for Two ounces of Pot" Gingrich supported heroin decriminalization in California.

The people most affected by the police state - those under 60, who grew up with it - are working against it. Effectively.

I'd like to see the anti-crime effort revert to what we had in the early 1800s. Only those crimes reported to the government were attended to. The end of enforcers.