Pubdate: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 Source: Old Gold and Black (NC Edu) Copyright: 2003 WFU Publications Board Contact: http://ogb.wfu.edu/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1875 Note: (Wake Forest University paper) Author: Jacob Lyles PROTEST WAR BEGUN LONG AGO The most unjust and self-destructive war being fought by America today is not in the Middle East, it is fought right here in the U.S.A.. It is the drug war. Although it has universal support among politicians, the drug war is a senseless waste of time, resources, lives and money, creating more problems than it fixes. First of all, the drug war is a violation of human rights. I have this crazy idea that each person has absolute ownership over their body and life, and the right to decide what to do with them. The drug war breeds a lack of respect for individual self-determination. It is the majority imposing its standards on the rest of us. Your conception of the "good life" may be hell to me, which is why each person must be able to seek his own happiness, as long as he does not harm another person. My vision of a free America, and I think Thomas Jefferson would agree with me, is one where I can shoot up heroin while simultaneously smoking crack and eating double chocolate marijuana brownies in the middle of the Benson food court. In addition to the violations of rights, there is a high material cost to the drug war: it causes increased crime. The government tells the truth when it says that drug money funds terrorism, but the reason it does so is because drugs are illegal. Prohibition means that the criminal element instead of legal farmers controls the drug trade. The price of drugs is raised dramatically, making it very profitable for those willing to break the law. Like alcohol prohibition of the 1920s, drug prohibition has made our streets into battlegrounds as criminal gangs and organized crime kill other dealers and innocents caught in the crossfire. When America re-legalized alcohol in the '20s, violent alcohol related crime went away. The price of alcohol fell and criminal gangs could not compete with legal producers. Similarly today, if we legalized drugs we would remove the presence of terrorists, gangs and militant cartels from the drug trade. Our cities would be safer and would not be a source of income for terrorist organizations. There is a huge social cost to the drug war. According to the Justice Department, over 750,000 people are in jail for drug-related crimes, and 75 percent of these are non-violent offenders. America is the largest incarcerator in the world. It costs $50,000 to build a prison cell and $20,000 a year to keep a prisoner in one, according to statistics from Social Problems by Eitzen and Baca-Zinn, 9th edition. When you add in enforcement, investigation, and other efforts to stop drug use, the cost of this drug war accounts for half of the money spent on law enforcement in the United States. This money could better be used to rid American cities of violent crimes such as rape, murder, and theft, crimes that actually hurt other people. In the year before Sept 11, our country arrested over 700,000 people for marijuana use but only 60 for being suspected terrorists according to FBI records. It seems like we have our priorities in the wrong place. The Drug Policy Alliance maintains that the drug war affects minorities disproportionately Although white people use three times more marijuana than black people, five times more black people are arrested on marijuana charges. While in jail, parents cannot work to provide for their families, which causes their families to fall into poverty. After a drug offender gets out of jail, they are not allowed to apply for student aid for college, making a vicious cycle of poverty and welfare dependence. When the government attempts to do what is best for us, it usually does the opposite. The quixotic war on drugs is no exception. Drug education programs like DARE are a joke. Instead of teaching children what they need to know to make an informed and safe choice, millions of children know nothing more about drugs than to "just say no." Millions of lives have been ruined by the criminal justice system. People's health has been damaged by getting tainted drugs from shady dealers instead of buying it from legal safe sources on the open market. Money from drugs is funneled to terrorists instead of legal farmers. Our inner cities are wracked with the crime caused by prohibition. All around us we see the harmful effects of the drug war. Acording to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 40 million Americans are occasional users of some kind of illegal drug. Most are responsible non-addicted individuals. In these tough economic times, I can think of hundreds of better ways to use the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the drug war, including giving them back to the households and businesses that deserve them. The drug war cannot be "won," everyone loses from this internecine war on our own people. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth