Pubdate: Mon, 12 Nov 2007
Source: BC Heights (US MA: Edu)
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Copyright: 2007 The Heights, Inc.
Author: Kevin Boland

END THE WAR ON DRUGS

For well over 30 years, the government has waged a "War on Drugs." By 
nearly all accounts, this war, much like the utopian "War on 
Poverty," has been an abject failure. The stated goals of the federal 
government's drug policy - reducing crime, drug addiction, and 
juvenile drug use - have not been achieved. In many instances, the 
aggressive prosecution of the "war" has inflamed the problem rather 
than solved it. At the very least, the federal government's policy 
has been an invasion of the constitutional rights of Americans.

Marijuana has been around as both a medicinal plant and a drug for 
thousands of years. It was legal in the United States and was used as 
medicine until 1937. The war on drugs, however, began in earnest with 
the election of Richard Nixon as president. In 1972 marijuana was 
placed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning that 
the government considered it to have "no accepted medical use in 
treatment in the United States."

William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the founders of the modern 
conservative movement and of the magazine National Review, has been 
convinced that the United States should cease and desist from the war on drugs.

He stated in a 2004 column that, "The marijuana laws can most 
directly be compared to the Prohibition-era laws, which didn't work, 
undermined the law, and were capriciously enforced. Pot consumption 
varies, but not in correlation with the laws' throw-weight. If you 
buy an ounce in New York state, that could bring you a fine of $l00; 
in Louisiana, a jail sentence of 20 years."

Buckley shares some interesting statistics. He said, "When Nixon 
declared his tough drug policies, athwart the recommendation of his 
own commission, which had advocated licensing marijuana for 
individual home consumption, arrests climbed to over 100,000 per year.

In 2001, 720,000 Americans were arrested for pot. About 20,000 
inmates in the federal system have been incarcerated primarily for a 
marijuana offense. Those in state systems would equal that figure, 
and exceed it."

The war on drugs has continued despite growing public resistance to 
the notion that marijuana use and possession should be classified as 
a criminal activity.

According to a 1999 Gallup poll, 73 percent of Americans are in favor 
of "making marijuana legally available for doctors to prescribe in 
order to reduce pain and suffering." In a 2004 poll commissioned by 
the AARP, 72 percent of Americans ages 45 and older thought marijuana 
should be legal for medicinal purposes if recommended by a doctor. 
Since 1996, voters in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, 
have passed favorable medical marijuana ballot initiatives.

The policemen and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents who 
enforce the federal and state laws on drugs have begun to show signs 
of dissatisfaction with current policy as well.

In 2002, several thousand current and former members of the law 
enforcement and criminal justice communities formed a group called 
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which aims to legalize 
drug use under a regulatory scheme, which would be administered by 
the government.

LEAP states that "Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the 
money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and 
far easier to get than they were 35 years ago at the beginning of the 
war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while 
drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before."

Legalizing marijuana would bring few societal ills and would benefit 
society in a variety of unforeseen ways. By regulating pot, the 
government would take it out of the hands of drug lords and into the 
marketplace; by legalizing it, we would free our law enforcement 
community from the burden of frivolous arrests; and, by putting the 
responsibility of drug use back on the citizenry, we would restore 
the individual liberty of the American people.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that, "Timid men prefer the calm of despotism 
to the tempestuous sea of Liberty." Americans aren't timid people. 
They are capable of making their own choices and determining their 
own destinies.

Kevin Boland is a Heights staff columnist. He welcomes comments at  ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman