Pubdate: Wed, 12 Mar 2008
Source: Daily Gazette (NY)
Copyright: 2008 The Gazette Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.dailygazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/105
Author: Henry Bukoff

BUCKLEY WAS RIGHT ABOUT 'WAR ON DRUGS'

I found it particularly interesting that William Buckley's death came
within a day or two of the announcement that more than one in 100
Americans are in prison.

In the requiems on Buckley's behalf, it is odd that no one decided to 
credit him for the following statement he provided the New York Bar 
Association: "A conservative should evaluate the practicality of a 
legal constriction, as for instance in those states whose statute 
books continue to outlaw sodomy, which interdiction is unenforceable, 
making the law nothing more than print-on-paper. I came to the 
conclusion that the so-called war against drugs was not working, that 
it would not work absent a change in the structure of the civil 
rights to which we are accustomed and to which we cling as a valuable 
part of our patrimony. And that therefore if that war against drugs 
is not working, we should look into what effects the war has, a 
canvass of the casualties consequent on its failure to work. That 
consideration encouraged me to weigh utilitarian principles: the 
Benthamite calculus of pain and pleasure introduced by the 
illegalization of drugs."

He certainly hit the nail on the head, didn't he? How many of the
millions of jail inmates are there due to this "war on drugs" -- which
apparently will never be won?

Henry Bukoff,

Duanesburg
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