Pubdate: Sun, 20 Jun 2010
Source: Gary Post-Tribune, The (IN)
Copyright: 2010 Post-Tribune Publishing
Contact:  http://www.post-trib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/827
Author: John Stossell

END THE DRUG WAR

I'm confused. When I walk around busy midtown Manhattan, I often 
smell marijuana. Despite the crowds, some people smoke weed in 
public. Usually the police leave them alone, and yet other times they 
act like a military force engaged in urban combat. This February, 
cops stormed a Columbia, Mo., home, killed the family dog and 
terrorized a 7-year-old boy -- for what? A tiny quantity of marijuana.

Two years ago, in Prince George's County, Md., cops raided Cheye 
Calvo's home -- all because a box of marijuana was randomly shipped 
to his wife as part of a smuggling operation. Only later did the 
police learn that Calvo was innocent -- and the mayor of that town.

"When this first happened, I assumed it was just a terrible, terrible 
mistake," Calvo said. "But the more I looked into it, the more I 
realized (it was) business as usual that brought the police through 
our front door. This is just what they do. We just don't hear about 
it. The only reason people heard about my story is that I happened to 
be a clean-cut white mayor."

Radley Balko of Reason magazine says more than a hundred police SWAT 
raids are conducted every day. Does the use of illicit drugs really 
justify the militarization of the police, the violent disregard for 
our civil liberties and the overpopulation of our prisons? It seems 
hard to believe.

I understand that people on drugs can do terrible harm -- wreck lives 
and hurt people. But that's true for alcohol, too. But alcohol 
prohibition didn't work. It created Al Capone and organized crime. 
Now drug prohibition funds nasty Mexican gangs and the Taliban. Is it 
worth it? I don't think so.

Everything can be abused, but that doesn't mean government can stop 
it or should try to stop it. Government goes astray when it tries to 
protect us from ourselves.

Many people fear that if drugs were legal, there would be much more 
use and abuse. That's possible, but there is little evidence to 
support that assumption. In the Netherlands, marijuana has been legal 
for years. Yet the Dutch are actually less likely to smoke than 
Americans. Thirty-eight percent of American adolescents have smoked 
pot, while only 20 percent of Dutch teens have.

One Dutch official told me that "we've succeeded in making pot boring."

By contrast, what good has the drug war done? It's been 40 years 
since Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Since then, government has 
spent billions and officials keep announcing their "successes." They 
are always holding news conferences showing off big drug busts. So 
it's not like authorities aren't trying.

We've locked up 2.3 million people, a higher percentage than any 
other country. That allows China to criticize America's human-rights 
record because our prisons are "packed with inmates."

Yet drugs are still everywhere. The war on drugs wrecks far more 
lives than drugs do!

Need more proof? Fox News runs stories about Mexican cocaine cartels 
and marijuana gangs that smuggle drugs into Arizona. Few stop to 
think that legalization would end the violence. There are no Corona 
beer smugglers. Beer sellers don't smuggle. They simply ship their 
product. Drug laws cause drug crime.

The drug trade moved to Mexico partly because our government funded 
narcotics police in Colombia and sprayed the growing fields with 
herbicides. We announced it was a success! We cut way back on the 
Colombian drug trade.

But so what? All we did was squeeze the balloon. The drug trade moved 
across the border to Peru, and now it's moved to Mexico. So the new 
president of Mexico is squeezing the balloon. Now the trade and the 
violence are spilling over the border into the United States.

That's what I call progress. It the kind of progress we don't need.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom