Pubdate: Mon, 01 Oct 2012
Source: In These Times (US)
Copyright: 2012 In These Times
Contact: http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/about/contact/
Website: http://www.inthesetimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/207

LEGISLATE FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS NEVER

We all must share responsibility for the ignorance of our
leaders.

The comments that Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) made in August about
legitimate rape helped expose a sad truth about modern-day Washington,
D.C.-it has become entirely disconnected from the people it is
supposed to represent. People are shocked that a six-term Congressman
could be unaware that the abortion policies he and his party support
would require rape victims to carry the rapist's child. But we all
must share responsibility for the ignorance of our leaders.

First, we have not stood up against disastrous federal policies whose
pain is borne by the working poor. As former vice president and
stalwart abortion foe Dan Quayle once explained during a rare moment
of candor, if his daughter ever became pregnant, it would be her
"decision" whether or not to have an abortion. Wealthy Republicans can
go along with a platform to overturn Roe v. Wade because they know
that their daughters will always have the option to travel someplace
that has liberal abortion laws.

And because we did away with the draft after Vietnam, today's wealthy
can support disastrous but profitable wars knowing that the fighting
and dying will be done by other people's kids. Just like the wealthy
can go along with our draconian and destructive war on drugs, knowing
that only the poor will be targeted to serve mandatory 20-year
sentences. Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) thus could publicly support a
federal death penalty for drug dealers, but when his own son got
caught transporting nearly eight pounds of marijuana from Texas to
Indiana in 1994, federal prosecutors politely looked the other way.

Perhaps the best example of this disconnect is the federal war on
drugs. American taxpayers spend about $50 billion per year to finance
this war. It has resulted in skyrocketing incarceration rates with no
dampening effect on the availability or consumption of illegal drugs.
Nonetheless, the war rages on, into its fourth decade.

But this was not Washington's first attempt at using federalpower to
control the nation's consumption of intoxicants. In 1919, the federal
government attempted to solve the nation's booze problem with harsh
federal criminal penalties. Ten years later, the murder rate had
skyrocketed, the country was awash in corruption, and America's
consumption of booze was largely unchanged. In response to this
disaster, President Hoover assembled a panel of experts to study the
policy of alcohol prohibition. This study revealed a catalog of
failure that set the stage for repeal.

Today's leaders have learned an important lesson from the prohibition
experiment. If a policy is politically advantageous-whether it be a
war on drugs, a war on terror, or a war on women-never authorize a
study of its effectiveness.

In December 1993, then-Surgeon General M. Joycelyn Elders dared to
suggest that the federal government "study" the idea that legalizing
drugs might help reduce crime. A year later, Elders was forced to resign.

The greatest pressure for a change in U.S. drug policy has come from
the states. Many states, burdened by the high cost of incarcerating
drug offenders, have sought to at least carve out an exemption for
medical marijuana. But the federal government continues to assert that
marijuana "has no accepted medical uses," and in 2005, the Supreme
Court found, in Gonzales v. Raich, that the feds can continue putting
users and growers of medical marijuana into federal prison despite the
conflicting policies of the states in which they reside.

In this opinion, the Supreme Court noted that medical marijuana users
and growers had introduced a large amount of scientific evidence as to
the therapeutic value of marijuana, citing a study that pointed to its
potential use for "pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and
appetite stimulation." In contrast, the official U.S. policy that
marijuana has "no accepted medical uses" is supported by no science,
only by the pharmaceutical lobby, which asserts no homegrown substance
can be a medicine.

The Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Raich accurately summed up the
situation as follows: Any change in U.S. policy will have to wait
until "the voices of voters ... may one day be heard in the halls of
Congress." It could be a long wait.
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