Pubdate: Wed, 05 Mar 2014
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2014 The Dallas Morning News, Inc.
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/send-a-letter/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: John Williamson

CRIMINALIZING DRUG USE MAKES A DESTRUCTIVE PROBLEM A THOUSAND TIMES WORSE

Re: "Legalization will create monster," by Gary Schornick, and 
"Compare liquor, pot prohibitions," by Kent Kelley, Saturday Letters.

Schornick's letter is one of the most irrational circular arguments 
against legalization I've ever heard. His argument is that legalizing 
weed will simply cause the black market to push other illegal drugs 
in its place.

Schornick's reasoning is actually one of the strongest arguments one 
could possibly posit for the decriminalization of all drugs, not just 
marijuana.

When Prohibition was overturned in 1933, they didn't just legalize 
gin or just vodka, they legalized ALL alcoholic beverages.

Kent Kelley's Saturday letter is right on the money. The resemblance 
between 1920s Prohibition and today's "War on Drugs" is indeed 
astonishingly startling. Not unlike the similarities between the 
Nazis' gas chambers, to which the world vowed never again, and the 
repeat Cambodian killing fields genocide. Humanity seems insanely 
incapable of learning anything from its past historical mistakes.

Does drug abuse result in enormous and tragic harm to millions of 
people? Yes. But if this is your argument for criminalizing drugs, 
you've totally missed the most important core public policy issue of 
all in drug criminalization. Criminalizing drug use, instead of 
treating it like a health issue, makes an already destructive problem 
a thousand times worse. You don't have to be pro drug use to be 
against drug criminalization.

John Williamson, Plano
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