I have written several controversial posts but I have a feeling that this will probably be the most contentious yet by far. I don't ask that you agree or disagree with me. What I do ask of you is to keep an open mind and read the entire thing before forming an opinion...and think. If, through this article I start just one meaningful conversation about the suffering that we as Americans bring upon ourselves, I will have fulfilled my purpose in writing it.
God knows we've tried. We fought the good fight and gave it our all. We spent our prayers, our time, our money and our blood. Some fell along the way. Many good men and women died or were ruined for life.
Citations
1
History
of the Harrison act of 1914
God knows we've tried. We fought the good fight and gave it our all. We spent our prayers, our time, our money and our blood. Some fell along the way. Many good men and women died or were ruined for life.
Now, I believe the time has come to
face the truth. A very uncomfortable and controversial truth.
The fact is we lost! We lost the
war.
Not the ones in east Asia or the
middle east. I don't mean Korea or Vietnam, Iraq, Grenada,
Afghanistan or the cold war.
I'm talking about the war on drugs.
Although the war on drugs was
officially declared by Richard Milhous Nixon in 1971, in truth it
started with the passage of the Harrison Act1
in 1914. This was the first federal attempt
to curb usage of cocaine, opium and their derivatives. It was
presented as a tax law, but it's real intention was to end the sale
and use of recreational drugs. It failed. Miserably!
Instead of curbing drug
use, it only drove it underground; into the world of smugglers,
thieves and murders2.
One law review stated " The impact... make it almost impossible
for addicts to obtain drugs legally.3”
What people failed to realise was that they would obtain them. One
way or another.
Instead of stopping crime, this
misguided attempt at legislating morality and personal behaviour
actually increased it. Drug use and all the suffering associated with
criminals and their ways of life flourished. Soon, the cartels began
to become a major criminal force in an exact parallel to the rise of
the Mafia directly due to our (the governments) attempt to stop us
all from drinking: the 18th
amendment4.
Yes. By making illegal
drugs profitable, we created the cartels. That makes us responsible
for the thousands of murders and kidnappings, be-headings and bombings
perpetrated by them every year.
And besides the cost in
misery and blood, let us not forget the absolutely staggering
financial cost. According to one police chief, we waste almost 52
million dollars a day5
on a losing battle-a battle we cannot win.
There's another –
hidden – cost, too. Not money spent, but money not made. If you buy
a new TV, you spent $300 or $400. If you skipped work today, you may
not have spent any money, but you didn't make any either. The effect
on your monthly budget is the same: you have less money to pay the
rent and buy groceries.
Anything bought and
sold on the black market isn't taxed. That's just a plain fact.
And how much tax
revenue is lost each year? One government estimate states that
Americans consumed about 22,000 metric tons of Mary Jane in 20026.
There are 35,274 ounces in a metric ton. Assuming a tax of just $5.00
per ounce, we lost $3,880,140,000 of tax money that year. And that
was just on pot. I'm sure that almost every pot smoker would gladly
pay $5.00 or $10.00 more for his/her weed to be able to get it
legally. That's 4 BILLION
dollars a year we didn't collect in taxes; 8 billion at $10 a bag.
And that's just on marijuana. Throw in all the other drugs and you
would probably come up with a trillion dollars in less than 5 years.
That would cover a lot of the Social Security deficit.
And now you know where
I'm going with all this. Maybe it's high (pun intended) time to look
at the issue from another angle.
Legalization. Total
legalization of the purchase, possession and use of all drugs. Let
the government control the manufacture and sales of marijuana,
hashish, cocaine, opium, heroin, ecstasy, lsd and all other
recreational substances.
Oh yes. I can hear all
the screams already. I said you should read the whole thing before
forming an opinion.
Think about it. No more
overdoses from extra-pure drugs. Or people getting ripped off buying
aspirin instead of X. Or going on a bad trip because they got pot
laced with PCP. There would be quality control. People would get what
they pay for.
But wouldn't even more
people use drugs if they were legal? Not if history is any measure.
Again let's look at prohibition. Thousands of people who never drank
before started drinking precisely because
booze was against the law. The forbidden-fruit syndrome.
No more filling our
jails with people that just want to get high. According to a study I
read, there are about 420,000 people in jail just for drug offenses7.
Lane County, Oregon says that it costs between $90 and $130 a day to
keep someone in jail8.
Another article places the cost at a paltry $79 a day9.
Even at that figure, it costs us the taxpayers $28,835 a year for
each and every man or woman caught with a bag of weed or a hit of
acid. That works out to $12,110,700,000 a year just to lock up the
druggies.
Add that to the lost
tax dollars and we are out over 16 BILLION
dollars a
year. Add in the profits that the states would make from selling the
drugs out of state-controlled outlets and about 30 of the 50 states
could balance their budgets in under 3 years.
What
about jobs? Consider that someone would have to hire hundreds if not
thousands of people to produce, package, market, transport and sell
all these products. That's American jobs; not European, Colombian or
Mexican. That money would stay in the US of A. Not get shipped to
some country that doesn't even like us.
Some
people say that it would cost more money than it saves. Not true10.
Addicts will still be addicts. People will still get high, just like
all the folks in the speakeasies of the 20s and 30s. The 21st
amendment (repeal of prohibition) brought a reduction in drinking and
crime, an increase in tax revenues from the sale of liquor and a lot
of legal, good paying jobs. The same would happen with the
legalization of drugs. The prisons would be empty. Or at least a hell
of a lot less overcrowded. And the trillion or so extra dollars we
would have could go towards education, health care, feeding the
hungry or just getting the country out of debt.
In
this time of financial collapse and failing job markets does our
current drug policy really make any sense at all?
If
the drug laws and all the associated problems had ever actually
helped to curb drug use, I might say yes. But the reality is that we
are simply making a bad situation worse.
We
lost the war. It's time to face the truth, change direction and try
something that we know works.
We
know it would work because it worked before.
We
lost the war.
Time
to lick our wounds and start over.
We
lost the war.
At
least that's my opinion. What's yours? Leave a comment and tell
me...and the world what you think.
Citations
