The Time Has Come To End War On American People: Legalize and Regulate Controlled Substances

The "War on Drugs" was to domestic policy what the decision to invade Iraq was to foreign policy:  the worst decisions made by the federal government in our nation's history.  I strongly encourage everyone to read Dan Baum's feature article in the April 2016 edition of Harper's entitled Legalize It All  Howto win the war on drugs.

Whether it is the fact that this misguided and evil policy has its historic roots in racial discrimination*, its modern roots in the cynical politics of the Nixon Administration**, has had the effects of turning the United States into the world's largest prison camp***, causing the corruption of law enforcement through unconstitutional forfeiture laws or perhaps most importantly, creating the belief among many Americans that the police and our government are the enemy, the bottom line is that this is an incredibly dangerous policy to have while we are trying to defend the nation against terrorism.

Furthermore, the "War on Drugs" is a failed policy, it has not worked in the past, is not currently working, and will never be successful.  We need only look to the nation's ill-fated experiment with Prohibition for proof of this policy's futility and most importantly for the disastrous unintended consequences (e.g. violent , organized crime) that the "War on Drugs" produces, some of which we are still battling today.

This is a no brainer people.  The only thing we are lacking is the moral courage of the electorate and our politicians to admit our mistake, despite all the well intended but misguided belief that tough policies were required to save the addict from him or herself or out of fear that our own children would succumb to drug addiction.  The only model that has worked or will work is legalization and regulation and treating the problem for what it is:   a health issue.

I strongly encourage everyone to read Dan Baum's feature article in the April 2016 edition of Harper's and listen to the interview with him on NPR's Weekend Edition radio show.

*A Brief History on the War on Drugs  The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at Chinese immigrants. The first anti-cocaine laws, in the South in the early 1900s, were directed at black men. The first anti-marijuana laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the 1910s and 20s, were directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans. Today, Latino and especially black communities are still subject to wildly disproportionate drug enforcement and sentencing practices.

**John Ehrlichman, convicted Watergate co-conspirator and Nixon administration staffer and then Nixon drug policy advisor told Dan Baum:  "... an amazing thing. I started asking him some earnest, wonky policy questions (concerning the "War on Drugs") and he waved them away. He said, "Can we cut the B.S.? Can I just tell you what this was all about?" The Nixon campaign in '68 and the Nixon White House had two enemies: black people and the anti-war left. He said, and we knew that if we could associate heroin with black people and marijuana with the hippies, we could project the police into those communities, arrest their leaders, break up their meetings and most of all, demonize them night after night on the evening news. And he looked me in the eyes and said, "Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."  For full interview:   Legalize All Drugs? The 'Risks Are Tremendous' Without Defining The Problem

 ***World Prison Brief Institute for Criminal Policy Research:  Highest to Lowest – Prison PopulationTotal

Ranking                Title       Prison Population Total

1              United States of America             2 217 000

2              China     1 649 804

3              Russian Federation         646 319