How Our Absurd Drug War Hurts Everyone

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/154974/how_our_absurd_drug_war_hurts_everyone/

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Something as massive and amorphous as America’s War on Drugs can be difficult to imagine in concrete terms. This web of failed policies is so huge, so persistent and so deeply woven into the fabric of our nation that it’s hard to envision an alternative — or even appreciate what the conflict is currently siphoning resources away from.

That’s why the past week has been so important for the cause of ending the drug war — because it has provided three tragic examples of how that war harms not only its dead and/or incarcerated victims, but also how it makes society as a whole more susceptible to horrific crimes.

In Boulder, Colo., for example, the Daily Camera reports that “the University of Colorado announced a new plan to snuff out the Boulder campus’s 4/20 smoke-out, warning that police will ticket pot smokers at this month’s event.” In a state whose police forces have faced serious budget cuts, this decision clearly reflects a hardcore War on Drugs ideology by removing finite police resources from safety and security operations and instead focusing them on punishing pot use.

That’s a key point: Focusing police resources on safety is distinctly different than focusing them on the drug war. As the Camera notes, the new policy is “a more aggressive enforcement tactic than in years past, when officers mostly monitored the crowd for safety reasons.” Underscoring that point, notice that one day after the CU announcement, the same newspaper reported that the area near the university campus is experiencing an intense wave of burglaries. Rather than announce a serious crackdown on that crime wave, though, the university is choosing to spend taxpayers’ limited police resources on stopping pot smokers.

[izquierdista]

1. enFORCEment?

Seldom can you FORCE people what you want them to do. As most parents well know, you can't FORCE your kids to behave; you can, however, go on a TIRADE, after which the kids will appear to comply with your wishes but go on doing exactly what they did before, this time behind your back. Only small authoritarian minds could believe that enFORCEment works. The rest of us know that it is really enTIRADEment, and after the yelling and shouting is over, we merely act more discreetly so as not to start another round of bombast.

[saras]

3. Or conversely, we learn to enjoy provoking bombast, at the cost of civility in general

but it sure is exciting, especially if we can put a moral layer on it.

I think the OP nailed it. It's not about pot, it's not about drugs, its about the fact that they are deliberately ignoring a wave of burglaries and housebreakings and letting the criminals get away with it, in order to hassle a bunch of college students. EVERY right-wing property owner ought to be up in arms about that, and if they're not, they should be screaming for the police to give them THEIR arms so that they can do the cops' fucking JOB.

[SoCalMusicLover]

2. Sometimes It Costs Votes Also

I won't be casting a vote in the Presidential election this year, based on this issue alone.

President Obama has turned his back on promises too many times, but on this one, there is NO EXCUSE! Clearly he is just another leader who continues with the status quo.

Well, decisions have consequences, and I'm not going to just blindly hold my nose and forget about shit like this.

More proof that they're more alike than different. If * had been president and doing this, there would be an uproar. But since he's a Democrat, I guess that gives him a pass. So nice to have someone on your side, sticking a knife in your back, after they pretended to be your friend.

[90-percent]

4. Some logic here

What is it about life in America that forces us all to seek some form of medication in the form of alcohol and prescription drugs and recreational drugs?

This is part of a response Frank Zappa published in the L.A. Free Press when the Mothers were starting to go big time in the mid 60's. There were some in the M.O.I. entourage that advocated drug use (this is 1966 L.A., keep in mind) Frank didn't like drugs and wanted to set the record straight.

THE SORT OF HIGH YOU WANT IS A SPIRITUAL HIGH AND YOU ARE BULLSHITTING YOURSELF IF YOU TRUST ANY CHEMICAL AND/OR AGRICULTURAL SHORTCUT TO DO IT FOR YOU. YOU CAN’T BE BUSTED YET FOR AWARENESS.

Maintain your aristocratic coolness –

Sincerely,
Frank Zappa, for the Mothers of Invention


It appears to me we have this medieval and draconian system of idiotic drug laws simply to enrich the prison-industrial complex. Unnecessary human misery is the pink slime like by-product of this greed/stupidity. 50,000 Mexican casualties on the Mexican side of our war on drugs is making at least 50,000 families pretty fucking miserable I would think? At least when our country sacrificed 50,000 servicemen in pursuit of the domino theory they got a fucking Wall in Washington for it!

It boils down to this

OUR INSTITUTIONS RE INFESTED WITH GREED AND CORRUPT SOCIOPATHS

I am also deeply disappointed that Holder/Obama are so extremely on the wrong side of history with marijuana prohibitions. Don't they have other skyscraper sized fish to fry first?

While I'm on those two, I think their failure to prosecute GW Bush White House war criminals and traitors for crimes against humanity will prove to be a time bomb in the manner of the repeal of Glass-Steagal in 1999 led to the Depression of 2008. These precedents that give the President the powers of a King goes with the OFFICE not the INDIVIDUAL!

-90% Jimmy

[Fumesucker]

5. Didn't Zappa smoke cigarettes?

ISTR that nicotine was his drug of choice..

[90-percent]

6. cigarettes

Zappa was a bit of a contrarian. He insisted that cigarettes and coffee were "food". He was suspect of the harmful effects of tobacco, which is odd because there's a lot of science to substantiate cigarettes aren't exactly healthy. Frank's mind worked in the manner of a scientist, or at least with cogent and clear thinking to his reasoning, so I find this odd. Frank's diet would have killed an ordinary person. He was oblivious to doing his best for good health, but his genetics seems to have predisposed for good health, as he never had a weight problem and was naturally and effortlessly lean his whole life, which is one of the best things you can do for good health.

He died of prostate cancer, which I understand is not directly caused by smoking. Ike Willis told me Frank went to five Doctors for urinary problems. His prostate cancer was finally correctly diagnosed by Doctor #6, which was a little too late for turning it around.

Ike also told me that in the last year of Frank's life, he thought the cancer was in remission and he wanted to get the band back together and go back on the road!

-90% Jimmy

[Fumesucker]

7. Man is not a rational animal..

Man is an animal that rationalizes..

Zappa enjoyed cigarettes, hence he rationalized that they weren't bad for him.

A friend of mine's dad quit smoking at a fairly advanced age, he'd never had a gut in his life but developed something of a paunch fairly quickly after quitting. The hypothesis we developed was that all the coughing from cigarettes was keeping his belly flat..

[malcolmkyle]

8. Prohibition is a gross affront to fundamental human decency

If you're a bottom-dwelling, scum-sucking prohibitionist who's career has entailed subjecting the rest of us to off-the-scale corruption and lawlessness, then maybe you should consider moving to somewhere that won't extradite you to a future national or international drug-war tribunal for your crimes against humanity.

Prohibition has finally run its course; the lives and livelihoods of hundred's of millions of people worldwide have been destroyed or severely disrupted; many countries that were once shining beacons of liberty and prosperity have become toxic, repressive, smoldering heaps of hypocrisy, and a gross affront to fundamental human decency. It is now the duty of every last one of us to insure that the people who are responsible for this shameful situation are not simply left in peace to enjoy the wealth and status that their despicable actions have, until now, afforded them. Former and present Prohibitionists must not be allowed to remain untainted and untouched from the unconscionable acts that they have viciously committed on their fellow human beings. - They have provided us with neither safe communities nor safe streets; we will provide them with neither a safe haven to enjoy their ill-gotten gains nor the liberty to repeat such a similar atrocity!

Prohibition has evolved local gangs into transnational enterprises with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, helping them control vast swaths of territory while gifting them with significant social and military resources.

Those responsible for the shameful policy of prohibition shall not go unpunished!

[Fumesucker]

10. The drug war will never end..

It's far, far too useful to the powers that be for them to ever give it up.

[DiverDave]

9. PROFITS!

They Have to make more money, it's pathological.
They will lie, cheat,steal,bribe, whatever they can to get that next quarter higher then the last.
This is NOT about justice, or saving people, it's about MONEY.

Money IS THE root of all evil, I firmly convinced of that.

Get Money OUT of politics, and we got a chance of fixing everything.