David Sirota: What Are They Smoking in California?

[marmar]

from truthdig:



What Are They Smoking in California?

Posted on Apr 8, 2010
By David Sirota


History shows that America, when choosing between frugality and security, almost always selects the latter. To paraphrase President John F. Kennedy, we’ll pay any price and bear any burden to protect ourselves.

No doubt this was why the economic case against the Iraq invasion failed. To many, the war debate seemed to pose a binary question: debt or mushroom clouds? And when it’s a scuffle between money arguments and security arguments (even dishonest security arguments), security wins every time.

Call this the Pay-Any-Price Principle—an axiom that has impacted all of America’s wars, and now, most poignantly, its war on drugs. When faced with criticism of budget-busting prosecution and incarceration costs, law enforcement agencies and private prison interests have successfully depicted their cause as a willingness to pay any price to imprison dealers of hard narcotics.

Of course, data undermine that story line. In 2008, the FBI reported that 82 percent of drug arrests were for possession—not sales or manufacturing—and almost half of those arrests were for marijuana, not hard drugs.

Fortunately, these numbers are seeping into the public consciousness. Gallup’s latest survey shows record support for marijuana legalization, as more Americans see the drug war for what it really is: an ideological and profit-making crusade by the Arrest-and-Incarceration Complex against a substance that is, according to most physicians, less toxic than alcohol. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_are_they_smoking_in_california_20100408/

[Uncle Joe]

1. "The War Against Drugs;" particularly Marijuana poses a national security threat.

1. The War on Drugs is an un-winnable war.

2. The War on Drugs enriches organized crime.

3. The War on Drugs has a corrupting influence on the police and government.

4. The War on Drugs serves to perpetuate and empower an immoral for profit prison industry; which in turn has an inherent financial interest in eroding the American Peoples' freedom and liberty.

5. The War on Drugs criminalizes what should be an educational, medical, personal privacy issue, which in turn disenfranchises the American People from their government, employment and better health.

6. The War on Drugs can only serve to erode the Bill of Rights for so long as it exists.

7. The War on Drugs destroys family structure.

8. The War on Drugs diverts precious dollars away from critical infrastructure needs, educational, medical, transportation and defense.

All of those dynamics together spell a continually growing national security threat.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

[Soylent Brice]

2. K&R

[OhioChick]

3. K&R n/t