It's all vodka. It matters not whether you drink it, smoke it or shoot it in your veins, it is all just a way of modifying your consciousness. It's simply hypocritical and unconstitutional to put someone in a cage for smoking a flower. The restriction of a thing should not be in the doing of it, but the getting behind the wheel and putting others at risk. Until it's all viewed the same as vodka, we will live in a hypocritical land.

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Alcohol and tobacco kill far more people every year than illegal drugs do - but when was the last time you heard about "restricting the supply" or "cracking down on the suppliers?" Every once in a while the police might send an underage undercover officer to try and buy alcohol, but that's about it.

Alcohol use is kept in people's homes and in bars - there are laws against public consumption of alcohol, laws against minors in possession of alcohol, and laws that prohibit adults from buying for minors. Despite all this regulation, alcohol is for sale everywhere in the U.S. It's also heavily marketed to teenagers and adults.

Make no mistake - excessive alcohol use is the #3 killer in the United States, behind tobacco. Still, no one is suggesting going back to Prohibition days.

(The leading causes of death in 2000 were tobacco (435,000 deaths; 18.1% of total US deaths), poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000 deaths; 16.6%), and alcohol consumption (85,000 deaths; 3.5%). Other actual causes of death were microbial agents (75,000), toxic agents (55,000), motor vehicle crashes (43,000), incidents involving firearms (29,000), sexual behaviors (20,000), and illicit use of drugs (17,000)).

A sane drug policy would apply equally to alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, opium, cocaine and to other drugs. Recreational drugs could be made legal, sold to people at licensed locations (just as alcohol and tobacco are today), and the taxes would go to state and local governments. Laws banning drug use by minors, illicit traffic, and so could be implemented.

Today, around half of all newly sentenced prisoners are drug offenders (In 1970, it was 16%). Of the 2.2 million people in U.S. prisons, perhaps a quarter are there on non-violent drug charges. Since it costs as much as $50,000 a year to hold and feed a prisoner, releasing all those people (around half a million people) would save the government about $25 billion dollars a year!

What's with all the drug convictions? See: Bay Area counties toughest on black drug offenders, Dec 2007, SFC

Half of all drug offenders in prison are black, even though blacks make up about 13% of the population, and drug use rates between all racial groups are similar. Furthermore, the penalties are often selectively applied by prosecutors - rich white kids from the suburbs who get caught with a few grams of powder cocaine are treated quite differently than black kids from the ghetto with a few grams of crack cocaine.

All in all, the "Drug War" isn't about stopping drug use - it's about entrenched government agencies like the DEA, who want to stay in business, and private prison contractors, who want to keep their cells full, established drug dealers in the pharmaceutical, alcohol and tobacco corporations who don't want any competition, and, last but not least, puritanically-minded social maniacs who can't stand the idea of people enjoying themselves, whether it be booze, pot or sex that's involved.

This goes all the way back to Harry J. Anslinger, the first anti-drug crusader in the U.S. government, who stated before Congress in 1937 that

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others."

"...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."

"Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."

Straight from the mouth of the founding father of the DEA. . .

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It all comes down to the same old puritan "strict father" conception of life (its the second time I use this idea today...). Whenever one steps outside what some people consider normal and good there need to be consecuences, there must be a price to pay. Original oposition to drugs come not from health related issues but from a puritan moral point of view. Drugs were bad not because they made you feel bad but because they made you feel too good for your own good. And pleasure is antagonic with fear. And their idea of society is fueled by fear.

So there is not really a War to erase drugs from our societies, but to keep them in the fringes, to keep them unregulated and illegal so there are consecuences. Legal ones and health related ones, because with prohibition the manufacture of these drugs fall in the hands of people who wont hesitate to mix the product with whatever will give them a better profit. Ive heard of bricks turned to dust to be mixed with heroin injectable doses... Truth is the most dangerous drug healthwise, heroin, can be compatible with a long productive life when medical heroin is avaliable, like that of many cronic disease patients.

But for some people to push their model of society down our troaths, we need to see people suffer, be ill and in jail for not following the rules. And if that people also make a buck while fear-mongerin, all the better. Run down addicts on the street work as cautionary tale not only against drugs but against any kind of rebelious impulse.

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I agree with Vox: it is all vodka. Europe has shown that legalization can work. Do they do random tests for public safety hi-risk jobs? The comment that "most people who use drugs are like the responsible alcohol consumer, causing no harm to themselves or anyone else" is silly. I can tell you for a fact that narcotics addiction within healthcare is a BIG problem. Do you want your loved one's dying days spent in an ICU, pumped up with morphine by a heroin addicted RN? Do you want a mother or brother treated with the chemically clouded judgement of a hardcore addict? Then Come to the City of Brotherly Love. Teaching Hospitals here don't bother randomly testing their staff or students. Risk management and safety oversight are a farce, legalized drugs or not.

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it all goes back to Economics 101, people: illegal drugs are a business, the biggest business in the world today. to destroy a business...ANY business...TAKE THE PROFIT OUT OF IT. it seems to me that legalizing 'controlled substances' [an oxymoron] would do this more effectively than our current system of incarcerating the consumers.

if there were little profit in drugs...

...dealers wouldn't be hanging around outside schools giving away free samples to build a future customer base

...addicts could be treated as patients rather than criminals, so that their drug habit could be either eliminated or brought under control

...if the cost of drugs was, say, 10% of what it is now, in order to support his habit a hard-core criminal addicted to drug use would only have to knock over the head and rob 10% of the little old ladies [like me] who are just trying to get home with their social security check

...law enforcement and incarceration cost tax dollars. if drug use is not a crime, then what ...40%? more?...of the dollars we spend on our failing War on Drugs could be devoted to something more potentially rewarding. a War on Illiteracy. a War on Unemployment. a War on our Tragic Dependence on Fossil Fuel. a War on our Deteriorating National Infrastructure. We can still have the Wars we seem to be so fond of, people. we can even win some if we choose our opponents more wisely.

after all, if I'm completely wrong and legalization won't improve the situation, we can always declare a NEW War on Drugs and go back to the excellent system we have today, which is producing such grand results.

finally, please, PLEASE don't tell me I'm 'soft on drugs'. I have five kids born between 1956 and 1964; I have seen up close and personal the damage drugs can do to a life. if it would do any good, I would cheerfully advocate roasting drug dealers over a slow fire on a sharp stick. unfortunately, as long as the enormous profits are available, there are always gonna be more drug dealers than sharp sticks.

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Medical maintenance would be fine with me. But there is NO comparison between vodka and meth or heroin. The long term affects of coca (cocaine) on the brain put all others at risk.

Minorities and the poor would be affected the most - in the worst way - if narcotics were legalized.

Despair and the lack of education would not go good with addiction.

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Excuse me-- haven't you heard that there is a multi-billion dollar industry that depends on a steady flow of docile drug users into the jails to generate income? The prison industry is the main stay of the rural economy in many states. If the supply of drug prisoners dried up, thousands of prison staff would lose their jobs and the economies of several states would collapse. If anything, we need to start jailing more people for more trivial offenses. If Jesus Christ came down on earth tomorrow and crime stopped, the prison lobby would hunt him down in three days and drive a stake through his heart.

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If Jesus came down and saw how drug addicted "America" is he would buy stock in Corrections Corp of America.

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The analysis, though sensible and agreeable, is disappointing in its political naivete. It ignores the political realities that have configured the drug trade for over fifty years. Ever since the OSS worked with the Mafia to invade Sicily there has been active collaboration between the highest levels of the U. S. government (OSS to CIA, Meyer Lansky to Ollie North) and the engineers of the drug trade. The U. S. doesn't just support narco states, it creates them. Afghanistan was created through the collaboration of drug warlords and Columbia (our only "friend" in South America) is run by drug lords.

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The argument made in the article has many excellent points, however, rather than push for legalization, I believe that the next step should be to decriminalize drug use, and treat the problem as a health care issue. There is a difference between legalization and decriminalization.

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The CIA is the biggest dope dealer in the world.

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Leagalizing drugs would pull the rug out from underneath the brutal criminal element benefiting from it, including our banks (money laundering), our "intelligence" community (black ops), our prison industry, and our "lawmakers" (kickbacks).

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Living in a most drunken state, errrr as a resident of the state ranked highest for binge drinking and drunken driving, I also point the finger of blame directly at lobbyists funded by alcohol and tobacco corporate interests. They march hand in hand and will spend a fortune to stop any effort to legalize drugs. Perhaps the solution lies in pitting the corporate beasts against each other by reversing the decision to place drugs under the control of the AFT branch and place it under the control of the FDA - then "sales" and marketing incentives would cause big Pharma to begin battling big Alcohol and Tobacco by adding medical marijuana to their lobbying agenda. Then it's just a slippery slope, greased with PROFIT... to ease restrictions.

Historian David T. Courtwright explains The Controlled Substances Act: how a “big tent” reform became a punitive drug law.

Here's a summary:
The 1970 Controlled Substances Act was part of an omnibus reform package designed to rationalize, and in some respects to liberalize, American drug policy. While the legislation provided additional resources for law enforcement and a systematic means for regulating the use of most psychoactive drugs, it also did away with mandatory minimum sentences and provided more support for treatment and research. Over the next three decades, and in response to public alarm about drug abuse, the US Congress continuously amended the law to produce a more punitive system of drug control. The amendments, which gave the Drug Enforcement Administration greater control over scheduling and maintenance and which substantially increased penalties for illicit trafficking, transformed the law into the legal foundation of America’s “drug war,” as the stricter criminal approach came to be known. By the 1980s, the flexibility and innovative spirit of the original Controlled Substances Act (and that of Nixon-era drug strategy generally) had largely disappeared from American drug policy.

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...by definition, if cultivation were legal.

(Just a minor semantic point.)

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Educating people on that reality would itself be more than powerful enough to SHUT DOWN THE PHONEY "WAR ON DRUGS". Besides, what have "legal" drugs such as Viagra and other "FDA approved" but dangerous poisons, "Happy Meals" and other junk food filled with petroleum and chemicals, alcohol, and tobacco done for you anyway other than DAMAGE your health from moderate to SEVERE?

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Drug dealers have been highly vilified in a lot of comments on this story. These people are vilified as being the cause of all drug use and addiction. In actuality, all these people do is supply a need by selling a product to eager customers.

The old legend of drug "Pushers" is just plain false. Why would selling illegal drugs require any real salesmanship skills, including provision of free samples, when there is a large market among people who are actively seeking to buy the product? New users are not introduced to drugs by unscrupulous dealers, they are introduced to them by their friends, usually occasional casual users.

Dealer vilification is a creation of governments who cannot stand the fact that someone is making money without paying any income tax on it. Pointing out that it is a tax issue might create some sympathy for drug dealers, so the government started the urban legend that dealers are the cause of the drug problem.

Legalisation is the answer - some people will take drugs whether they are legal or not, and others will choose not to take drugs.

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There's only one candidate openly calling for the repeal of most federal drug laws. We all know who that is.

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Here's what some honest police say:


http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

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When I am weary I think of the relentless and courageous and highly focused activists like Ethan Nadelmann.

The persistance of people like Nadelmann is a real source of hope and inspiration.

He is correct on almost all his conclusions which are based on lifelong scholarship in this area built on a foundation of human health values

(I can't resist adding the harm done in ths "war" by Big PhRMA)

Let us get behind him NOW. His day has arrived.

Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

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We discuss this issue endlessly here and in other arenas, and nothing ever changes.

Like the war on terra, it's based on inflaming people's passions with disinformation, leading to massive corruption due to greed in all levels of government, from your local sheriffs in podunk towns to the highest levels of government.

if there weren't tons of money in it, the war would not be fought!

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The sovereignty of my conscience is sancrosanct.
My freedom of consciousness not only equals my freedoms of speech and assembly but also precedes them.
There must be greater distinctions and definitions in drug jargon as to what is and what isn't psychoactive. As the article mentions, we are innately moved to alter our consciousness, but we can either do that crudely through body drugs or more sublimely through head drugs. Cocaine and it's derivatives muddle those distinctions. Thanks to our government, we have an even more muddled mess with the ever greater derivatives. Upon the flow shifting to Mexico, we then even got the blowback of the popular uprising of ephedrine-based crank.

Recently the Netherlands felt forced to regard psychedelics differently than their old evenhanded approach vis a vis marijuana. Well, duh. Mushrooms are useful but still considerably a larger undertaking than any joint of primo.

I submit not all drugs are equal. They should each be regarded uniquely.

Personally, I would fully legalize marijuana just as quickly as I would seek to regulate the concentrated dose hits of THC that would be sure to follow.

Legalizing drugs must be done for it's own sake. Doing so will solve one set of [ethical and moral] problems and create another set [of practical and cultural], but justice will be served and liberty regained.

Strongly consider what Terence Mckenna had to say with his book, 'Food Of The Gods'.

Consider South America's future place, especially given the way things are going all around.

Consider the good done us by these things, eh?
This bounty of our Earth.

http://zuma.vip.warped.com/z/#points

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Hear! Hear! Legalization would:

(1) Drive the criminal element out of the drug business; shut it down; cripple it; put where Al Capone has gone.

(2) Make safer, more responsible drug use a reality, doing much to end overdosing, the cutting of drugs with toxic substances, and the dispensing of "hot shots."

(3) Divert the billions spent on the hopelessly useless "War on Drugs" to such things as school and infrastructure funding, making sure no child goes to bed hungry, &c.

(4) Convince more people to eschew such genuinely harmful drugs as alcohol in favor of less harmful, more haimish things like pot.

(5) Do away with bureaucracies like the D.E.A. which is as worthless as tits on a boar hog.

(6) I could go on but you get the idea.

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I had an offer to join the NYPD a long time ago. However, I couldn't see myself busting people for dealing in nickel bags at street corners in the middle of a lonely friggin' night. So, alas, I passed up on that opportunity.

I see some cops wearing medals on their uniforms. How many, I wonder, were those awards given to them for busting disenfranchised youths trying to make a few bucks???

Bernie Kerik, Rudy Ghouliani's flunkie, did so as an undercover cop. The system just sucks!!!!

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I’d say that drugs are mostly about sex, and so is vodka. People are going to use drugs as they use alcohol, to suppress their deeply ingrained societal inhibitions and jump-start their sexuality. Nothing else gets good Christians through to the make-out stage, or beyond. So they learn to rely on their new tools. There was a recent anti-pot ad that showed a teenage girl getting high again and again and she’s finally unable to stop getting sexually molested by a boy. The ad increased pot usage.

We need drug education that deals functionally with sex. For non-sex drugs, we need better age-appropriate education about huffing. Cigarette smoking and roids are often about body sculpting.

Decriminalize/Legalize which drugs?

Pot is the good poster child. Pot isn’t quite vodka because vodka is physically addictive. We have millions of drunks (and drunk drivers) who can’t quit their drinking until they die early.

Crack cocaine and heroin are the bad poster children simply because the poorer class uses them. Upper crust addicts do Oxycontin and snort cocaine powder.

Steroids are legal with a prescription. Steroids are famous for roid rage and losses of life expectancy.

Huffing materials are legal and in every home. Huffers like to get drunk for a couple of minutes on airplane glue, on Glade cans and on magic markers. Huffing kills brain cells like crazy, but it leaves no clue, just a deadbrain holding the tube. It’s the first choice of little kids. Maybe 1/5 of little kids huff.

Behavior counts as much as the drug

Drunk driving is more dangerous to society than drinking at home. Going to gay anonymous sex parties is a good way to become an AIDS vector, and the same for heroin addicts not cleaning their works. We need to criminalize certain behaviors which affect society.

We also have regulations shutting people off at bars when they’re really drunk. The amount matters.

We should have a regulation prohibiting the addition of sugar to cigarettes, in order to create a chemical through combustion that makes cigarettes harder to quit.

Rich people’s penalties versus poor people’s penalties.

A family member got busted for running a red light while drunk. He’s upper middle class if not wealthy, and the penalties laid on him were severe enough. He found someone to drive him to work for 90 days so that no one at his expensive job knew, and so he saved the job. With no threat of prison, he cleaned up and never drove drunk again. He still drinks a bit.

We need laws tailored to the person’s wealth. Everyone needs a proper incentive, not draconian and not a slap on the wrist either, to not drive drunk or stoned.

Maybe we specifically need weekend-only drunk driving prisons that you can find in Europe.

Many U.S. prisons don’t work.

Too many times we put people away forever. We get Geritol cons, these old wheelchair-bound guys who show up at religious services in the medium-security units. Cons dumped on the street will commit crimes because they don’t know how to live on the outside anymore. Other cons commit suicide when released.

Legalizing drugs only because our justice system is the world’s most incompetent, is too simplistic.

Using, dealing, and kingpins

Anti-cancer pot clubs deal pot without murdering other dealers.

We need to remove the money incentive from violent criminals.

Our government springs from a truly idiotic electoral system, where campaign contributions, e.g. bribes, always win majorities in Congress. Our government will always take the “everything is subordinate to creating tax revenue” theme and run with it. We need the health of our society.

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SWAT teams kicking down residential doors in the middle of the night and shooting innocent victims is the perfect example of collateral damage at home accepted by the general populace and perpetrated to the extreme in Iraq and Guantanamo; The End Justifies the Means including murder, torture and collateral damage by the millions of lives and trillions of $$$.

US society is uncivilized. By sanctioning war on it own people it thus insures that its own people will support war anywhere else. What goes around, comes back around.
IM
Belteshazzar

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Drug use is a social issue not a criminal one. What someone put in their own body is not my business but doesnt mean we cant help eachother as a society.
Locking up drug users with murders and rapists is a human rights nightmare. It also does not help the situation but will make it worse. legalize drugs and you stop the major funding for criminal elements dropping them out of business.
Hemp is only illegal because it is easy to grow and hard for the government to regulate(tax). It also can be used for many things which would cut out corporations and their chemicals.
The war on drugs was created to steal more money from the public and to take away more freedoms from us. It also jacks up the police with military grade weapons they should never have.
There is no benefit to the war on drugs. It also was enver amended to the constitution like prohibition of alcohol was which makes it illegal.
Anytime the government declares war on anything it is for their benefit and at the cost of regular citizens.

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Let me start by saying that all drugs are not the same. I have no problem with legalizing some the "softer," for lack of a better word, drugs (pot, mushrooms, PCP, etc -- essentially those that are not highly addictive.)

When you start talking about things like heroin, meth and cocaine, the situation is more complicated, and legalization advocates have to start honestly addressing the social costs to legalization of these substances.

First, use will be more widespread. There is no reason to suspect that it wouldn't be. When you make something easier to get, more people will get it. Anyone who advocates for greater gun control understands this. Banning machine guns will not eradicate machine guns, but being able to buy them at the corner gun shop will certainly increase their presence.

Second, with increased use comes increased addiction. Now, the libertarian in me that says that people should be able to put whatever they want into their bodies is now saying "wait, now I have to PAY for the drugs that people put into their bodies?," as the author suggests.

Third, addiction brings crime. Unless you are Rush Limbaugh or Amy Winehouse, you probably can't afford to maintain a drug habit for very long without resorting to crime. That has social costs as well.

Even given all of this, it may still make more sense, both economically and socially, to legalize these drugs, considering the costs of the so-called war on drugs. I don't know if it does or doesn't, but I do know that ignoring the flip side of this debate and pretending that legalization is going to be nothing but positive is useless. We need to have an honest discussion of the costs and benefits if we're going to get anywhere.

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... For all the reasons listed here in favor of it. Bottom line, it's all about money, and right now many people are making money by policing, incarcerating, and selling all the things that support current drug policies... Yet the pharmaceutical companies keep pushing their own legal drugs, and people get rich (and other people get addicted).

We need to tax and control the distribution of drugs, so that we have a better idea of who is dealing, and then use the tax money for awareness programs, and to help those who do become addicted. This is the only sane and human approach to the problem.

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One has to remember that illegal drugs is big bucks, not just for the gangsters who control some of the distribution, but also for those who feed at the government troughs, from politicians, to law enforcement and judiciary, to incarceration and social welfare, shareholders in incarceration ( Halliburton!!!), not to mention the extras for co-operation by authority to turn a blind eye.

Few of these employees would like to see their jobs go astray, and their incomes depleted, and would rarely apart from the social workers, perhaps, take up any flag of decriminalisation or for legalisation.

There is systemic corruption with the current policies and only society as a whole can take a stand for legalisation and decriminalisation, much as it did in regard to the prohibition of alcohol. The idea though that the gangsters will then go away is equally ludicrous, when prohibition ended they set up Las Vegas, not just alcohol but gambling and prostitution as well, for sale.

High Times magazine reported how drugs legally sold in Amsterdam had come from villages in poor rural Asia, where villagers were forced to grow the marijuana, but given little in return, due to their enforced labour through national criminal gangs. The villagers were literally held captive and enslaved by criminal elements.

Given these criminal gangs access to vast amounts of wealth from the period of illegality, these same gangs may well become the "new suppliers" of an older trade, and poorer communities throughout the globe become the victims of drug feudalism ( as opposed to oil/timber/mobile phone minerals/gold/uranium feudalism - international corporation is "king"), where they are required by gangsters to grow drugs rather than their own food needs. Just so people in the "West" can get high.

As legal groups this may be of benefit, to the larger community by paying taxes for profits, but as current mega-companies breach national laws in the almighty pursuit of profit, I fear there can only be some real change if in the case of marijuana people were legally allowed to grow their own.

I think it would be great if drugs were decriminalised, and the horrific statistics of incarceration in the US and around the world for marijuana ( in particular),were laid to rest, but any future markets for a total decriminalisation of all drugs will be beset with the previous leaders in the field, the gangsters, and their hangers-on, the politicians and officials who have allowed the illegal system to flourish.

Only an intergovernmental system, that cannot be privatised, and is able to monitor quality (of product and the lives of production)through International regulation, may hold some hope, though as evidenced by various other protection agencies ( environment), this too seems another opportunity for corruption.

The real challenge is to build a world society where mind altering drugs are not needed, especially when drug use further entrenches human exploitation for the benefit of the already rich, to the detriment and prolonged misery of those already over-exploited by the civilised "West".

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At least one positive outcome for legalization is the elimination of workplace drug testing. That is perhaps THE biggest waste of time and money and a real burden foisted upon businesses. While the Congressional Republicans were in power preaching deregulation, cutting taxes and reducing red-tape, they did nothing concerning a real thorn in the ass for businesses (oh, they can't be "soft on crime!!!")

Let's take a former employer of mine, Citigroup, as an example. This is a HUGE entity. Every new employee must undergo drug testing as a condition for employment. The company must spend a significant fortune for this. That's money that could have gone to employee raises, shareholders, fringe benefits like daycare or expanded vacation/sick days, increased training opportunities, etc. Stuff that brings demonstratively good things to people.

Drug testing supposedly making the workplace safer??? Give me a break!!! Ironically, since the inception of drug testing during the Reagan era, businesses suffered high rates of sensational violence in schools and in the workplace. Not one incident was from the result of controlled substance use. Many times, however, the violence is usually precipitated from regular alcohol and prescription drug consumption.

How much money is spent for drug testing? Those who really benefit are the drug testing outfits who lavishly lobby congress to perpetuate this scheme, and the folks who make the "toxic flusher" solutions that guarantees u pass a drug test. That nullifies any real purpose to drug testing. I know, I took a dose and IT WORKS!!!

So go to a bathroom and pee while someone is watching. How humiliating is that, Mr Big Brother?? And what's the point, really.

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Having close friends and family members caught up in the legal system because of "illegal" substances they choose to use, I've seen the effect of our current policies on drugs firsthand. I've also seen the lives of family and friends completely destroyed by alcohol use.

My personal opinion is that the devastation alcohol wreaks on the body and mind is far greater than any drug I've ever seen... but alcohol is "legal"?

It's all just a game our government plays involving the population. We are the pawns they feed their biased bullshit to, ignoring both truth and science, instead focusing on keeping corporations happy and a large segment of our society on the fringes, with no voice or vote. Then they conveniently under-fund mental health programs nationwide, denying much needed treatment to millions. (Just sweep them all under the rug)

How many more "liberal" voters would go to the polls on election day if the policies denying felons the right to vote were rescinded? Hmmmm...

Not all drug users are felons, and not all felons are drug users, but a large percentage of people in prison are there because of drugs. Many more are introduced to drugs inside those same prisons, where drugs flow freely, but not for free. Prison guards sell everything from tobacco to heroin, while "the system" turns a blind eye to the problem.

The DOJ is considering using Blackwater in the "War on Drugs". The "Governator" wants funding for more prisons and prison beds to ease overcrowding in CA prisons, but twice vetoed legislation allowing industrial hemp farming in the state! One costs billions in taxes to fund, the other would bring in much needed tax revenue, put an end to the required importation of a crop with more uses than any other plant on this planet, and would totally piss-off corporations whose products would be replaced by something more natural.

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You act as if there actually is a war on drugs, rather than just a war on the drug sellers at the very bottom of the food chain. On the contrary, the biggest drug importers to this country and the biggest drug dealers and pushers are the various secret services, intelligence agencies with aconyms you and I have never even heard of, and the US military. All this money goes to fund black ops, and you have no chance in hell at ever putting this particular genie back in the bottle. You would have to completely disband all the agencies and organizations I listed above (as if), and even then be willing to really dig underground where they'd all crawl. Nothing short of nuking this country from sea to shining sea will accomplish that, and believe me, the rest of the world is working on that as we speak and has been working on that solution for a LONG time now.

Give it up already. Illegal drugs will never be legalized, they're far too profitable for the main mob groups that really run this country. And provide the perfect way these groups can act unilaterally with impunity and complete lack of accountability to anyone, anytime, indefinitely.

And you thought we bombed Afghanistan back to the stone age to get even for 9-11, instead of to restart the opium poppy heroin trade that had completely ended for religious reasons under the Taliban.

Welcome to Amerika, the "greatest country on earth".

Not even close.

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If you are really serious about ending the war on drugs, you need a president committed to making that happen. Ron Paul is that man. (Note - you must be registered republican to vote for him in the primaries)

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