It's Time To End The War On Drugs

In case no one has noticed, the war on drugs was lost almost before it began, but it has been an extremely expensive war even so. Apparently we learned nothing from prohibition.

As with prohibition, the war on drugs has created a whole new way to make gazillions for organized crime, not to mention criminal lawyers and prison corporations who love nothing better than recidivism.

As with prohibition, ordinary, work-a-day citizens have been turned into criminals where no tendency toward a criminal life-style was evident. Lives have been ruined; the lives of people at a young age, unfortunately. If parents want to assure themselves that their kids will, at least, experiment with drugs, they should be thankful to the drug warriors, because making drugs illegal assured that very thing. Once a society makes a substance illegal, it has lost all control over it and the profit motive is there for others to sell said substance.

Courts across America are jammed up. A big part of the problem is drug related crime.

The last time I checked the statistics, it costs tax payers an average of $47,000 per year to incarcerate one individual. The vast majority of Americans are lucky if they make that much in a year. Of course, the amount varies from state to state just as the cost of living does, but is anyone really interested in spending anywhere near that much money to incarcerate a person who prefers cannabis in the evenings to a glass of wine or a few beers?

Legalize it and tax it, but please don't give the market to the tobacco industry. They have already proved to everyone that they have no integrity. If anyone can find a way to make cannabis truly addictive, it would be the same people who took an already dangerous, addictive drug, nicotine, and manipulated the content in cigarettes in order to hopelessly addict even more people, while lying for decades about their knowledge of the addictiveness of nicotine, which is, by the way, worse than addiction to the many illegal drugs.

Time To Restore The Fourth Amendment

Whenever there is any kind of war, civil rights watchers had better be on their toes. Even a cursory knowledge of history tells us that. The 4th Amendment began being shredded in earnest when the war on drugs was declared. Today I'm not sure that it actually exists anymore except on paper (no matter what they say on Law and Order.). It is time that we restore it completely. I wonder if there are any statistics on how many doors have been kicked in and people at the address killed because the police had the wrong address while trying to make a drug bust? We have all heard on the news (usually local) that it has happened, probably more times than the police want to count, that's for sure. How many cops have been killed by new organized crime created by these new prohibition law?. How much time is wasted by police doing paperwork on a cannabis case while people are being raped, murdered and robbed on the streets of America? I've spoken to countless cops in many cites over the years who wish the government would legalize cannabis.

Too many people have died, too many lives have been ruined by this senseless war, probably far more than would have been lost to or ruined by the drugs themselves. Perhaps we should stop declaring war on inanimate objects or highly charged emotional states. It doesn't make any sense and it never did. Declaring war on a plant that grows just about anywhere anything else will grow has got to be one of the most incredibly stupid things I have ever heard.

So who was behind some of the most incredibly stupid laws ever written? The cotton industry for one, who didn't want to have to compete with the much stronger, durable fiber, hemp. It is still illegal to this day to grow hemp in America. Of course that was ages ago. The lobbyists who really wanted cannabis outlawed belonged to the alcohol industry. ( Since Holland de-criminalized cannabis years ago, the biggest drug problem in the Netherlands is still alcohol.)

Nevertheless, if we insist on continuing these ridiculous policies, everyone from the president, his staff and cabinet, members of congress, to the bail out babies on Wall Street should have to submit to the piss police. After all, if people who flip burgers need to be clean and sober to do their jobs, surely the highest ranking officials of the nation and the irreplaceable thieves on Wall Street certainly do. Oh, by the way, lets test for alcohol too. After all alcohol is more of a problem when it comes to exercising good judgment. Even hangovers from alcohol impair a person's judgment. Can't test for alcohol, you say? Maybe not, but since the liver cannot completely metabolize alcohol, it leaves another quite toxic substance in the system for quite some time. As a matter of fact it is the substance that causes hangovers; acetaldahyde.

Time for the insanity to end.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

States consider drug tests for welfare recipients

By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Writer Tom Breen, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 26, 9:28 am ET

CHARLESTON, W.Va. –




Want government assistance? Just say no to drugs.

Lawmakers in at least eight states want recipients of food stamps, unemployment benefits or welfare to submit to random drug testing.

The effort comes as more Americans turn to these safety nets to ride out the recession. Poverty and civil liberties advocates fear the strategy could backfire, discouraging some people from seeking financial aid and making already desperate situations worse. (It could backfire in an even worse way for the drug warriors and everyone else using our tax dollars to fight an endless, extremely expensive "war on drugs" which we lost years ago. Wars are expensive, even if they are already lost. In this case, especially if the war has already been lost.)
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Those in favor of the drug tests say they are motivated out of a concern for their constituents' health and ability to put themselves on more solid financial footing once the economy rebounds. But proponents concede they also want to send a message: you don't get something for nothing. (Yeah right, we all know how concerned these people are for their so-called constituents. That's why many of them voted for policies which led us over an economic cliff for campaign support from their real constituents, some of whom may not even be in the state they represent, not to mention their districts, but all of whom stood to get wealthier of said policies.)


"Nobody's being forced into these assistance programs," said Craig Blair, a Republican in the West Virginia Legislature who has created a Web site — notwithmytaxdollars.com — that bears a bobble-headed likeness of himself advocating this position. "If so many jobs require random drug tests these days, why not these benefits?" (Of course they aren't being forced into assistance programs. Neither are the crooks on Wall Street, but are they being asked to submit to the piss police?)

Blair is proposing the most comprehensive measure in the country, as it would apply to anyone applying for food stamps, unemployment compensation or the federal programs usually known as "welfare": Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Women, Infants and Children.

Lawmakers in other states are offering similar, but more modest proposals.

On Wednesday, the Kansas House of Representatives approved a measure mandating drug testing for the 14,000 or so people getting cash assistance from the state, which now goes before the state senate. In February, the Oklahoma Senate unanimously passed a measure that would require drug testing as a condition of receiving TANF benefits, and similar bills have been introduced in Missouri and Hawaii. A Florida senator has proposed a bill linking unemployment compensation to drug testing, and a member of Minnesota's House of Representatives has a bill requiring drug tests of people who get public assistance under a state program there.

A January attempt in the Arizona Senate to establish such a law failed

In the past, such efforts have been stymied by legal and cost concerns, said Christine Nelson, a program manager with the National Conference of State Legislatures. But states' bigger fiscal crises, and the surging demand for public assistance, could change that.

"It's an example of where you could cut costs at the expense of a segment of society that's least able to defend themselves," said Frank Crabtree, executive director of the West Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Drug testing is not the only restriction envisioned for people receiving public assistance: a bill in the Tennessee Legislature would cap lottery winnings for recipients at $600. (Perhaps they should be sterilized as well...snark. After all, kids are expensive.)

 
There seems to be no coordinated move around the country to push these bills, and similar proposals have arisen periodically since federal welfare reform in the 1990s. But the appearance of a cluster of such proposals in the midst of the recession shows lawmakers are newly engaged about who is getting public assistance.

Particularly troubling to some policy analysts is the drive to drug test people collecting unemployment insurance, whose numbers nationwide now exceed 5.4 million, the highest total on records dating back to 1967.

"It doesn't seem like the kind of thing to bring up during a recession," said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "People who are unemployed, who have lost their job, that's a sympathetic group. Americans are tuned into that, because they're worried they'll be next."

Indeed, these proposals are coming at a time when more Americans find themselves in need of public assistance.

Although the number of TANF recipients has stayed relatively stable at 3.8 million in the last year, claims for unemployment benefits and food stamps have soared.

In December, more than 31.7 million Americans were receiving food stamp benefits, compared with 27.5 million the year before.

The link between public assistance and drug testing stems from the Congressional overhaul of welfare in the 1990s, which allowed states to implement drug testing as a condition of receiving help.

But a federal court struck down a Michigan law that would have allowed for "random, suspicionless" testing, saying it violated the 4th Amendment's protections against unreasonable search and seizure, said Liz Schott, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

At least six states — Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Wisconsin and Virginia — tie eligibility for some public assistance to drug testing for convicted felons or parolees, according to the NCSL.
Nelson said programs that screen welfare applicants by assigning them to case workers for interviews have shown some success without the need for drug tests. These alternative measures offer treatment, but can also threaten future benefits if drug problems persist, she said.

They also cost less than the $400 or so needed for tests that can catch a sufficient range of illegal drugs, and rule out false positive results with a follow-up test, she said.
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Associated Press Writer Lawrence Messina in Charleston contributed to this report.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.