Every now and then Rolling Stone publishes an awesome article. The latest issue (Dec. 13) had an article titled “How America Lost the War on Drugs“, written by Ben Wallace-Wells. The article goes into great detail on how the so-called War on Drugs began and how it evolved to what it has become today. If you have any interest in politics and the economy of our country, this article is a must read. The War on Drugs has cost the country $500 billion and that is increasing at a rate of $50 billion a year. It puts non-violent criminals in overcrowded prisons and is racially biased in that it puts on average more African-Americans in prison than whites, yet there is no evidence that African-Americans use more.
The article goes on to show that the whole notion of marijuana as a “gateway” drug is completely false and anyone that tells you otherwise is lying. It explains how the War on Drugs has gone from attacking drugs at the source in Colombia to attacking medical marijuana users (key quote about just how ridiculous things have gotten follows):
In one particularly ludicrous incident, a forty-four-year-old post-polio sufferer named Suzanne Pfeil, who smoked prescription marijuana to relieve her pain, was hauled off to jail by DEA agents who pointed automatic rifles at her head and handcuffed her to her wheelchair. The rhetoric reached the level of crusade: Walters called citizens who plant and tend marijuana gardens “terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties.”
People who use drugs are not terrorists. People who grow marijuana are not supporting terrorists. That notion shows just how out of touch with reality our current government truly is and what lengths they will go to and what scare tactics they will use to continue this War on Drugs that will never end and will never be won.
This War on Drugs needs to end. Support organizations like NORML. Contact your representatives and senators in Congress. This is your money being thrown out the window. Half a trillion dollars ($500,000,000,000 so you can see how big it is written out) could go a long way towards other things, like improving our education system, research into alternative fuels for automobiles, supporting public transportation system. Spending it on a losing battle is just wasting it.
I found it on Boing Boing. Slate has a great article on it as well.
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