Pubdate: Fri, 7 Nov 2008
Source: DrugSense Weekly (DSW)
Website: http://www.drugsense.org

LETTER OF THE WEEK

NO PROHIBITION

By Curt Wagoner

To the editor:

It seems contradictory for the same people who claim to be 
'anti-crime fighters' to support the prohibitionist drug policies 
that create the crime in the first place.

Substance prohibition hasn't worked since Adam and Eve took a bite of 
the forbidden fruit.  In 1500 Greece the penalty for coffee 
possession was death.  Prohibition has always caused a rise in 
property crime, violence, corruption, gangs, disease and death.

Albert Einstein wrote regarding alcohol prohibition in 1921, "The 
prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by 
the prohibition law.  For nothing is more destructive of respect for 
the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot 
be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase in 
crime in this country is closely connected with this."

Thanks to the prohibitionist, the United States now has the largest 
prison system on the planet. We're filling those prisons at a rate 
faster than any nation on earth and at a cost that is absolutely mind-boggling.

The group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, ( L.E.A.P. ), with 
nearly ten thousand members, sees the drug war for what it is -- 
Prohibition.  According to their website ( www.leap.cc ), the U.S. 
spends $69 billion a year fighting the drug war.

$1.3 billion every week and for what? We build brand new state of the 
art prisons like the one in Madras, dubbed 'The Drug User 
Concentration Camp', while our outdated schools are literally 
crumbling apart.  That's $5.75 billion a month for a policy that has 
a history of failure and for creating crime and violence.

Police Captain Peter Christ ( ret.  ), L.E.A.P. cofounder, "Drug 
legalization is not to be construed as an approach to our drug 
problem.  Drug legalization is about our crime and violence problem. 
Once we legalize drugs we've got to then buckle down and start 
dealing with our drug problem, and that's not going to be easy but, 
it's something we can do.  Fifty per cent of the adult cigarette 
smokers in this society have quit in the past ten years. That's an 
amazing success story when you talk about the most addictive drug we 
know of -- nicotine.  How did we accomplish this amazing success 
story? Through education."

Supporting prohibition and calling oneself anti-crime is a 
contradiction. A true anti-crime fighter would be an 
anti-prohibitionist.  Honestly, just because drugs are bad it doesn't 
mean prohibition is good.

Curt Wagoner

Mosier

Pubdate: Thu, 23 Oct 2008

Source: Dalles Chronicle, The (OR)
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