Pubdate: Fri, 9 Jan 2009
Source: DrugSense Weekly (DSW)
Website: http://www.drugsense.org

LETTER OF THE WEEK

DRUG WAR HAS BEEN A FAILURE, SO IT'S TIME TO LEGALIZE THE STUFF

By Michelle Cohen

After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. war on drugs with over 
a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug 
offenses, our confined population has quadrupled, making prison 
building the fastest growing industry in the United States.

More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated, and 
every year we arrest an additional 1.9 million more, guaranteeing 
those prisons will be bursting at their seams. Every year we choose 
to continue this war will cost U.S. taxpayers another $69 
billion.  Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money 
so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent and far 
easier to get than they were 35 years ago, at the beginning of the 
war on drugs.

Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and 
terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before. We would suggest 
that this scenario must be the very definition of a failed public 
policy. This madness must cease!

We believe that to save lives and lower the rates of disease, crime 
and addiction, as well as to conserve tax dollars, we must end drug 
prohibition.  LEAP [Law Enforcement Against Prohibition] believes 
that a system of regulation, and control of production and 
distribution, will be far more effective and ethical than one of prohibition.

We do this in hopes that we in law enforcement can regain the 
public's respect and trust, which have been greatly diminished by our 
involvement in imposing drug prohibition.

Michelle Cohen

Schenectady

The writer is a LEAP volunteer and criminal justice student at SCCC.

Pubdate: Mon, 29 Dec 2008

Source: Daily Gazette (NY)
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