Former governor of New Mexico, Republican Gary Johnson, was at the UMKC School of Law student lounge delivering a message to a group of students and faculty Tuesday. "Congress will pass laws regarding anything and everything," Johnson said. "This is our America, take it back." Johnson occupied the governor's seat in New Mexico for two terms. He proudly vetoed 750 bills during that time and he was only overridden twice. However, Johnson did not begin as a politician. He was an entrepreneur, starting his own construction business that turned in to a 1,000 person operation. [continues 279 words]
I'm writing about "Law enforcement group seeds drug legalization" [University News, Oct. 31, 2005]. I'd like to add if tough-on-drugs policies worked, the quixotic goal of a drug free America would have been reached a long time ago.And if tolerant drug policies created more drug use, the Netherlands would have much higher drug usage rates than the United States. They do not. In fact, the Dutch use marijuana and other recreational drugs at much lower rates than Americans do. See the Web site: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/thenethe.htm. [continues 127 words]
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is an ever-growing conglomeration that advocates ending prohibition of all Schedule 1 drugs. Recently Matthew McCally, a spokesperson for the international organization, talked to criminal justice classes at UMKC and also Blue River Community College on the merits of legalizing and maintaining the production of illegal drugs. "LEAP's goals are: (1) To educate the public, the media, and policy makers to the failure of current drug policy by presenting a true picture of the history, causes and effects of drug abuse and the crimes related to drug prohibition and (2) To restore the public1s respect for law enforcement, which has been greatly diminished by its involvement in imposing drug prohibition," reads the Mission Statement on LEAP's Web site. [continues 395 words]