WOD: Fabricating Criminals for Power and Profit
Bill St. Clair at the Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY) - Time to scrap failed U.S. drug laws - they printed my letter. The link contents will change tomorrow, and the Gazette doesn't provide archives, so I've copied the text below. They changed my title, reworded the opening a little, fixed spelling, and added some paragraph breaks, but left the rest exactly as I wrote. I called it No Reevaluation Needed when I submitted it on August 29.
Letter to the Editor
Time to scrap failed U.S. drug laws
The Aug. 26 issue contained a column by David Broder, "Time to re-evaluate war on drugs." Nope. We've had plenty of time to evaluate it.
The war on some drugs is an unmitigated disaster, a complete and utter failure. It has ruined the lives of millions of peaceful Americans while shredding our Bill of Rights. It pours hundreds of billions of dollars annually into the pockets of organized criminals. Since black market substances are subject to no regulations on purity or labeling, bad drugs kill thousands every year.
It's time to end this insanity, free all the prisoners of war, offer realistic information to prevent people from taking drugs in the first place, and provide voluntary treatment to help them when they decide to stop.
Asa Hutchinson should be directed to administer the complete shutdown of the Drug Enforcement Agency. The Office of National Drug Policy should be eradicated. Adults own their bodies. What they choose to ingest is nobody's business. Personal responsibility works. Give it a try.
BILL St. CLAIR
New Lebanon
Good commentary today from Will Cate in the context of Steve Kubby's wish-you-were-here letter from British Colombia. [will]
Remember, brothers and sisters, the only reason cannabis is illegal is to make criminals out of people who otherwise would not be criminals.
Making as many people criminals as possible is big business for the government on a couple of different levels: the first is power. Making more people into criminals increases, overall, the power that government is able to exert over the citizenry. There are currently 1.8 million individuals incarcertated or on probation in the U.S. The per-capita prison population has increased 72% between 1990 and 2000. (DOJ statistics)
Second is the business of prison-building. Small, poor towns compete with one-another for privelege of building new prisons. It provides a stimulus to the local economy by way of providing jobs to low-IQ individuals who might otherwise be unemployed.
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