Perhaps the 'Just Say No' message is sinking in

...and one from the Denver Post...

Newsbrief: Denver Post Says Legalize It 9/10/04
In an editorial last Sunday, Colorado's largest and most influential newspaper has called for the legalization of mar1juana, a radical review of the nation's drug laws, and an end to mandatory minimum sentences. The Denver Post cited the dissent of prominent conservatives such as William Buckley from the war on drugs, but was apparently heavily influenced by a recent compilation of essays about the futility of prohibition, "The New Prohibition," edited by Colorado's San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters, with a heavy representation from other Coloradans as well. (The book also includes an essay from DRCNet executive director Dave Borden. Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/348/newprohibition.shtml to read our book review.)

"The first step toward a rational drug policy," the editorial said, "is to legalize, regulate and heavily tax the sale of mar1juana -- with the taxes earmarked to fund treatment programs for victims of truly dangerous drugs." But, the Post noted, the state of Colorado has already moved about as far as it can on its own, with possession of less than an ounce considered a petty offense with a maximum $100 fine. Colorado voters have also approved of medical mar1juana, the newspaper continued, "with state law being followed about as well as a surly federal government will permit."

Thus, opined the Post, "because of the federal government's preemptive authority, Colorado cannot take the final step of legalizing and regulating mar1juana on its own. It is time for Congress and the president to call a cease-fire in what has become not a war on drugs but a war on people who use drugs."

The war on drugs is "long and fruitless," and the costs, human and economic, are too high, the editorial continued. While noting that progressives, libertarians, and others oppose drug prohibition, the Post was downright enthralled at the notion of conservatives such as Buckley joining the chorus. In fact, it cited Buckley's June 29 National Review article supporting the proposition that "the government should treat mar1juana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: It should regulate it, control it, tax it, and make it illegal only for children."

We should adjust the way we deal with other drugs as well, the Post argued. "A reassessment of the drug war should include an evaluation of the effects of each drug on users and adjusting the legal status of that drug accordingly," the paper suggested. "Drug policy should then be placed on a continuum ranging from continued prohibition to outright legalization." Methamphetamine should remain a proscribed substance in the Post's view.

As for federal mandatory minimum drug sentences, the Post calls them simply "a wellspring of injustice" and urges "that such laws be changed to restore reasonable discretion to federal judges in meting out sentences in drug cases."

Read the editorial, "It's Time to Rethink and Reform Drug Laws," in full at http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~417~2376803,00.html online.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/353/denverpost.shtml

 

...and one from Canada's National Post.

Newsbrief: Canada's National Post Says Legalize It 9/10/04
Canada's National Post, whose position as Canada's national newspaper of record is challenged only by the Toronto Globe & Mail, called Tuesday in an editorial for the legalization of mar1juana. The newspaper cited two contemporary cases and the contradictory way in which they are being handled as providing the latest compelling reason to not fool around with the halfway measure of decriminalization, which the government of Prime Minister Paul Martin is prepared to move on this year.

The Post noted the case of Vancouver's Da Kine Café, which has been selling mar1juana in an Amsterdam-style coffee house setting for four months. Café owner Carol Gwilt hoped to advance the cause by forcing a crackdown on her open pot sales, but it didn't happen. So she turned to the media to expose what she was up to in what the Post referred to as "a slightly ridiculous play for attention."

Even with the publicity, Vancouver police and political figures had not gotten around to bothering her by the time the Post wrote its editorial. Gwilt finally got her wish, though, on Thursday evening. According to Canada's CTV, more than 30 police cars surrounded the café and arrested six people as an angry neighborhood crowd jeered and smoked joints defiantly. The large number of police was there to protect the police, Vancouver
Police spokeswoman Sarah Bloor told CTV.

Still, it took two weeks of intense media scrutiny to force Vancouver's police to finally make arrests at Da Kine. Contrast that reluctance to enforce mar1juana laws with the harsh 90-day sentence meted out to mar1juana seed entrepreneur and leading Canadian pot activist, who currently sits in the Saskatoon Jail. Vindictive authorities there charged him with drug trafficking after he shared a joint with bystanders at the end of a pro-pot rally there. The Post did, and it didn't like what it found.

"Even on its own, the indifference to the activities of the Da Kine Café would speak to the absurdity of a criminal law that few people -- including, it seems, some police forces -- have any interest in enforcing," noted the Post. "But it is all the more telling when contrasted with the case of Marc Emery, the mar1juana activist recently sentenced in Saskatchewan to three months in prison on a trafficking conviction for passing a joint at a rally. When our drug laws are enforced so arbitrarily that one individual is imprisoned for trafficking when he did nothing of the sort, even as another feels compelled to contact the media in order to draw attention to the fact that her establishment has sold the same drug over the counter for months without any consequences, the need for reform is obvious."

Decriminalization would not go far enough, said the Post. "The only sensible course of action is to end the pointless prohibition of a substance that is neither more dangerous nor more addictive than alcohol or tobacco, and one that has reportedly been smoked by more than 10 million Canadians at some point in their lives," the editorial concluded. "It's time to make official what Vancouver's authorities have evidently already accepted, and legalize mar1juana."

The editorial, "Pointless Prohibition," is available online to National Post subscribers only at http://www.nationalpost.com. DrugSense's Media Awareness Project has an archived copy posted at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n1267/a08.html?140656 online.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/353/nationalpost.shtml

 

Thanks Andy.

 

And my apologies to you. Shouldn't have been so sharp with you. Was high on beer. I really recommend reading andy's threads. Some of this stuff will blow you away.

 

Here is my personal favorite. I'm not just some kook yelling "FREE THE WEED" while driving around in a VW van, I actually have a plan.

http://bbs2.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63243

 

Uh-oh...

Andy's now posting the 'best of moon' threads.

 

Well I don't have a VW bus (any more) but I'll help you out.

FREE THE WEED!

 

This Week in History http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/353/thisweek.shtml

September 13, 1984: US State Department officials conclude, after more than a decade of crop substitution programs for Third World growers of mar1juana, coca or opium poppies, that the tactic cannot work without eradication of the plants and criminal enforcement. Poor results are reported from eradication programs in Burma, Pakistan, Mexico, and Peru.

September 14, 1995: The Reagan-appointed, conservative libertarian described by American Lawyer magazine as "the most brilliant judge in the country," Richard Posner, Chief Judge of the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, is quoted in USA Today:

"I am skeptical that a society that is so tolerant of alcohol and cigarettes should come down so hard on mar1juana use and send people to prison for life without parole... We should not repeal all the drug laws overnight, but we should begin with mar1juana and see whether the sky falls."

September 15, 1994: The Boston Globe printed the results of a reader call-in survey that asked, "Do you favor legalizing mar1juana for medical use?" An astonishing 97 percent of the callers said "yes."

September 16, 1934: The New York Times reported (if you can call it that), "users of mar1juana become stimulated as they inhale the drug and are likely to do anything. Most crimes of violence in this section, especially in country districts are laid to users of that drug."

September 17, 1998: Ninety-three members of Congress vote for medical mar1juana.

 

I could be wrong, but this sounds like it could be more of a parenting failure more than anything else?

Maybe the problem has roots that no one thoguht of... For example, maybe since the divorce rate is so high, kids think that their parents won't be together for long and are just going to be together temporarily, which takes away their credibility as "regular" parents or heads of a family?

Sounds to me like you've done your homework. If your way is the only way, then I'm all for it as well. But I hope there are more solutions, solutions that don't send a message that "drugs are ok" because, citing the parenting failure, kids will have no guidance whatsoever, even the few that DID listen to their parents right?

 

From what I have seen, there is no correlation between divorce rates and kids using drugs. People, particularly kids, use drugs at roughly the same rates no matter their family circumstance. Personally, when I had my "youthful indiscretions," my parents were still married but my peers were telling me that drugs weren't very dangerous. I found out for myself that my peers were wrong, but the breakdown came because drugs were SO easy to acquire.

There are two things that seem to positively affect drug usage rates are true, one is honest education. The other is raising the age at which one first tries mind altering substances. If we make it somewhere between difficult and impossible for kids to get ahold of drugs in the first place and then educate them once they become adults, we will have done everything we can do to dissuade them from using. At that point, if they make a decision as adults, the government should make sure that the taxes from these chemicals fund treatment centers so that the small percentage of people who DO become addicted have the means to get help.

As far as messages go, changing the laws will not send a message that "drugs are OK," particularly when adults can say with one unified voice that "you should not use drugs until you are an adult," a statement that I am sure ALL of us can agree on. The current policy makes drugs widely available to kids, causes kids to distrust the "messages" they get from their parents and the government, and encourages kids to use drugs while they are young and the penalties are relatively light. The only "message" that kids listen to today is the one their peers give them because their peers are seen as more trustworthy than authority figures, especially when we are trying to send the same "message" about pot that we try to send about cocaine.

Kids know that we are lying to them and use that as a basis to distrust ALL "messages" regarding drugs. I would rather take drugs completely out of the hands of kids, at which point the "message" doesn't matter nearly as much as the reality that they cannot acquire drugs anywhere near as easily as they can today.

 

I think that the law should just make the punishment for possesion or use of drugs a little harsher. I see kids at school getting caught all the time, and all they get is 10 days suspension?? WTF

 

If, as part of the new message, we also have the effect of ACTUALLY reducing availablility to kids, isn't that better than just sending "messages," no matter how noble the message might be?

I want to reduce the number of young people who use drugs DRASTICALLY, not just pay lip service (which is all that the "message" we are sending now is doing) to a "drug free America." No matter what you believe, such a utopia does not and never will exist. However, if we can take drugs out of the hands of our children by killing the black market, we can have a real impact as far as the number of children who use drugs. If we have that kind of impact, it can only lead to lowered overall drug usage rates, particularly of cocaine and heroin.

You already do. Alcohol is among the worst of the recreational drugs and the "message" you gave your kids (presumably) was just that. We have made tremendous strides reducing the access that kids have to alcohol to the point that they report that illegal drugs are easier to acquire than alcohol. With a strong system of regulation along with education, we can make it somewhere between difficult and impossible for them even to get drugs in the first place. This is the biggest goal that our drug policy should have: to actually reduce the access that our kids have to drugs.

"Messages" are lip service. It is time for a policy that actually does something positive.

To be fair, it is statistically improbable that all of the people you mention here have NEVER used illegal drugs. If that is the case, then y'all are the exception, not the rule considering that half of our young people have reported using illegal drugs every year since the early 1970s.

We need a drug policy that reduces the access our young people have to drugs and reduces the impact that drugs have on our society. Prohibition is like throwing napalm on a fire and we just keep poring that napalm on despite massive amounts of evidence that this policy is counterproductive, harmful, and way too expensive for the long term.

Don't get me wrong, it is commendable that so many in your circle have avoided the negative impact that drug use can have, but I am talking about a system that could take drugs totally out of the hands of children, meaning ALL kids would have the opportunity to grow up drug free, not just half of them.

 

When low level drug "mules" get 10 and 20 years, how much harsher could it be?

I agree that the "punishment" meted out to kids only encourages them to use drugs when they are young, when the penalties are relatively minor, but the system I am talking about would deal out harsh penalties for providing drugs to kids in the first place. In addition, it would include a tracking system so that any drug could be relatively easily traced back to the person who bought it, and if the penalties for letting kids get your drugs is probation for a first offens, 5-10 years for the second, and 10-20 years for the third, we can solve the problem with kids using drugs in the first place.

Keeping drugs out of the hands of our children should be the number one goal of our drug policy, above all other considerations. It is obvious that the current policy cannot and will not accomplish that goal, which means it is time for us to try something else.

 

Again, it is nice that it worked for you, but it is clear that it is not working for the majority of kids since over half of them have reported using drugs every year since the 1970s.

I want to create a system where it doesn't make any difference who you hang out with. I want a system that actually reduces the access our young people have to drugs. Prohibition ensures that the black market will continue to provide drugs to EVERYONE, kids included. In fact, the black marketeers would RATHER sell to kids since they will pay higher prices and generally do not know when they are being scammed.

In addition, with the system of regulation I have in mind, it would make it easy to decide which peer group you want to be involved with. If you prefer not to hang out with people who use drugs, ask to see their purchaser ID card and if they are licensed for chemicals you would rather avoid, you can choose not to spend time with them.

The "drugs are bad, mmmmmmmkay" message may have worked for you, but my point remains that it, far from working for everyone, actually increases the chances that kids will be enticed to use drugs, particularly as they go through their rebellious phase. In addition, prohibition places control of these chemicals into the hands of criminal organizations that have no morals, no scruples, and will sell to anyone, ESPECIALLY kids.

We can keep drugs out of the hands of our children if we get serious about it and apply science, reason and logic in place of the cliches, misinformation and politics that rule the day now.