In 1914 when all drugs were legal in the US, 1.3% of the US population was addicted to drugs. Despite over 1 trillion tax dollars being wasted, millions of Americans being arrested and all the other harms that have resulted from our failed drug prohibition policy, today 1.3% of our population is still addicted to drugs. That’s 0% improvement.

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Well worth reading DRUG FACTS:
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/90295/
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/basicfax11.htm

If you can show me ANYTHING that the drug war has accomplished when it comes to reducing drug related death, disease, crime and drug use that has significantly improved any drug related area over a long period of time I’d appreciate you telling me what it is.

The Constitutional right to freedom of religion, free speech, a free press, to keep and bear arms, to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects against unreasonable search and seizure, to life, liberty and property, to be protected from having your property taken by the government without due process of law and without just compensation, to confront the witnesses against you, to be protected from excessive bail, excessive fines, cruel and unusual punishment, to vote and others have been unjustly denied to millions of Americans in the name of the drug war.

If a person kills or drives when they are intoxicated or breaks any legitimate law, we already have laws on the books to deal with those problems and if a real danger to society is recognized like it was with drunk driving, then those laws certainly should be rationally adjusted accordingly. Trying to lock up every drug user or eradicate every plant that produces illegal drugs from planet earth are completely unattainable irrational goals. We simply cannot afford to lock up every drug user and even if we could the vast majority go back to using drugs when they are released. Some countries even went so far as to execute drug users and even that has not succeeded in accomplishing a “drug free” country. At some point we have to realize that a certain percentage of people are always going to use drugs and implement policy that minimizes the harms without devastating society.

In Switzerland they set up government run clinics where heroin addicts can go and get pharmaceutical grade heroin. If you don’t have the money to pay for the drug it’s free. That instantly put every illegal heroin dealer in that country out of business… they can’t compete with free. Anyone that wants heroin can go into a government run clinic up to 3 times a day and inject it. There are medical personnel on hand and anyone that wants to kick their habit is given counseling and help toward that goal. The results are that there has not been a single heroin overdose there in more than 13 years. Switzerland has the lowest AIDS and Hepatitis infection in all of Europe. Crime fell by 60% because no one is stealing or prostituting their self to pay for their heroin and after a 10 year study, they documented that there has been an 82% decline in new heroin users. Now please tell me why our drug war seems like better policy than that. No one went to jail and no one got killed.

Because of our prohibition policy bad laws have been put on the books that make it illegal for IV drug users to obtain clean needles. This results in AIDS and hepatitis being spread unnecessarily into our non drug using society on a huge scale.

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FL voters: Please go to http://www.pufmm.com/ print, sign and mail the FL medical marijuana petition. No matter where anyone stands on recreational use of marijuana, preventing a Dr. from providing any safe and effective medicine they think will help a patient goes against the very foundations of human decency. THANK YOU!

Many big corporations that see marijuana as competition contribute heavily to promoting marijuana prohibition. Alcohol, tobacco, petroleum, cotton, timber, chemical and pharmaceutical companies, just to name a few and of course the government contributes billions every year to keep their prohibition cash cow alive and well. I’ve seen estimates that contributions toward drug prohibition may be as much as 1 million dollars per day. However, once people learn the truth about the issues they overwhelmingly are in favor of revising drug policy. That’s why 13 states have passed medical marijuana laws already and several have decriminalized. I’m sure you saw the news that the feds revised their policy about prosecuting medical marijuana patients that are in compliance with state laws. That’s a huge step in the right direction. It proves when enough voters take action rational progress toward regulation and away from prohibition is being made.

Marijuana which accounts for roughly half of all drug arrests, never was a serious threat to society, families, or individuals and it never will be. Because of that bad law being implemented based on lies by a few people that stood to gain financially from marijuana’s prohibition and them intentionally deceiving lawmakers, literally millions of Americans that choose to use that plant for ANY purpose are criminalized needlessly. No one in the entire world of any age in all of recorded history has ever died from the ingredients in marijuana. In the US we arrest someone on a marijuana charge every 38 seconds.

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Right now we are installing 900 new prison beds and hiring 150 new correction officers every 2 weeks. Here in the “land of the free” for the first time in history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison. 2,319,258 Americans were incarcerated at the start of 2008. The United States now incarcerates more people than any other nation on earth,  more than even far more populous communist China. Over half of our federal prisoners are serving time for a drug offense. Largely because of the drug war, arresting Americans is becoming big business. We now have companies attempting to privatize our penal systems. These companies are huge supporters of drug prohibition and any other laws that cause Americans to be incarcerated. The more Americans behind bars, the more money they get from the government.

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Despite the drug war and all the money and efforts that have been put into it, drugs today are more potent, more readily available and often less expensive than they were in 1971 when Richard Nixon coined the phrase “war on drugs”.

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The goals of the drug war are to reduce drug related death, disease, crime and drug use. It has accomplished NONE of those goals after almost 100 years of prohibition policy, over 1 trillion tax dollars wasted, ever tougher criminal penalties, arresting millions of Americans, removing an ever increasing list of our Constitutional rights and all the other effort and resources that have been put into this failed wasteful and harmful unproductive policy.

The drug war is a real war and it is an unnecessarily harmful, completely unwinnable, and wasteful war. It is in fact a war against a certain large percentage of our own population that chooses to different degrees and with a wide range or results, to put a wide variety of different substances in their body and for a wide variety of reasons. It’s being fought in our communities with real guns, military styled raids against nonviolent citizens, teargas, dogs and virtually every other tool of war available.

In order to effectively address drug related death, disease, crime and addiction, we must demand rational drug policy that has PROVEN to get far better results than our drug war.

We have laws on the books that are causing a nonviolent US citizen to be arrested every 17 seconds on drug charges. Those laws have been in effect for almost 100 years and the goals of those laws are not being accomplished AT ALL. It’s time for the voters to say enough is enough and support long term proven methods of dealing with drug use and addiction in an effective rational manner.

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