The War Against The War On Drugs

Sasha Abramsky: Economic Necessity And Shifting Mores Are Changing The Nation's Approach To Incarceration

(The Nation)  Sasha Abramsky,a freelance journalist and senior fellow at Demos, is the author, most recently, of Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It.

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If that old adage still holds true, then the nation may soon see a gradual backpedaling from the criminal justice policies that have led to wholesale incarceration in recent decades.

For the most populous state in the union is on the verge of insolvency--partly because it didn't set aside a rainy-day fund during the boom years; partly because its voters recently rejected a series of initiatives that would have allowed a combination of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to help stabilize the state's finances during the downturn; partly because it has spent the past quarter-century funneling tens of billions of dollars into an out-of-control correctional system. Now, as California's politicians contemplate emergency cuts to deal with a $24 billion hole in the state budget, old certainties are crumbling.

The state with the toughest three-strikes law in the land and a prison population of more than 150,000 is facing the real possibility of having to release tens of thousands of inmates early in order to pare its $10 billion annual correctional budget. At the same time, an increasing number of the state's political figures are challenging the basic tenets of the "war on drugs," the culprit most responsible for the spike in prison populations over the past thirty years; they argue that the country's harsh drug policies are not financially viable and no longer command majority support among the voting public.

Similar stories are unfolding around the country; in Washington, federal officials are talking about drug-policy reform and, more generally, sentencing reform in a way that has not been heard in the halls of power for more than a generation.

For old-time politicians, who have spent the past three-plus decades navigating the country's roiling tough-on-crime waters, the changes are almost unfathomable. Onetime California governor and current gubernatorial hopeful Jerry Brown, for example, has spent decades trying to erase the public's memory of his liberal tenure in the 1970s, when California's prison population shrank to well below 30,000. As a part of that remodeling, he has assiduously courted the California Correctional Peace Officers' Association, the trade union representing the state's prison guards. Now, with his war chest flush with CCPOA funds, Brown won't do anything to challenge tough-on-crime orthodoxies.

Yet many newer political faces view the current moment as something of an opportunity. For Betty Yee, chair of California's Board of Equalization--the office responsible for collecting sales tax in the Golden State--the changes, especially around drug-law enforcement, can't come soon enough.
Sitting at her conference table high up in one of downtown Sacramento's few sky-rises, Yee has marijuana on her mind. Specifically, she has become an outspoken advocate for legalizing pot for residents older than 21. Her friend Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a former San Francisco city councilman, is pushing just such a bill in the State Legislature. Yee wants to levy fees on business owners applying for marijuana licenses, impose an excise tax on sellers and charge buyers a sales tax. Do it properly, and the state could reap about $1.3 billion a year, she has estimated. "Marijuana is so easily available. Why not regulate it like alcohol and tobacco?" she says, and gain additional tax revenue into the bargain?

Not so many years back, any public figure who dared to advocate such reforms would have been shunned by much of the establishment. It's a measure of how much things have changed that Yee and Ammiano's proposal is being taken seriously across the board. In fact, shortly after I met with Yee, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger--whose office declined my request for an interview for this article--announced that the state should at least consider the merits of pot legalization. He wasn't advocating it, he was careful to stress, but he did think the time was ripe to debate the issue.

"The budget is so bad now, the populism of the issue is beginning to work here in the Legislature," Ammiano says as he paces back and forth in his office, toward the bookshelves with the four martini glasses and Golden Gate Bridge bookends and then away again. On the wall near the receptionist's desk hangs a huge poster from the movie Milk.

"Everyone thinks it's Cheech and Chong," he says with a laugh, describing the marijuana legalization bill. "But there's a lot of policy wonks" supporting it.

"There's very conservative support from the oddest sources and locations." The GOP chair in the state, as well as Tom Campbell, a Republican gubernatorial hopeful, have indicated their support for his bill, Ammiano declares. "When it starts to cost more money than it's worth even in the eyes of the pooh-bahs, then you can accomplish something."

Over the past three decades, California has tripled the number of prisons it operates, has more than quintupled its prison population and has gone from spending $5 on higher education for every dollar it spent on corrections to a virtual dead-heat in spending. That puts it in the same boat as Michigan, Vermont, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware--all of which, according to estimates by the Pew Charitable Trust, spend as much or more on prisons than on colleges. California is also under federal court order to implement costly improvements in the delivery of medical and mental healthcare services in prisons and to release close to a third of the prison population--about 55,000 inmates--to improve conditions for those remaining behind bars.

Schwarzenegger adamantly opposed that ruling by a three-judge panel. Now, though, in the face of fiscal calamity, he is proposing cutting the prison population by tens of thousands. Of course, he is doing that not out of concern for inmates' well-being, or out of a sense that many sentences are disproportionate to the crime, but simply because the state can no longer pay its bills. Schwarzenegger believes he can save several hundred million dollars by releasing some categories of inmates, in particular nonviolent offenders who are in the country illegally and stand to be deported upon
early release.

To save money, he's also talking about firing hard-working guards (a far better, but costlier, option would be to scale back the prison system and to retrain surplus guards to work in other venues), and he's asking for close to $1 billion in cuts to vital prison drug-treatment, education and job-training services. At the same time, since this is all about shaving dollars off budgets rather than intelligent criminal justice system reform, there's no talk of investing in crucial re-entry infrastructure.

In short, it looks like California will go about a necessary scaling back of the correctional system exactly the wrong way. But however grudgingly state officials are approaching the issue, at least they recognize that the magnitude of prison spending is a problem. Down the road, when Californians start thinking beyond the crisis moment, that new understanding will shape policy responses for years to come. It will both feed off and help create a new national sentiment that being "tough on crime" isn't necessarily being smart on crime.

Tough-on-crime rhetoric, and the policies and institutions that grow from it, emerged from Nixon's Silent Majority tactics, from his recasting of politics as a series of debates around "values" rather than bread-and-butter issues. And in the same way the 2008 presidential election ended that peculiar chapter in American history, so too did it end the monotone cry that we could incarcerate our way out of deep-rooted social and economic problems. Despite a few halfhearted GOP attempts to accuse Democrats of being weak on drugs and public safety--Obama had, after all, written about his drug use during his teenage and early adult years, which, according to the old calculus, should have made him an easy target for scaremongers--neither presidential candidate played the tough-on-crime card. It was a nonissue for most voters and thus for the candidates.

In fact, recent Zogby polling commissioned by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency suggests that close to eight in ten Americans favor alternatives to incarceration for low-level nonviolent offenders. Another Zogby poll, from last fall, found that just more than three-quarters of Americans felt the "war on drugs" was a failure. The sea change in public opinion holds in California too. In late March the Los Angeles Times ran a column asking readers their opinion on marijuana legalization. So far 4,927 people have replied, and 94 percent of them favor legalization. A Field Poll in April found that 56 percent of Californians favor legalizing and taxing pot.

The new atmosphere is most apparent vis-à-vis the Obama administration's move away from "war on drugs" rhetoric and toward a harm-reduction strategy. Gil Kerlikowske, the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has made it clear that he prefers treatment over punishment for drug users, a preference he brings from his time as a reform-oriented police chief in Seattle. Putting money where its mouth is, the new team has increased funding for the Bush-era Second Chance Act, intended to connect released inmates with community services such as housing, family counseling and addiction treatment. Support is also growing for the creation of more drug and mental health courts across the country. Finally, there are the promises being made by drug policy leaders in Washington that state medical marijuana laws will be respected rather than trampled, as they have been for more than a decade.

A related issue involves the infamous discrepancy in sentences for crack- versus powder-cocaine crimes. Vice President Biden was one of the architects of these laws--which is why his repudiation of them in recent years has been so significant. The day after Obama's inauguration, the president's website mentioned the importance of eliminating these discrepancies--as well as of promoting needle-exchange programs and expanding the nation's embryonic network of drug courts. The House recently held hearings on the sentencing discrepancy issue.

For Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director of the Drug Policy Alliance in Southern California, sacrosanct legislative underpinnings of the "war on drugs" are starting to look like the Berlin Wall, "up one day and down the next"--seemingly impregnable; in reality, utterly fragile. Over the past few years, an increasing number of localities have dabbled in ways to simply walk away from the "war on drugs." Initiatives in several states and cities, including Denver; Missoula, Montana; Albany County, Oregon; and Seattle have mandated that law enforcement agencies deprioritize marijuana arrests. Several cities have begun needle-exchange programs. And states like California have passed citizens' initiatives mandating that first-time drug offenders be channeled into treatment programs in lieu of prisons.

Then there's Virginia Senator Jim Webb's legislation creating a blue-ribbon commission on criminal justice reform, with a mandate to put all questions on the table during its eighteen-month tenure--from drug law reform to the restoration of judicial discretion in sentencing, from parole reforms to different approaches to gangs, border patrol, prison architecture and the like. Webb has been pushing for systemic criminal justice reform for years; in 2009, he believes, it will acquire legs. During a telephone interview for this article, Webb said that President Obama "has personally called me on this, and he's very supportive of the idea of moving forward." Across the aisle many Republican senators, including senior figures like Lindsey Graham, have also expressed support for the idea.

The bipartisan backing for Webb's commission is partly a response to the escalating drug-and-gang crisis south of the border. There's a growing recognition in US policy and law enforcement circles that government dysfunction, phenomenal levels of street violence and the rising power of drug cartels are threatening to move from being a Latin American problem to one that destroys the integrity of the Mexican state and risks spilling over more heavily into the American Southwest. Nobody, no matter their political stripe, wants the Tijuana-ization or Juárez-ization of Phoenix or Los Angeles, of San Diego or El Paso.

"It really is a serious problem in this country," Webb argues. "The transnational gangs or syndicates are bringing a tremendous amount of drugs into this country."

To get a handle on that problem involves thinking of ways to neutralize these gangs, which inevitably leads to a discussion of partial drug decriminalization or legalization. Why? Because once the drug market is no longer confined to the shadows--once it is regulated and taxed, as alcohol was after Prohibition ended in 1933--the violence that accompanies struggles for control of that illicit market will disappear. After years of denying this truth and assuming that the country could incarcerate its way out of the drug-abuse epidemic, a number of American politicians, Webb included, are touting that seemingly paradoxical fact. Want to get really tough on crime? Well, do the smart thing: start working out ways to neutralize the drug cartels, start talking about at least limited forms of decriminalization or legalization.

It is, Webb argues, "a fair issue for this commission. Every piece of it should be fair game."

For an administration like Obama's that prides itself on thinking outside the box, systemic drug policy reform is an intriguing prospect. An increasing number of law enforcement people and judges have also decided that this is an idea worth running with.

"I've never seen so much interest," says retired Orange County superior court judge James Gray, who has been advocating marijuana legalization since the early 1990s. "My phone is ringing much more than it ever has before."

"We need to ask, Is there a more sensible approach?" argues Norm Stamper, who, like Kerlikowske, is a former chief of police of Seattle who believes the criminal justice system is broken. "And the answer is prevention and education and treatment."

After decades of being on the defensive, progressive criminal justice reformers suddenly have a receptive audience. New York, which has closed some of its prisons in the past decade, has spent the last few years unraveling the tangled web created by the 1970s-era Rockefeller drug laws. Michigan, Louisiana and several other states have also scaled back their harshest mandatory drug sentences. The State of Washington is looking at how to redefine low-end drug and property crimes as misdemeanors rather than felonies. And in Michigan, which allows a $100 theft to trigger a four-year prison sentence, legislators are pushing to make the threshold $1,000 instead, so as to reduce the number of low-end offenders pushed into long-term incarceration and hobbled for life by felony convictions.

Meanwhile, correctional system administrators in Georgia, Illinois and Arkansas have started the long, hard task of reforming their systems from within even without a new consensus emerging on the issue.

Howard Wooldridge, a retired police detective from Bath, Michigan, who advocates in DC for criminal justice system reform, says the moment is ripe for change. "I've been doing this for twelve years, and this is by far the most perfect storm."

America isn't about to abandon all of its "tough on crime" tenets. Nor should it in all instances. The three-strikes law will likely remain in place for violent offenders, as will the growing body of laws limiting where sex offenders may live. Violent crimes will probably continue to trigger longer sentences than they did before the get-tough movement. And while some inmates will qualify for early release, many sentenced to long terms at the height of the tough-on-crime years will stay in prison. But out of economic necessity and because of shifting mores, the country will likely get more selective, and smarter, about how it uses incarceration and whom it targets for long spells behind bars.

This will be especially true for drug policy--the multi-tentacled beast that's sucking most people into jails and prisons. There, profound changes are likely to develop over the next few years. And when it comes to the mentally ill, momentum continues to build around mental health courts designed to get people medical and counseling help rather than simply to shunt them off to prison. States like Pennsylvania are starting to develop parallel institutions to deal with mentally ill people who run afoul of the law. Many other states will likely follow suit in the near future. Forty years after deinstitutionalization, a new consensus is emerging that prisons became an accidental, de facto alternative to mental hospitals, and that very little good has come from that development.

"I believe that we have a compelling national interest," explains Senator Webb, referring to systemic criminal justice reform. "That's a term that is carefully chosen. This is a national commission, but it should not be limited to looking at the federal prison system. You have to look at the whole picture and then boil it down into resolvable issues."

[yofrane777]

Marijuana......I am 60 years old, never missed a day of work, own my cars, house and have no credit card debt. Pot has never lead me to any other drug and I do not DRINK. I have seen total chaos with alcohol users. Never with pot. I have smoked though my whole pregnancy and delivered a totally perfect child (She makes 75,000.00 a year and is just as responsible as I am) She does not smoke or drink, HER CHOOSE.....
I am Smoking for 41 years and as healthy as can be, smoking has made me get though the very hard times. My MOM died at 54 and never smoked or drank anything from a brain tumor caused by STRESS. Smoking DE STRESSES you in this very stressed WORLD. I may not be book smart person but I have total common sense. I have developed my own business of helping people move and am very successful. I love what I do. I still smoke and only need 2 hits to feel the effect. I have also quit with no withdrawals. I have a brother in jail he was set up from the FBI for a case to lesson another drug dealer time. He did nothing but talked about his past Now is world has fell apart with 3 children. Our taxes are paying for him in jail and his family losing their home. He is in jail for 6 years and didn't do anything but talked about his past. Enough is enough. If your are a responsible person this drug does not make you do bad things just Laugh, Laugh, Laugh and that is the BEST medicine in the WORLD. I hope before I die this one law against Marijuana is legalized or decriminalized . If my child had any addition which we all have in some form, I hope it will be to MARIJUANA........

[OregonJames]

I have smoked weed for ages and the drug laws have never been more than a minor inconvenience to me, yet our nation is spending 10 billion dollars a year to fight marijuana. I don't know which is more stupid, me for smoking or the government for wasting so much in such a destructive and futile effort.

Legalize marijuana and hemp for commercial use. It is time to end the wars, all of them. War is bad. Marijuana and hemp are good. Legalize it. Enjoy it. Save money. It's the smart thing to do.

[omnibus66]

The war on drugs may be a failure, but the war on reason continues unabated. I recently witnessed a report on CNN quoting a "new" study that concluded that marijuana is responsible for a multitude of maladies including, but not limited to, headaches, heart attacks, and mental illness.

When lies are allowed to flourish, the truth will struggle to exist.

[andylance1]

Even the older cops and politicians were subject to growing up in the 1960s and 1970s when smoking marijuana was commonplace. One good thing about the current recession is budgetary restraints on state governments. After many decades of the mantra - "tough on crime" the politicians are beginning to see the light and the budgetary problems of the prisons are coming home to roost.

Illegal drugs has been a cash cow for law enforcement. They can seize cars, boats and homes where drugs were found. The Feds give them fancy new helicopters and weapons. Every couple of years the more populous states are forced to build more prisons to house so-called drug offenders. Now, thank God, this house of cards is beginning to crumble.

[Snerdguy]

If marijuana were legalized across the country it's value would plunge drastically. Nearly anybody could grow the stuff if they want it. It would be like the stock market had crashed for many of the drug cartels because their illegal import would be nearly worthless. Legalizing marijuana could actually help us win the drug war.

[WakeYourself]

Prohibition is the cause of nearly all the drug-related problems in our country today. Marijuana doesn't make people sick and has never, in the history of mankind, ever killed a single human being. Why should responsible users, who are the vast majority, pay such steep consequences for the few who can't control themselves? Marijuana isn't a problem and is in fact one of the best natural substances known to mankind. The problem is prohibition and the "War on Drugs", both of which have cost this country far more than billiions of dollars, it has cost us our families, our trust in our government, our homes, our privacy, our freedom, and our basic human right to enjoy one of God's greatest creations.

The time to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana has come. Tell your representatives how you feel. Vote for politicians that support ending this greatest of all US fiascoes. And vote-out the blind prohibitionists. If they still think prohibition is a smart thing, then the rest of their mindset is probably just as worthless.

[koko98-2009]

It's not getting a lot of attention but Mexico is again working towards legalizing small personal amounts of pot, coke AND meth. When they tried this in 2006 the Bush Administration made them back off. The Obama Administration is looking the other way on this effort. Could this be a white flag in Mexico's war on drugs.

[gold_standard]

The government does not care about morality or drugs. The government cares about money and eliminating freedom. (What is freedom? Lack of government control of your life, duh).

If the war on drugs makes money, the government wages war on us. If it is no longer profitable, the government finds another way to extort money from us.

Anyone who acts like the government would be called a criminal. Government has the unique charter to act in criminal ways that the rest of us cannot and should not. Why is it okay for government to lie, steal, and murder?

[gunownerdan]

Why isn't marijuana legal?

- Legalization would endanger billions of dollars in prison and law enforcement spending, thousands of jobs would be at stake.

- It is useful in society to have some laws that millions break - that way minorities can be arrested at will.

- Legal marijuana would interfere with the existing pharmaceutical industry.

- Fully legal hemp would interfere with existing paper, rope, energy, clothing and other industries.

- The war on drugs provides a convenient cover under which to project U.S. influence into many countries, particularly in South America and South Asia.

- The war on drugs is a critical revenue source for the prison industry, the CIA, and the DEA.

www.LEAP.cc

[onesword]

Because they have the power to do so.

[spillover]

For crying out loud I've read books shorter than this article.Can't a point be made in less than three thousand words.

[DoubleHappiness88]

America failed to learn from its history. Current gang wars and border violence are the result of Drug Prohibition. Alcohol Prohibition caused similar gang wars and corruption. If the gang wars are to be ended, Drug Prohibition must be ended. Drugs should be legalized, controlled and taxed.

The alternative is continued gang wars, corruption of The US Justice System and foreign governments.

America can no longer afford the foolish, failed, corrupt and never ending War On Drugs.

[DoubleHappiness88]

Harvard economist: Prohibition creates violence, legalize all drugs

David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Published: Tuesday March 24, 2009
Because of his title as a Harvard economist, people tend to listen to Jeffrey Miron. And, if the old principle holds true and controversy always creates interest, expect a lot of people to be talking about Miron's latest volley into the mainstream media.

"Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground," he wrote in an essay published by CNN on Tuesday. "This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.

"Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after."

Miron's proposed solution to ending the cartel war along the US-Mexico border is both simple and enormously complex.

"Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it's permitted," he wrote. "Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question.

"The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs."

In 2005, Miron published a study titled, "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition" (PDF link), funded by the Marijuana Policy Project. Over 500 professional economists, including Milton Friedman, signed on to the report, which was sent to then-President George W. Bush.

Miron's report found that "marijuana legalization would save $7.7 billion per year in state and federal expenditures on prohibition enforcement and produce tax revenues of at least $2.4 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like most consumer goods."

He also discovered a potential for $6.2 billion or more, were marijuana taxed similarly to alcohol and tobacco.

However, during a CNN appearance on Tuesday, he took the anti-prohibition sentiment of his prior study on marijuana and applied it universally, telling anchor Kiran Chetry, "A lot of the violence we're seeing and a lot of the underground market is not related to marijuana but related to the other drugs.

"If we only did marijuana we would only have a small impact on the violence and corruption and disruption of other countries that is caused by U.S. prohibition of drugs and the U.S. forcing prohibition of drugs on other countries."
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Harvard_economist_Legalize_all_drugs_to_0324.html

This video is from CNN's American Morning, broadcast Mar. 24, 2009

[DoubleHappiness88]

Seventy years of waste. Seventy years of promoting values over bread and butter. Seventy years of stupidity. Perhaps the politicians are waking up and change will come. Time to be done with the moralist. ~R.F.J. Attorney

Beyond the substantial economic gains of legalization, we should consider the LIVES that would not be damaged by being labeled CRIMINAL for NO GOOD REASON.

When people are arrested for marijuana, they often carry a criminal label for the REST OF THEIR LIVES. They are unable to obtain high paying jobs, security clearances, school loans, credit etc.

Tobacco killed 435,000 people last year, yet it is legal. Our drug laws are IRRATIONAL and do more harm to those they are designed to *protect* than the substances they outlaw.

"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." -Abraham Lincoln

Drug Prohibition has failed for the same reason Alcohol Prohibition failed. Prohibition does not work. Prohibition is UN-AMERICAN!

END THE FAILED, FOOLISH WAR ON DRUGS!

[mswolfestock]

SUGGESTION: Send a batch of pot brownies to your local GOP.

[thinkharder-]

I makes absolutely no sense to incarcerate someone with a drug problem. Do we jail fat people for their blatant lack of self control? Do we jail any other cast of person predisposed either genetically or culturally to an affliction? These people are having their already troubled lives utterly stripped of all chance and opportunity for healing by simply throwing them to the wolves.

[John34Chase]

California is bad because it's big. Florida is proportionately worse. On a per capita basis Florida has a prison population of 0.55%. California is .040%. The Tampa Trib ran an editorial in favor of a recent proposal to farm out some FL prisoners to other states because FL doesn't have $$ to build another prison.

[itmaybesaid]

Unreasonably long sentences; Unjustly denying parole for serious offenders for have served their time and are not, or no longer are, dangerous; Replacing mental hospitals with prison time; and the overwhelmed, broken parole system are ruining salvage lives, not making us safer, and are bankrupting California.

Thank you for the article that, unfortunately, is absolutely accurate.

[johnbrown8888]

Funny how the "conservative Republicans" are all in favor of less government interference in your life--unless you do something that the Uber-Reich Wing doesn't like--in that case the sky is the limit.

Repigs are hopeless hypocrits.

[highiron999]

Want better schools, less crime, more productive citizens, less welfare cost, less security costs, more money for roads, bridges and transit, fewer acts of senseless violence, more respect for laws and courts, stronger support for America from Americans, less conflict between citizen action and the constitution and much more, then end the hypocrisy of our current drug laws.

Around 1908 the US Supreme Court ruled outlawing drugs was unconstitutional. The answer was to have doctors control drugs and the government regulated doctors. Same effect, yet clearly illegal.

The legal basis is not the issue, but rather what will achieve the desired end result. Anyone wanting drugs today can get them, so as a way to stop drug use, today's approach does not work. Ending or reducing desire through accurate and truthful drug education rather than inaccurate and hysterical hyperbole offers more evidence for ending or reducing drug use. This may also lead to more intelligent and more moderate drug use possibly benefiting society as a whole. Treating people with respect and an attitude of inclusion goes a long way toward building a strong, productive society. Those alienated by the current drug laws will feel embraced when the law changes.

If today's illegal drugs are so bad, how did the US get from the revolution of 1776 to 1914 and become a major global power WITHOUT the drug laws we have today? How have other societies and cultures survived without drug laws without self destruction? How did countries invest in other countries where daily drug use was the norm, rely on the local population as the work force, and still run a successful enterprise? (See Indian Hemp Report and the Jamaican Hemp Report by the British government)

Drugs are illegal for political purposes of repressing particular groups to create profit from the resulting cheap labor and additional profit from the resulting drug trade.

Legalize drugs and you starve these enterprises the same as legalized gambling and alcohol has done. Legalize drugs and all the people hiding and resisting come on board. Legalize drugs and destroy the networks that recruit otherwise law abiding citizens into collateral crimes, ID theft and other criminal activity. These citizens will become allies of America and will not dwell in shadowy areas where our more dangerous enemies may hide. These shadow areas will shrink and the human agents of danger to America will be more easily revealed.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and yet today, sitting alone smoking pot and feeling good is against the law. Sounds like we have been saying one thing and then doing another for a long time. Enough!

Highiron999

[gunownerdan]

Marijuana has been illegal for over 70 years and today it is America's #1 cash crop.
Today drug gangs and drug cartels rule the streets just like violent gangsters and bootleggers did in the 1920's during alcohol prohibition.
It's time we realize that prohibition does not work!
It did not work with alcohol and it most certainly does not work with marijuana.
That's why many cops are saying LEGALIZE and REGULATE MARIJUANA.
Please learn more....

www.LEAP.cc
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

www.MPP.org
Marijuana Policy Project