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| Source:Liberty Pen- Norman Stamper, being interviewed by Reason Magazine, about the phony American War on Drugs. |
"Members of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) explain the painful reality of America's drug war. Also, Nils Gilman looks at the economic effects the drug war has had on the cocaine industry. Liberty Pen."
From Liberty Pen
I'm not saying that we should go from a drug policy that prohibits narcotics like marijuana, cocaine, heroin and meth, to a drug policy that decriminalizes all of those narcotics without any regulation or taxation. But I am in favor of decriminalization of marijuana and regulating and taxing it like alcohol and tobacco. 21 or over to use, posses, sell and license to sell marijuana as well. With steep fines and even jail time if necessary for people who break these drug laws, similar to alcohol and tobacco.
If you look at marijuana, it's about as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco. Perhaps a little less or more and we arrest and send people to prison for not only what they do to themselves which seems crazy to me but for doing something to themselves thats about as dangerous as alcohol and tobacco.
And we have all of these people in jail and prison today and have a prison inmate population of over 2M people in America (the largest inmate population in the world) where a lot of our offenders are in prison for marijuana use and possession. Where also by the way a lot of people who use marijuana in America have never been to jail for anything. Explain that one.
Marijuana is illegal in America and we have all of these drug offenders who are in prison, who aren't a threat to anyone taking up valuable and short prison space, that should instead be occupied by actual dangerous criminals.
Like I said, I'm for decriminalizing all narcotics. I would stop at marijuana when it comes to legalization and anyone who said if you start with one drug that would lead to others, should just look at the decriminalization of alcohol in the 1930s and you'll see no other narcotics have been decriminalized since. And if you believe in the domino theory when it comes to drugs, then you should be in favor of outlawing alcohol as well.
America has more sense than to end one bad drug policy of complete prohibition and replace with a wild west drug policy without any rules. Legalization of marijuana, but stop there because if we did the same thing with meth, cocaine and heroin. We would have serious health costs that would come with it, with the increase visits to the emergency room, because of all of the overdose's and people dying right away. Things that do not happen with marijuana use and we would see non-heroin, cocaine, and meth addicts paying for the health care costs of the people who use these drugs. Because a lot of these users wouldn't be able to afford the costs that comes with their addiction.
But then get our drug offenders the users out of prison, the ones with clean prison records and get them in drug rehab (at their cost) instead where they would pay for their drug rehab and stop sending heroin, cocaine and meth users to prison, but to drug rehab and halfway houses again, where they would pay for their stays.
Again, like anything if people want to do something bad enough, they'll find a way to do it and they'll screw off the consequences for a short-term pleasure. Knowing this what we should be doing is stop sending people to prison for using something thats no more dangerous then alcohol and tobacco. And teach the other drug users why what they are doing is wrong, so they don't do it again and can move on with their lives. If you just send them to jail or prison, then they'll remain addicts there and when they get out.
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