News One: Paul Shepard: 'Focusing On Prevention & Neuroscience, President Ends Ronald Reagan’s War On Drugs

Source:News One- 

"Being a college student at the time, I clearly remember when Nancy Reagan and the conservative wave in national government helped usher in the nation’s War on Drugs in the 1980s.

Television news images of drug busts, large and small, along with the wholesale arrests and stiffer sentencing for anyone even suspected of drug involvement sent a clear message that government intended to empty the streets and fill the prisons until drugs were no more. 

But subversives like me and my Rutgers University cohorts viewed the so-called war as a heavy-handed, law-enforcement driven, prison complex-building effort to harass, arrest, and ultimately mark for life two groups of people: those who did small amounts of recreational drugs and were generally no threat to society and those with serious drug dependencies who needed a good rehab program instead of a jail cell.

It may have taken 30 years to prove, but it seems we were on the right track way back when: on Wednesday, the White House announced a new direction in the War on Drugs, where stopping drug use before it starts and treating drug addiction as a health issue will now be priorities." 

From News One 

Paul Shepard is just dead wrong here about two pretty important facts. And that's as nice as I can be about this. 

President Ronald Reagan, didn't start the War On Drugs, President Richard Nixon did that. And these anti-narcotics policies have continued with every President since. President Jimmy Carter flirted with legalizing marijuana in the 1970s and treating users and addicts like patients and not criminals, But he didn't get very far on it. 

The other thing that Paul Shepard is dead wrong about: just because the President of the United States declares that a war (if you want to call the War On Drugs a war) is over, doesn't mean it goes away. Remember President George W. Bush declaring mission accomplished in Iraq in June, 2003? How did that work out? 

Taking the word of any career politician, anywhere, as gold, is like buying 20 year old used car, from a used car salesman, without even test driving it, (perhaps not even looking at it) paying the original price on the car, plus 20 years worth of inflation. You are screwing yourself blindfolded by doing that. The fact is Americans can still go to prison today for simple possession of illegal narcotics and Barack Obama is still President. 

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