This video by LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) is well worth watching, especially by those who claim to support the “War on Drugs.” The many hundreds of law enforcement officials who belong to LEAP agree that what we have is not a “War on Drugs,” but prohibition, rampant social destruction and corruption.
But won’t people start using a lot more drugs if they are legalized? Not likely, based on the “Holland effect”: Legalizing marijuana in The Netherlands has lessened its appeal: Per-capita consumption is only half what it is in the United States. “They have succeeded in making marijuana boring,” according to James Gray, an Orange County Superior Court judge for 20 years.
Check out the 12-minute mark of the above video for shocking statistics on institutionalized racism.
As one of the police officers states, legalization is not about promoting drugs. It’s about stopping the violence. Once we legalize, then we can go about our work to discourage the destructive use of drugs, just like we did with cigarettes. 50% percent of adult smokers have given up that habit in the past ten years thanks to education. We cut the use of nicotine in half without telling our police to kick down doors and slap handcuffs onto smokers.
Judge Gray indicates that ending the “war on drugs” is the “single most important thing we could do” to improve our urban neighborhoods.
What is the war on drugs? According to one of the speakers in the above video, it’s “sixty nine billion dollars per year down the rat hole.” I agree. The “War on Drugs” should be renamed the “Inject Violence Into Neighborhoods Project.” It is immoral and senseless. And finally, there is good reason to believe that the momentum has changed (based on many things, including Denver’s legalization of marijuana). Large numbers of Americans are starting to question this insane “War.”
Judge Gray makes the point that legalizing marijuana is NOT condoning it. In the following talk (Oct 28, 2009), he gives a long litany of additional reasons for regulating and controlling marijuana. The biggest reason for legalizing is the the present system endangers children:
For much more important information, see the home page of LEAP.
Judge Gray Is right we are exposing not only children to risk by continuing this madness we are exposing millions of adults daily to danger as well.HOW? By forcing people to obtain their cannabis from drug dealers they are are exposed to what ever else they may just happen to be selling to make a buck. like cocaine meth.heroin etc.every state that has allowed the use of medical cannabis has seen decreases in teen canabis use . It is time to end this scam once and for all.
The St. Louis daily newspaper publishes yet another "cops seize dope" story and the readers fight back. There are a lot of comments here, but very few of them see any sense in continuing to bust people for marijuana. All of this pro-legalization commentary in a city that is rather conservative. Maybe we're getting smarter about the insanity of the "drug war." http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf…
This is all too predictable. A police officer (from British Columbia) being muzzled for criticizing the "war on drugs" on his own time, even though he was making clear that his opinions were his own, and did not represent the opinion of his police department.
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lets not forget the abuse of it to acquire property and money from innocent people. excuse to get phoney warrants targeting people who have valuable property or large amounts of legally acquired money.
how much money or property they acquired from innocents? I bet it runs into the billions in money calculations. not to mention all the innocents lives destroyed going to jail, leaving their families destitute.
also this war on drugs was probably designed to fail, it was intended to limited competition with the big shots in government and wall street etc, and to inflate the price of drugs. hence war on drugs is probably working as intended. keep drug prices very high and minimize competition, increase crime, to justify more prisons and more arrests and more taxpayer money and increase in taxes and more excuses to get around the constitution at every turn.
wars are designed and started for one reason only profit. whether the profit is money, power or stealing property from another.
most wars have not be defensive in regards to the US britian alliance. wars are also declared to get some legal justification to ignore the constitution and instead of protecting life liberty and property rather destroying life liberty and property of the average common living soul on the land.
to bad.
" The global war on drugs has failed and governments should explore legalizing marijuana and other controlled substances, according to a commission that includes former heads of state, a former U.N. secretary-general and a business mogul."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/01/drug-war…
"Since President Nixon declared 'war on drugs' four decades ago, this failed policy has led to millions of arrests, a trillion dollars spent and countless lives lost, yet drugs today are more available than ever," said Norm Stamper, former chief of police in Seattle and a speaker for legalization-advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/15/40-anniv…