Our demented out-of-control drug policies' monetary and environmental costs are staggering and the human suffering is unconscionable. The destruction of the sacred family unit is one of the worst consequences of prohibition.
The propaganda is we wage this war to protect our children. The devastating and deadly facts are our babies, especially teens have become collateral damage in this grossly failed war.
The death and devastation begins on kids before they are even born. Because mothers on drugs are afraid to go to doctors for fear of being arrested or having their babies taken away from them, their fetuses have higher incidences of birth defects, premature births, and miscarriages. The drugs don't cause these problems; it's the lack of prenatal care.
Kids placed in foster care when their parents are incarcerated for drug use have four times the death rate of kids left with their parents.
We have deprived millions of children and teenagers of their imprisoned parent(s).
Our adult murder rate is four times higher than in the Netherlands where drugs are regulated, controlled, taxed, despite having six times their adult incarceration rate. Much worse, this drug war has created an obscene teenage murder rate that's nineteen times higher than in the Netherlands, where drugs are legally available to everyone over eighteen.
The drug war has turned a million of our teenagers into drug dealers, many in deadly drug gangs that have four times the death rate of Texas death row prisoners.
We have more teens selling drugs than the rest of the world combined. Why? The tough Rockefeller drug laws provided for mandatory five-year sentences for anyone over 18 involved in drugs. The result: drug dealers got 16 and 17 year-olds to sell drugs for them and we created the teen drug market.
Only 50 percent of high school students graduate in our ten biggest cities and only 40 per cent graduate in NYC, Baltimore and Detroit. In the Netherlands 92 percent graduate; that's No Child Left Behind!
We need to fight drug abuse with compassion; treat nonviolent abusers as patients not criminals. Fight use with factual evidence! We are diminishing the use of tobacco with the campaign, Knowledge is Contagious, so Infect Truth! Educate people and they will make better choices for themselves.
True education is our most important duty; the way out of ignorance and repression. Do not doubt history will mark this time as a new beginning for a period of enlightenment and abundance.
Stephen H. Frye, M.D. Retired medical school professor just wrote a book giving these facts titled: We Really Lost This War! Twenty-five Reasons to Legalize Drugs.
The war waged by Mexican drug cartels has resulted in 610 children deaths reports a study and 3,700 children have been left orphans as a result of the violence or execution of their parents. Many minors who are orphaned have been psychologically scarred after witnessing violent actions against their relatives.
The Mexican military reported that 420 children who had been recruited have died in the clashes between rival groups. There were many examples of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17 dying in fierce battles with the drug traffickers or being tortured and killed as paybacks between feuding clans.
It is really misleading to call it a drug war or drug fueled violence. The horrific carnage is triggered by the new prohibition and fueled by official lawlessness.
How much misery can a policy cause before it is acknowledged as a failure and reversed? This international calamity is no laughing matter.
A new study by Glenn Greenwald, writer and civil rights lawyer, looked at Portugal's policy of decriminalization and regulation. He found: "While drug addiction, usage, and associated pathologies continue to skyrocket in many European Union states, those problems - in virtually every relevant category - have been either contained or measurably improved within Portugal since 2001.
Save the children, just say NO to prohibition! Trigger less violence, official lawlessness, racism, tyranny and ruined lives!
The truth is out and spreading like wildfire! Cannabis cures cancer! This truth will not be suppressed, until every household knows the clamor, the swelling protest, exposing dark, dirty secrets of heinous crimes against humanity! Does anyone you know or love have cancer? Eleven thousand people recently raced for a cure in El Paso, but we actually seem to be running from the cure!! It is down right sinister, a crime against humanity, for the medicinal uses of cannabis to be suppressed.
THC is the active ingredient in cannabis. Watch the herb in action in the Seth Group's petri dish. An Internet search for "THC cancer" brings up thousands of research papers from all over the world. Ooooops! Who spilled the beans? SCIENTISTS and PATIENTS all over the world, that's who!
The debate over medical marijuana or cannabis is really a scandalous controversy over whether this very easy-to-grow herb should be allowed to compete with pharmaceuticals for pennies on the dollar.
Harassing the sick and dying is an un-American activity.
When we enacted the first drug laws in 1914, 1.3% of America was addicted. When the current insane policy began in the '70s that figure remained the same and it remains so today after 39 million arrests. This policy is the very definition of insanity.
The tobacco, alcohol and prescription drug gangs cause more death annually than all illicit drugs The worst public policy since slavery disregards science and punishes families of nonviolent citizens, confiscating their property for making a safer health choice in a social or medicinal drug; that is pretty insane as well!
Users have been around for eons without this violent bloodletting except during the first "Noble" experiment. Servants of tyranny support prohibition under the guise of good intentions, a con used by them throughout history to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources.
Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk. It is called, "Overkill" to use such force on a nonviolent health issue.
Weed out morally bankrupt servants of tyranny, gun control fanatics and racists by taking away the main tool they use these days to extend their agenda, the new prohibition. Servants of tyranny want you to believe the evils of the drug war are unintended but felony convictions disenfranchise mostly poor and minority Americans. End the demented new prohibition, help construct better safer drug policies for society and the individual. Take morally bankrupt profiteers, servants of tyranny, gun control fanatics and racists a step closer to being politically dead bodies.
Johnny Sutton's and our court's actions were exemplary in this current climate of official lawlessness. Our officers, including border agents must obey the rules they swear to uphold if we are to maintain the republic for which we stand.
Help restore justice. Please contact your Legislators: US Senate, House, TX Senate, House.
The Spirit was with us here in Texas. We had a great TEA Party in Stephenville, the cowboy capital of the world. It was estimated at least 400 attended. The Spirit of '76 was the Holy Spirit and is our true North! Downsize DC! Join the Campaign for Liberty.
I wore a Medina for Gov. t-shirt and made a very tall sign with Medina for Governor, Campaign for Liberty, Downsize DC, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.(copy of Howard's portrait), Drug war clock cost of prohibition info and Ron Paul Love Revolution (copy of Ron's portrait) featured on it. I printed materials from these groups to hand out as well as one called "Save the children, just say NO to prohibition! Trigger less violence, official lawlessness, racism, tyranny and ruined lives!" It contained most of the information you just read with the Drug Policy Forum of Texas invite to join the discussion web address on it. I gave out everything I printed up and all the Medina for gov cards her organizers sent me.
The US federal government spent over $19 billion in 2003 on the WAR ON SOME DRUGS THAT MIGHT COMPETE WITH ALCOHOL TOBACCO AND PHARMACEUTICALS, at a rate of about $600 per second. The budget has since been increased by over a billion dollars. Source ONDCP.
State and local governments spent at least another 30 billion. Source: National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University: "Shoveling Up: The Impact of Substance Abuse on State Budgets," January, 2001. Source: Jeffrey A. Miron, Department of Economics, Harvard University: "The Budgetary Implications of Drug Prohibition," December 2008..
Did you attend a tea party near you? Did you point to the drug war drain on our precious lives and resources?
The original Boston Tea Party was not just a protest. It was a direct political action and blocked the collection of taxes. Take action by working for less government and ballot initiatives that shrink government.
If you believe politics or power corrupts DOWNSIZEDC.ORG recognizes your genius!
Changing whose in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on downsizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
More of our Legislators need to realize the people are wise to the ways of morally bankrupt servants of tyranny and want a return to our roots of self-government and very limited state and federal government grounded in truth and transparency. They need to help make that happen or plan on finding jobs in the private sector. Some feel the need for swelling the protest started at the New American Tea Parties.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
Reagan's "War on Drugs" seems inane. But the problems you've outlined here won't go away even if we did decide to legalize any of them. We've already fucked up.
We proven time and time again that we cannot handle addictive substances - whether they are legal or not.
100 years ago or so, when cocaine was still legal, something like 5% of all Americans were addicted to it while Freud sung its praise. There were no overdoses or crazies, like we see today, because it was monitored. Then some stupid White Americans decided to use cocaine against some African and Black Americans... racism got involved... and next thing you know it (along with several others) is being monitored, taxed, regulated etc. Doctors didn't want to pay the taxes, stopped regulating it. Reports weren't filed. We fucked up.
When alcohol was prohibited, we proved that we would go behind the government's back to buy, sell, drink, and trade anyway. Not to mention how many people are already growing their own marijuana (illegally). Do you really think they'll stop and pay taxes on it? Or just continue growing it themselves and skip the taxes. How can we possibly monitor or tax that? We can't - not without violating every one's privacy and checking every where that marijuana can possibly grow - which is everywhere. I, personally, don't want a government official checking my closets every few months or whatever just to make sure I'm not growing a plant somewhere that I'm skipping out on taxes for.
Cigarettes are legal, and yet still abused. Minors still go and buy them - stores still neglect to card and sell it to them. And it's not just cigarette companies making money off them either - the companies claiming to help you quit are ridiculously expensive; and to get full results you have to spend anywhere from $400 - $1200 over 3 months. That's if it works without complications or set backs.
We can't even really handle caffeine for crying out loud. How many Starbucks need to be on every street corner?
As a society in general, we are stupid and irresponsible. We can't handle addictive substances whether they're controlled and legal or not.
Suffice to say, the war on drugs appears assanine and stupid, and seems to be a complete waste of billions of dollars. But legalizing the drugs won't do any good either.
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"when you have nothing else to say, "Fwonk" is always the perfect thing."
"yeah well, fwonk"
--Devon
Fanaile Essence