Forty years ago, our government declared a war on drugs. In June of 1971, Nixon declared drug abuse as public enemy number 1. In 1973, the DEA was born. In 1976, Carter campaigned on decriminalizing marijuana. That didn’t work out very well.
*Thirty to forty percent of incarcerated Americans are incarcerated for drug related crimes.
*America has the highest rate of incarcerating their citizens in the world. 743 of 100,000 citizens are currently in prison.
* 1 in 28 children have an incarcerated parent.
*America houses more inmates than the top 35 European countries combined.
*America has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.
*12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses.
*Decriminalizing illicit drugs, along with enacting modest reforms in sentencing and parole, would save taxpayers an estimated $20 billion per year and reduce the prison population from 1.5 million to below 700,000.
*Those who have spent time in prison earn 40 percent less annually after release.
If we legalized only marijuana (I personally think we should legalize them all, but that is for another blog), we could tax and regulate sales which would be an enormous revenue creator. Remember prohibition and the costs associated there? It didn’t take us long to pull our heads out of our asses then, why is this taking so long? Because we signed treaties internationally supporting the war on drugs. The first such treaty celebrated its 100 year birthday this year:
“January 23, 2012 marks the 100th birthday of the first international drug control treaty, the International Opium Convention, signed at the Hague in 1912
The treaty called on signatories to prohibit the non-medical sales of opium, morphine, cocaine and to strictly regulate their distribution and production. The Hague convention would lay the foundation for an edifice of further treaties committing the United States and rest of the world to a century of prohibition, drug wars, and concomitant crime and violence.”
The city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands is viewed as an overly-progressive, lazy, sin-drenched city by the opposition, however nothing could be further from the truth. The standard of living is very high, legitimate business including coffee shops where marijuana is sold and consumed account for a strong economy, and the crime and murder rate is one of the lowest in the world. In short, marijuana has been legal and regulated there for many years and the walls have not burned down.
Everybody knows about the health benefits surrounding marijuana, and many states are finally bending and allowing medical marijuana use. Hemp is one of the most miraculous and versatile weeds in the world and its uses are limitless, yet the growth is still a punishable crime.
It astonishes me the lack of common sense governments have when it comes to social and economic matters. It makes me crazy that even when evidence and public interest points blatantly in the direction of easy, obvious solutions that they still choose to ignore it.
The more I read about the birth of America, the more I see how far we have strayed.
““God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.”
~Thomas Jefferson
“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither.”
~Benjamin Franklin
PS – This is ONLY how it is here, I have so much to say about the global effects of this, but will save that for another post.
