[Vision2020] Failed Drug Policies from Nixon to Bush

[Donovan Arnold]

What Nick doesn't realize is that it isn't the government's responsibility to keep people off drugs. That is the responsibility of the individual. Only you can decide not to use drugs and take responsibility for your behavior and decisions to use or not use drugs, and what you put in your body.

The government has made it clear to anyone who will listen from 5 years old to 105 years old, DON'T USE DRUGS. That is all they can do. They provide information to people for free, and they offer free drug counseling, and help with getting off drug addiction. 

I use to drink heavily, and smoke up to three packs of cigarettes a day, and I will not talk about anything else I did because this is a public forum. But it was me, and me alone, that had the power to decide to use and stop using products abusive to my body. 

People think it is the responsibility of the government to do things for you. It is not. If people want to use drugs, they will. If they want to get off drugs, they will.

I as a taxpayer can only do so much, and refuse to take blame for the personal decisions that people make with full knowledge of their actions and behaviors. 

The Government didn't fail with drugs, only people that decided not to get off drugs fail. Only people that refuse to take personal responsibility are the ones that fail. 

And who really gives a damn if bombing cocaine fields in South America makes other nations mad. These people are doing wrong, and the US has every right to protect themselves from people trying to do harm to our citizens. 

Best Regards,
Donovan



--- On Fri, 2/27/09, nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com> wrote:
From: nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com>
Subject: [Vision2020] Failed Drug Policies from Nixon to Bush
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Date: Friday, February 27, 2009, 8:51 AM

Good Morning Visionaries:

This is my radio commentary/column for this week. I had Ted Moffett and a
friend who's an expert in this area look this over before I polished off the
rough draft.  

Ted suggested that I add the abuse of pharmaceuticals but the long version was
already approaching 2,000 words.  Besides Ted has already posted some of the
material here on the vision. Thanks, Ted, for your research which is the best on
the Vision on all the topics you cover.

I just saw "Nixon/Frost" at the Kenworthy and I had to admit that I
began to empathize with the most despised of all presidents, but perhaps that
was because of the superb acting of Frank Langella.

The group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)has an excellent video at
<www.leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=Content&pid=28>.

Nick Gier

DRUG POLICY FAILURES FROM NIXON TO BUSH

By Nick Gier

Every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. 
What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob?
--Richard M. Nixon to Robert Haldeman

Nixon is the first post-war president to declare war on drugs.  He was
determined to enforce a policy that placed marijuana in the same category as
heroin. In the early days of Nixon's war, a person caught with any amount of
marijuana could be sentenced to seven years in prison.

In 1971 Nixon appointed Pennsylvania Gov. Ray Shafer to chair the National
Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, which unexpectedly recommended that pot
possession be decriminalized.  Always coarse and obscene, Nixon lashed out at
members of the Commission calling them "bastards" and
"Jews."

Since the day Nixon rejected the recommendations of the Shafer Commission,
fifteen million Americans have been arrested for marijuana charges (88 percent
for possession only), but pot dealing and smoking continue unabated. Since 1980
the number of drug offenders incarcerated by states increased from 6 percent to
21 percent and those in federal prisons went from 25 to 57 percent. Sadly, 80
percent of all those in prison for drug offenses are either Latinos or African
Americans.

Paramilitary SWAT teams in U.S. cities have been overly aggressive against
suspected drug dealers.  The libertarian CATO Institute has reported that these
units have entered the homes of 170 innocents and killed 43.  The CATO website
also lists 23 nonviolent offenders and 25 police officers killed.

Last year the U.S. spent $69 billion interfering in the lives of North and
South Americans, supporting military activities and crop eradication that have
alienated millions of people south of the border.  

In 2007 one of the first acts of Mexican President Felipe Calderon was to use
the army to crack down on Mexico's three major drug cartels. Calderon used
the army because local and regional police and many office holders had already
been bought off by the cartels.  The results of Mexico's military solution
to drug smuggling have been disastrous.  In the past two years an estimated
8,790 people have been killed, including 800 soldiers and police officers. 

Mexico is the transshipment point for 90 percent of the cocaine coming to the
U.S.  The main source of this drug is Columbia, which has been the focus of U.S.
efforts of eradication and interdiction.  Since 2000 the U.S. has poured $6
billion dollars into Columbia, but cocaine production has still increased 4
percent during that time. 

Large acreages of coca have been destroyed; the big cartels have been broken
up; left-wing guerrillas are in retreat; and the streets of Bogata are safer. 
But the coca farmers have simply switched to smaller plots closer to the jungle
and right-wing paramilitary units are still involved in cocaine production and
smuggling. 

Nixon's war on drugs have turned entire nations against us.  Evo Morales, a
former coca grower, is now Bolivia's president.  At recent speech at the UN,
Morales held up a coca leaf and spoke about a World Health Organization (WHO)
study that concluded that the ingestion of coca was not harmful and that it
might even have some beneficial effects.  When I was in Peru in 2002, my guide
distributed coca leaves to our group as a remedy for altitude sickness. 

In 1989 I chaired the Borah Symposium on the topic "Cocaine and
Conflict" and our keynote speaker was Ethan Nadelman. Now the head of the
Drug Policy Institute, he is a leading spokesman for drug legalization, which
means legal regulation, not total free use (except of marijuana) of hard drugs. 


Proponents of legal regulation contend that removing the illegal trade and
criminal gangs will have the same positive effect as the ending of Prohibition
in 1933.  A $250-350 billion business would become a source for much needed tax
revenue that can be used to rebuild communities and rehabilitate those relative
few who have been addicted to drugs.  

A 2007 Zogby Poll asked the following question of 1028 people: "If hard
drugs such as heroin or cocaine were legalized, would you be likely to use
them."  Only 6 answered in the affirmative.  
There are over 250 shops in the Netherlands where one can buy marijuana
legally, but only 16 percent of the adult population has even tried cannibals,
while 33 percent of Americans have.  One commentator quipped that the Dutch have
made smoking pot "uncool." 

Reading the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) website, one would think that
liberalizing drug laws in Europe has been a complete failure. In England doctors
used to prescribe heroin to addicts under controlled conditions and their
numbers stabilized at 2,000, but since that program was abolished in 1970 the
number has risen to 300,000.  Similar programs in Germany, Spain, Switzerland,
and the Netherlands have proved effective.

One of the most effective organizations for legal regulation of drugs is Law
Enforcement against Prohibition (LEAP). Since its founding in 2002, LEAP's
membership, former police officers, DEA agents, and city officials, has grown to
5,000.  These men and women have seen first hand how Nixon's war on drugs
has devastated their communities and made criminals out of ordinary citizens.  

As long as the U.S. has the highest drug use rate in the industrialized world,
this demand will drive the criminal drug trade and will continue to destabilize
all the countries south of the border. We should immediately un-declare the wars
on drugs and terror.  Police surveillance and investigation should replace
paramilitary over-kill. We should decriminalize the use of marijuana and we
should try the policy of legal regulation of all other drugs and see if it
works.

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