WANT TO END DRUG RELATED CRIMES? THEN DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS

If sanity prevails and drugs are legalized, Rush can come in from the shadows and become an honest, law-abiding citizen once again


http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm

Drug War Facts
Annual Causes of Death in the United States

Tobacco 435,000

Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity 365,000

Alcohol 85,000

Microbial Agents 75,000

Toxic Agents 55,000

Motor Vehicle Crashes 26,347

Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs 32,000

Suicide 30,622

Incidents Involving Firearms 29,000

Homicide 20,308

Sexual Behaviors 20,000

All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect 17,000

Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin 7,600

Marijuana 0

*******

If you want to provoke a conversation at a gathering, suggest that the best way to deal with the drug problem in America is to legalize drugs-- and give away the most addictive drugs for free. You’ll get a stunned gasp, an awkward silence, then a huge negative visceral reaction as if you have just suggested putting a drug dealer in every third grader’s classroom.

The sad truth is that we already have drug dealers in school classrooms. And on street corners. And in suburban homes. And in office buildings. And so forth.

Why? Because government has created the incentive- a huge incentive in most cases- to capitalist entrepreneurs willing to risk a few decades in the slammer for the privilege of selling a product for which the government has granted them a near monopoly status.

We have addicts who are prostituting themselves to get the money to buy crack or heroin. Addicts who will steal from their parents or other relatives, pawn the items, and use the few bucks to buy crack. Addicts who will burglarize homes or stores, shoplift, or mug pedestrians to get the money for drugs.

We have drug wars between gangs in inner cities. We have cartels and huge drug dealing criminal enterprises from the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia to Afghanistan to the high plateaus of South America. Resurging Talibani in Afghanistan, previously wholly opposed to the poppy trade which put heroin in the veins of New York City addicts are now financing their operations from drug smuggling out of that war torn country.

We have tens of thousand of American citizens locked up in our prisons, costing them their freedom and sometimes their lives, whose only crime is to fall prey to the inner demons of the chemical imbalances of their brains. We have AIDS and hepatitis being spread by shared needles of heroin users.

My solution? One that will destroy the drug cartels, end official corruption, free addicts from jail, free the rest of us from being victims of crimes ranging from check forgery to convenience store robbery, save countless lives and tens of billions of tax dollars?

Legalize drugs. All of them. And give the addictive drugs away for free (and through a karmic coincidence, as I type this, appearing on the Colbert Show on Comedy Central is an advocate of marijuana legalization).

Yes, give away addictive drugs for free. But not in the way you might think at first blush.

Build a structure near the local hospital. Each one will have a “Door A” and a “Door B.” Door A is the door an addict knocks on to get any addictive drug he or she desires. As much of it as he or she desires. But the drug has to be administered there (with clean needles and safe, tested, product), used there, and the addict can’t leave while high. While high, he or she will have a room to sit or lie in, movies or videos. Music. Brownies. Whatever. And they can have all the dope they want- can overdose to death if they want. Because we can’t save addicts. Only they can try to save themselves.

Which is where Door B comes in. Door B is treatment. Rehab. Support groups. Al Anon and Narcotics Anonymous. The latest in techniques and technology to wean addicts away from everything ranging from Crank to Crack to Heroin and beyond. The money currently being wasted on locking up addicts, on police, on border security, on international military efforts in a futile effort to roll the rock back up the mountain- all of that will be redirected to buying up the poppies, the coca leaves, the agricultural products which are the prime cash crops in countries from A(fghanistan) to C(olumbia) to P(eru) to T(hailand). Everything possible to help an addict become a productive citizen will be used.

The result will be the end of the spread of diseases from illegal drug use and from prostitution engaged in to buy the drugs. The end of victimless crimes crowding our prisons and bankrupting our taxpayers. The end of drive by shootings by gangs to establish who has the right to wheel and deal drugs on city blocks. The end of hypocrisy as nicotine and alcohol using politicians and drug enforcement agents bark about cracking down on drug related crime by ratcheting up punishments.

It’s a trip all right- a trip towards sanity.

And the non-addictive drugs? Ecstasy? Marijuana? We decriminalize them, tax them, sell them.

Oh yes. You’ve got to be 18 to be a drug user- same as with alcohol and cigarettes. And I won’t be complaining if the age limit for all such toxic substances is raised to 19, or 20, or 21.

My proposal isn’t far fetched. It will work. And it will happen- guaranteed. Not this year, next year, or ten years from now. But 20, 50, 100, 500 years? At some point, sanity will prevail. No doubt about it. How much are we willing to pay until then?