Urdedpal
New Member
Smart or stupid, prudent or foolish? What was Mexican President Vicente Fox thinking May 2 when his spokesman confirmed that he would sign legislation allowing individuals to possess small quantities of several currently illegal drugs, including ******* and marijuana?
Supporters of the law in the upper house of Mexico's Congress included most senators from both the conservative PAN and the more liberal PRI parties. They claimed that allowing personal use of small quantities of drugs would free authorities to focus interdiction efforts on larger drug traffickers.
Was Fox smarter or more foolish when he said May 3 that he would not sign the bill into law unless Congress agrees to make substantial changes? More foolish, in my view. But some readers might properly wonder why I, a self-confessed conservative, would appear to favor increased drug use.
ABC news correspondent John Stossel had it right when he observed March 29 that we "can't even keep drugs out of prisons -- do we really think we can keep them out of all of America?" Stossel also correctly noted that the gangs that "drug prohibition is creating are even richer [than Al Capone became during Prohibition], probably rich enough to buy nuclear weapons. Osama bin Laden was funded partly by drug money."
Consider: Why would a young man take a job flipping burgers for $7 per hour when he can make several times that much as a lookout for a drug gang? Why would he endure the arduous 19 years of schooling required to earn a law degree and make $100,000 when he can deal drugs for far more money?
But forget all that. We're not going to legalize or even decriminalize ***, heroin or methamphetamine. In fact, our national government is so zealous in prosecuting our insane drug war that we threatened Fox with God-knows-what for his apparent lapse into prudence.
So today I offer a far more modest and less controversial proposal: Let's emulate the Czech Republic, which -- according to Kirk Muse in the May 4 Colorado Springs Independent -- "is the only country in the world where adult citizens can legally use, possess and grow small quantities of marijuana."
According to our FBI's crime statistics, of some 1.75 million American drug arrests in 2004, 82 percent were for possession alone. And 684,319 were for marijuana possession. In his book Smoke and Mirrors, researcher Dan Baum claimed that if marijuana were decriminalized, there would be a 90 percent reduction in drug users.
Some readers will object that marijuana is a "gateway" drug that "hooks" users, encouraging them to try ever more powerful alternative drugs. But the Institute of Medicine claims that there "is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs."
Were it a gateway drug, we would expect large numbers of Czech arrests for other drug use and considerable drug-related crime. There is neither. Muse cites data showing that the Czechs' overall drug arrest rate is 0.17 percent of our own rate and that the robbery rate is merely 1.37 percent that of the U.S.
And if this modest improvement in our drug laws is still too much for conservative citizens who, like me, oppose drug use (I've neither smoked nor inhaled), let's try something even less daring. Let's follow Great Britain's decision -- implemented Jan. 29, 2004 -- to downgrade cannabis from a Class B to a Class C drug.
Possession of small quantities would no longer be an arrestable offense, in most cases. More modest still: Let's allow each state to determine its own policies regarding marijuana.
So if we don't want to be as crazy as a Fox (at least the May 2 version), we should nonetheless Czech our zeal for locking up millions of citizens for getting no higher than they might when imbibing California chardonnay or English ale.
Don Erler is president of General Building Maintenance.
Newshawk: Urdedpal -420 Magazine
Source: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
Author: Don Erler, Special to the Star-Telegram
Published: May 12, 2006
Copyright: 2006 Star-Telegram
Supporters of the law in the upper house of Mexico's Congress included most senators from both the conservative PAN and the more liberal PRI parties. They claimed that allowing personal use of small quantities of drugs would free authorities to focus interdiction efforts on larger drug traffickers.
Was Fox smarter or more foolish when he said May 3 that he would not sign the bill into law unless Congress agrees to make substantial changes? More foolish, in my view. But some readers might properly wonder why I, a self-confessed conservative, would appear to favor increased drug use.
ABC news correspondent John Stossel had it right when he observed March 29 that we "can't even keep drugs out of prisons -- do we really think we can keep them out of all of America?" Stossel also correctly noted that the gangs that "drug prohibition is creating are even richer [than Al Capone became during Prohibition], probably rich enough to buy nuclear weapons. Osama bin Laden was funded partly by drug money."
Consider: Why would a young man take a job flipping burgers for $7 per hour when he can make several times that much as a lookout for a drug gang? Why would he endure the arduous 19 years of schooling required to earn a law degree and make $100,000 when he can deal drugs for far more money?
But forget all that. We're not going to legalize or even decriminalize ***, heroin or methamphetamine. In fact, our national government is so zealous in prosecuting our insane drug war that we threatened Fox with God-knows-what for his apparent lapse into prudence.
So today I offer a far more modest and less controversial proposal: Let's emulate the Czech Republic, which -- according to Kirk Muse in the May 4 Colorado Springs Independent -- "is the only country in the world where adult citizens can legally use, possess and grow small quantities of marijuana."
According to our FBI's crime statistics, of some 1.75 million American drug arrests in 2004, 82 percent were for possession alone. And 684,319 were for marijuana possession. In his book Smoke and Mirrors, researcher Dan Baum claimed that if marijuana were decriminalized, there would be a 90 percent reduction in drug users.
Some readers will object that marijuana is a "gateway" drug that "hooks" users, encouraging them to try ever more powerful alternative drugs. But the Institute of Medicine claims that there "is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs."
Were it a gateway drug, we would expect large numbers of Czech arrests for other drug use and considerable drug-related crime. There is neither. Muse cites data showing that the Czechs' overall drug arrest rate is 0.17 percent of our own rate and that the robbery rate is merely 1.37 percent that of the U.S.
And if this modest improvement in our drug laws is still too much for conservative citizens who, like me, oppose drug use (I've neither smoked nor inhaled), let's try something even less daring. Let's follow Great Britain's decision -- implemented Jan. 29, 2004 -- to downgrade cannabis from a Class B to a Class C drug.
Possession of small quantities would no longer be an arrestable offense, in most cases. More modest still: Let's allow each state to determine its own policies regarding marijuana.
So if we don't want to be as crazy as a Fox (at least the May 2 version), we should nonetheless Czech our zeal for locking up millions of citizens for getting no higher than they might when imbibing California chardonnay or English ale.
Don Erler is president of General Building Maintenance.
Newshawk: Urdedpal -420 Magazine
Source: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
Author: Don Erler, Special to the Star-Telegram
Published: May 12, 2006
Copyright: 2006 Star-Telegram
