The Drug-war.us Library
Essays Against the War on Drugs:
Walter Cronkite: Telling the Truth About the War on Drugs
Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While
the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought
on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own
citizens. Americans are paying too high a price in lives and liberty for a failing
war on drugs about which our leaders have lost all sense of proportion...
Policing for Profit - The Drug
War's Hidden Economic Agenda
The “War on Drugs” has transformed the criminal justice system, to the point where the imperatives of drug law enforcement
now drive many of the broader legislative, law enforcement, and corrections policies
in counterproductive ways. One significant impetus for this transformation
has been the enactment of forfeiture laws which allow law enforcement agencies
to keep the lion’s share of the drug-related assets they seize...
Drug Test Nation
Like it or not, it’s dangerously clear the drug testers will not rest
until every American has submitted to their inspection, and with more
and more politicians in their pockets, they just might succeed...
The Morality of Drug
Controls
We Americans regard freedom of speech and religion as fundamental
rights. Until 1914, we also regarded the freedom of choosing our diets
and drugs as fundamental rights. Obviously, this is no longer true
today...
Law Enforcement Officers
are Calling for an End to the War on Drugs
The war on drugs has succeeded in little more than packing America's
prisons with low-level offenders. If the battle is being won, why is the
scourge of methamphetamine use spreading around the country? Why is the
marijuana bought on the street today more potent than it was 35 years
ago? ...
More Silliness in
America's War on Drugs
Like addicts desperate for a high, they've declared meth the new crack,
which was once called the new heroin (that title now belongs to
Oxycontin). With the help of the press, they're once again frightening
the public with tales of a drug so seductive it instantly turns masses
of upstanding citizens into addicts who ruin their health, their lives
and their families...
Smoked Out
Marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I drug since 1970, which
means that for 35 long years, pot has been viewed by the federal
government as a substance with no medicinal value and a high potential
for abuse, more so than cocaine, for instance, which is a Schedule II
drug. In many ways, modern-day government hysteria about the dangers of
marijuana is far more distorted and far-fetched than the scare tactics
that were employed under Harry J. Anslinger's reign at the Federal
Bureau of Narcotics...
Let Those Dopers Be
Prohibition of alcohol fell flat on its face. The prohibition of other
drugs rests on an equally wobbly foundation. Not until we choose to frame
responsible drug use — not an oxymoron in my dictionary — as a civil
liberty will we be able to recognize the abuse of drugs, including
alcohol, for what it is: a medical, not a criminal, matter...
The Ugly Truth About the
War on Drugs
Here's the raw, blunt truth about the war on drugs. Drugs are declared
legal or illegal based primarily on who benefits from their manufacture,
distribution and sale...
Time to Rethink the War on
Drugs
It's time for some common sense about the war on drugs. More than $30
billion is being spent annually on the drug war. One and a half million
people are being arrested every year. But 78 million people say they
have tried drugs, and 80 percent of teenagers say drugs are easy to
obtain. Things are obviously going in the wrong direction...
Failed Drug Policies Need
to be Revised
There is no easy answer to the traumatic impact of illegal drug abuse.
Most of us realize the federal government's "War on Drugs" has
been a failed experiment. Yet, as taxpayers we tacitly approve the
chicanery that is going on in Washington and at the state level...
The Illogical War on Drugs
Next to solving every foreign policy problem militarily,
the war on drugs is America's No. 1 bad idea. The illogic, the staggering cost, the ruinous toll in human lives -- all
for a campaign that arguably is a boon to drug cartels and which hasn't
banished drugs...
A War on Drugs Is a War on Ourselves
“If there is a war on drugs, then many of our family members are the enemy,” said fictional U.S. drug czar Robert Wakefield, a character played by Michael Douglas in the Oscar-winning film “Traffic.” “And I don’t know how you wage war on your own family.”
...
The Conservative War on the War on Drugs
A red state like Nevada may not top your list of pot-friendly places,
but that could soon change. A legalizing initiative is scheduled to
appear on the ballot there this fall. If approved, the "tax and
regulate" measure would make the sale of marijuana more like
alcohol...
The Racist War on Drugs
Harsher penalties and three strikes laws mean
that African Americans will stay in jail longer. The criminal
"justice" system is racist to the core. Meanwhile, most Americans are addicted to drugs--prescription or
otherwise. We are a pill-popping culture. Drugs are the remedy for
everything, even minor cuts and scraps that Mama used to kiss and make
better...
Vets Against the (Drug) War
Started in March 2002 by five police officers, LEAP now counts about 3,000
members, from the ranks of policemen, prison guards, DEA agents, judges,
and even prosecutors in 48 states and 45 foreign countries. The idea
behind LEAP is that, as with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the
call for an end to the drug war carries more weight when it comes from
folks who have been in the trenches...
The Drug War Toll Mounts
...despite all of the money we've spent and people we've imprisoned,
despite the damage done to our cities and the integrity of our criminal
justice system, despite the restrictions we've allowed on our civil
liberties, despite the innocent lives lost and the needless suffering
we've imposed on sick people and their doctors -- despite all of this --
the drug trade isn't just thriving, it's growing. Illicit drugs are
cheaper, more abundant, and of purer concentration than ever before...
Bill Wilson and the Drug
War
The same mindset that finds a symbolic victory over alcoholism more
important than a deathbed drink for a sick man can see fit to justify a
25-year prison term for an oxycodone-using MS sufferer and handcuffing an
elderly post-polio marijuana user to her bed at the point of a gun. It's the mindset that says victory over drug addiction is an end unto
itself, regardless of method, costs, or consequences...
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