My Response to National Reviews article Right on Marijuana

William Bennett was spot on with his article Why Barney Frank and Ron Paul are wrong on drug legalization.

With the 2012 election just around the corner, many people on the right are weighing their opinions on the “war on drugs” and legalization.

Many Republican candidates, while trying to please everyone, have decided to compromise by saying, “It’s up to the states to decide.” Really? Is our country going to be less dysfunctional and less dependent on big government if the states decide how to control addictive street drugs?

If the question is, Have we failed fighting the war on drugs, the answer is yes, but why have we failed? The DEA reports on its website that 60% of all marijuana consumed in America is brought across the borders of Canada and Mexico. Our law enforcement hasn't failed us, but America has, as we have become more and more complacent continuing to witness our once-great nation dumb down on its favorite illegal binkies. It’s like watching the levees in New Orleans holding back the Mississippi River during Hurricane Katrina. This shifting of views is nothing at all to be proud of.

“Never too comfortable with politics (he dismissed student activists as "young men with menopausal minds" and proclaimed that LSD stood for "Let the State Disintegrate"), he nevertheless hosted a Los Angeles fundraiser in 1988 for the very buttoned-down Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ron Paul (now a congressman from Texas). Yes, the same Ron Paul running as a candidate for U.S. president for the Republican Party and teaming up with Barney Frank on legislation that would legalize marijuana. Just when the Society of Nuclear Medicine presented an illustrated PET scan study showing effects on the brain as habitual marijuana smokers decrease the number of receptors in the brain.

Maybe Dr. Ron Paul could also enlighten everyone as an obstetrician on the dangers marijuana presents to the reproductive system during pregnancy.

Why ending the war on drugs and legalization is not a conservative issue: Working as a psychiatric counselor for 25 years, I have witnessed countless people who were independent but became addicts, ending up relying on SSI, SSDI and many other federal assistance programs.

Legalization will create a litigation war and fiasco between drug users and their employers. People who had already been prescribed medical marijuana have sued companies like Walmart for their right to work. Every addict knows they can walk into a doctor’s office and be prescribed a medical marijuana card simply by stating, "I have a pimple on my ass." We also know that trial attorneys love these types of lawsuits, and they are the largest special-interest group that influences the Democratic Party. Who is behind ending the war on drugs anyway?

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article June 2, 2011, titled “Panel Calls War on Drugs a Failure.” "‘The global war on drugs has failed,’ said a report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy released Thursday. The report calls for a frank dialogue on the issue and encourages governments to experiment with the regulation of drugs, especially marijuana,” the WSJ article said. The article went on to say, “The Global Commission is funded by member Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group Ltd., George Soros's Open Society Foundation, the Instituto Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the Centro Edelstein de Pesquisas Sociais in Brazil.” There are well-known people on this commission who are proven drug legalization advocates and are using this 20-page report as propaganda.

Why ending the war on drugs and legalization itself is unconstitutional: This apathy and Laissez-faire 1960's attitude toward drug use is going to quickly lead us on the path to our own demise. This itself is a major threat to our republic as it stands. There are too many people in the cart, but not enough people pushing. More drugs is just going to add more people to the cart. I am a big fan of the DEA's work to keep drugs off the streets even though they are outgunned and inundated.

Our federal government has the unique role in fighting epidemics and pandemics in an attempt to protect its citizens. Drugs have reached that point in our country. We need candidates who understand that a more dysfunctional drug-addicted society becomes more dependent on that socialist cradle-to-grave system that loves to wipe everybody’s bum when they lose brain function as a result of a liberal Amsterdam-style drug policy.

Think about the message ending the war on drugs and legalization sends to children and teens. It’s a tacit approval. We are witnessing drug use stats with teens go up. CBS news reported April 6, 2011 Teenage drug abuse is trending upward, according to the Partnership at Drugfree.org. It recently announced results of a new study showing sharp increases in the use of marijuana and Ecstasy after years of declining use.

We need to debate the consequence of use before we degrade just what the war on drugs was meant to represent. There will be more repercussions to these liberal attitudes on legalization. Is that really what America wants?

The term “neoconservative” came from the socialist Michael Harrington in 1973. It was used to describe Irving Kristol, and his buddies. Irving Kristol was on the Hubert Humphrey task force in 1968, but did not support McGovern in 1972.

Just because someone doesn’t support McGovern (60% in 1972 didn’t) doesn’t mean that that person is any type of Conservative. It just means they didn’t like McGovern. They were all Democrats. 30 years before that, Irving Kristol liked Trotsky.

I don’t appreciate a NeoCommunist, or NeoTrotskyite political philosophy masquerading as a type of Conservativism. It isn’t now and it never has been.

Some so-called conservatives have a need to control others’ behavior for their “own good” and/or the “common good”.

Some so-called conservatives are nothing of the kind. And Carry Nation was no conservative. She was a busybody liberal determined to run the lives of others.

You are 100% correct. I've never liked this William Bennett and I like him even less the more he speaks out on this subject.

The drug war is a colossal failure and was doomed to fail much in the same way as Prohibition was doomed to fail. The difference is that we were smart enough after 13 years to put an end to prohibition. We aren't so smart today.

I'm persuaded by my opinion that drug use would be no greater with legalization than what it is today. I would use drugs just as I very don't use alcohol very often. I'm nearly a teetotaler. And yet there is alcohol all around me all the time. I simply don't hardly ever use it.

So it would be with Drugs. The people who are gonna use drugs are gonna get them anyway, usually at very high prices and that brings crime along with it. Legalize drugs and we will save trillions.

I'm tired of the likes of Bennett. People like him are fools and they have learned nothing from Prohibition. William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, George Schultz and a lot of other true conservatives have believed this for a long time.

Bill Bennett Explains Why Freedom Is Slavery

http://reason.com/blog/2011/07/01/bill-bennett-explains-why-free

The question is: “Whose freedom?” The drug dealers’, sure—the drug consumers [sic], no.

As any parent with a child addicted to drugs will explain, as any visit to a drug rehab center will convey, those caught in the web of addiction are anything but free.

Contary to the dominant narrative, the War on Drugs is a great success - it has kept the retail price of drugs high, and thus allowed the entire criminal distribution chain to be adequately paid including the various police authorities who are supposedly curtailing this business.

As is well known, regulatory authority is always employed to increase the margins of established interests and to raise market entry costs for new competition. This is the bedrock of crony capitalism, which replaced the free market about a century ago.

If the War on Drugs were not serving that established interest, it would have been strangled years ago. There is nothing new under the sun.

As any parent with a child addicted to drugs will explain, as any visit to a drug rehab center will convey, those caught in the web of addiction are anything but free.

I've been away for a while but I need to respond to your comments. Some have commented that I don't have compassion for those who are addicted to drugs. Not so. But I also have compassion for those who are victims of drug violence and who have nothing to do with drugs. I know of two such people personally. And that doesn't count all the people I know who have burglarized by people who are trying to get money for drugs. So the innocent people have priority in my world. They are more important than the frivolous and foolish people who have experimented with drugs and got themselves addicted. These foolish people should pay for the consequences of their decisions.

However if drugs were available and cheap there would be no incentive for dealers to try to get people addicted. There's no profit to be made and this would put the drug dealers out of business.

Also we need to consider the culture. Hollywood has been glorifying drug use for about 4 decades now. It's all over the popular culture. (Cheech and Chong anyone?) But what about the movies that show a true story about the perils of drug addiction. Those stories should be made public. Yes, there are some movies and TV shows but not enough. And about Rap Music, I won't even go into. Rock and Roll was bad enough but Rap is horrific. So there's a huge problem here.

As I've stated, there would be no more people addicted to drugs if they were legal than there are now. We need to establish a cultural taboo against drugs and stop making it look "cool" (for lack of a better word) to be a drug user. Yes we would still have those people who seemingly are programmed to self destruct. We have those people now with alcohol. But we would have them anyhow. We can put the drug dealers out of business and reduce crime greatly if we legalized drugs.

We aren't stopping anyone now from getting drugs. They are widely available even though illegal. I've read that nearly 50% of all our crime is drug related. So for those parents whose kids are hooked on drugs, I do have sympathy. But most of those parents have failed their children by not teaching them how bad drugs are and that only "losers" use drugs.

That's the challenge in front of us. Fools like Bennett want to keep up this insane drug war. They simply cannot grasp the fact that we are shredding the US Constitution and inproverishing ourselves with this stupid war.

“They cannot even keep drugs out of prison, so what is the point?”

The point is drugs cause violent crimes.

Read this study titled The Criminal Mind: How Drugs and Violence May Affect the Brain

http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/10/the-criminal-mind-how-drugs-and-violence-may-affect-the-brain/

I haven’t heard many conservatives for legalization and ending the war on drugs strategizing plans on what we should do with the current violence or more violence that most likely will be created as a result.

Liberals create policies and laws without forethought not conservatives.

Some crime facts for you:

"Approximately 170 murders were committed in the Netherlands in 2010, a slight decrease from 2009."

http://www.denhaag.nl/de/to/Population-of-The-Hague-rising.htm

That works out to a murder rate of just over 1 per 100,000 population. Compare that to the US murder rate of 5 per 100,000.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

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Record low murder rate once again

2 January 2008

AMSTERDAM - 147 murders were committed in the Netherlands last year, one fewer than in 2006 and therefore a record low, according to the annual report from Elsevier.

http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/local_news/Record-low-murder-rate-once-again_1276.html

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Let's look at Amsterdam:

"In Amsterdam the number of murders decreased from 32 in 2009 to 16 in 2010..."

http://www.denhaag.nl/de/to/Population-of-The-Hague-rising.htm

With a population of 730,000, that works out to a murder rate of 2.2/100,000. For comparison, San Jose is one of the safest cities in the US. According to city-data.com, its murder rate for 2009 was 2.9/100,000.

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Back to the drawing board, Mr. Drug Counselor.

The point is drugs cause violent crimes.

Actually prohibition causes alot more violence than drugs ever could. I am not saying drugs are good, but our efforts to curtail them have been a total failure. Plus we get the negatives of prohibition: loss of constitutional rights, corruption of police, politicians and judges, violence by police against innocent citizens.

Drugs aren't good, but the drug war is much worse. Heck I saw a thread here today where a cop who was name Officer of the Year in Florida last year has been caught dealing meth over the last two years. And our prisons have 5 times as many people in prison as 30 years ago and it has not had any noticeable effect on drug use.

As the Federal Government goes into bankruptcy over the next few years, the war will end anyway due to lack of funds.

The problem with the drug war is that it is a moral crusade backed by fear mongering and emotion. No rational people would pursue such a futile endeavor, but it will have to be some future generation that straightens our country, the current ones are clueless and have no idea the problems our overspending and becoming the world's largest prison will cause future generations.

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