Posted on 12/17/2002 9:39:06 AM PST by Joe Bonforte
In a little noticed hearing of the House Government Reform Commnittee last week, Indiana Congressman (my homeotwn's Congressman actually) and longtime drug warrior Dan Burton made some stunning comments. In a hearing entitled "America's Heroin Crisis, Colombian Heroin and How We Can Improve Plan Colombia," Burton stopped just a hair short of advocating the decriminalization of drugs. Watch the video here (cut forward to 1 hour, 18 minutes into the hearing). Here's the transcript:
Dan Burton: I want to tell you something. I have been in probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty hearings like this at various times in my political career,. And the story is always the same. This goes back to the sixties. You know, thirty or thirty five years ago. And every time I have a hearing, I hear that people who get hooked on heroin and cocaine become addicted and they very rarely get off of it. And the scourge expands and expands and expands. And we have very fine law enforcement officers like you go out and fight the fight. And you see it growing and growing, and you see these horrible tragedies occur. But there is no end to it.
And I see young guys driving around in tough areas of Indianapolis in cars that I know they can’t afford and I know where they are getting their money. I mean that there is no question. A kid can’t be driving a brand-new Corvette when he lives in the inner city of Indianapolis in a ghetto. You know that he has gotta be making that money in someway that is probably not legal and probably involves drugs.
Over seventy percent of all crime is drug-related. And you alluded to that today. We saw on television recently Pablo Escobar gunned down and everybody applauded and said “that’s the end of the Medellín cartel. But it wasn’t the end. There is still a cartel down there. They are still all over the place. When you kill one, there’s ten or twenty or fifty waiting to take his place. You know why? Its because of what you just said a minute ago, Mr. Carr, Mr. Marcocci (sp). And that is that there is so much money to be made in it there is always going to be another person in line to make that money.
And we go into drug eradication and we go into rehabilitation and we go into education, and we do all of these things... And the drug problem continues to increase. And it continues to cost us not billions, but trillions of dollars. Trillions! And we continue to build more and more prisons, and we put more and more people in jail, and we know that the crimes most of the time are related to drugs.
So I have one question I would like to ask all of you, and I think this is a question that needs to be asked. I hate drugs. I hate people who succumb to drug addiction, and I hate what it does to our society. It has hit every one of us in our families or friends of ours. But I have one question that nobody ever asks, and that is this question: What would happen if there was no profit in drugs? If there was no profit in drugs, what would happen. If they couldn’t make any money out of selling drugs, what would happen?
Carr: I would like to comment. If we made illegal... what you are arguing then is complete legalization?
Dan Burton: No I am not arguing anything. I am asking the question. Because we have been fighting this fight for thirty to forty years and the problem never goes way...
....Well I don’t think that the people in Colombia would be planting coca if they couldn’t make any money, and I don’t think they would be refining coca and heroin in Colombia if they couldn’t make any money. And I don’t think that Al Capone would have been the menace to society that he was if he couldn’t sell alcohol on the black market and he did and we had a horrible, horrible crime problem. Now the people who are producing drugs in Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia and Colombia and everyplace else. They don’t do it because they like to do it. They don’t fill those rooms full of money because they like to fill them full of money. They do it because they are making money.
At some point we to have to look at the overall picture and the overall picture and I am not saying that there are not going to be people who are addicted they are going to have to be education and rehabilitation and all of those things that you are talking about - but one of the parts of the equation that has never been talked about because politicians are afraid to talk about it this is my last committee hearing as Chairman. Last time! And I thought about this and thought about this, and thought about this. And one of the things that ought to be asked is “what part of the equation are we leaving out?” And “is it an important part of the equation?” And that is the profit in drugs. Don’t just talk about education. Don’t just talk about eradication. Don’t just talk about killing people like Escobar, who is going to be replaced by somebody else. Let’s talk about what would happen if we started addressing how to get the profit out of drugs.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if, twenty years from now, we could look back at law-and-order Dan Burton's conversion as the "Nixon goes to China" turning point of the drug war?
Where have you seen this? Kerberos posted a thorough reference that did not cite that figure."
Well at least you guys are closer on your figures than what you were. Your at 1.8%, Tex is at 4%, do I hear 2.9%.
So could an alcoholic neighbor; nothing there justifies banning the substances.
The social safety of my children having to see people out on the streets that use hard drug,
Public intoxication is already against most local ordinances. They might see the occasional drug user before he's arrested, just as they now might see the occasional drunk; nothing there justifies banning the substances for home use.
as well as seeing the drugs on store shelves sending the message that it is perfectly acceptable.
The same "message" is sent about tobacco and alcohol---and Marxist books. Nothing there justifies banning the items.
False. I read a newsgroup account (looking for it right now) by a fellow who smoked tobacco in such a way as to get "so blasted he could hardly walk."
I don't care how much you want to ignore facts. Cocaine is a hundred times worse than tobacco.
I also mentioned previously, perhaps you missed it, that I was administered cocaine in solution as part of my septoplasty surgery, or the fact that Coca-Cola for the first fifteen years of its existence contained the equivalent of a small line of cocaine.
You don't seem to grasp that conentrated cocaine is far worse than ordinary tobacco, just as concentrated alcohol is far worse than a glass of beer.
A person who is very tall and dressed in tattered clothing and wearing a certain facial expression is walking down a street on the same dark night as I.
I feel threatened. Therefore I have the legitimate power to use force to restrain him. That is the preposterous notion you advance.
- 323 ThomasJefferson -
You repied
IMPOSED danger, at a certain level is a violation of one's rights. correct?
There must be a 'clear & present danger' according to common sense & law.
If you use restraint in the above example, you must justify YOUR action in court, or suffer the consequenses.
Or do you argue that I may put you in as much danger as I wish up until the point I actually cause damage to you?
-328 Texaggie79 -
It's a judgement call, and our constitution, in the 5th & 14th amendments, -- says that due process must be used to deprive persons of their rights to life, liberty, or property.
Prohibitive laws endeavour to criminalize property & restrict behaviors BEFORE they result in damaging acts.
You claim that:
States may probibit an activity within their borders that they find to be too much of a threat.
Not true tex, as you are well aware.
They can reasonably 'regulate' public behaviors and the public sale of such threatening objects, -- but under our constitution, they have no power to outright prohibit, as we saw evidenced with the 18th.
We have a right of assosiation. I do not wish to live in the same community with hard drug users. I can form a community that has such standards. This does not violate any constitutional right.
True. -- But you cannot violate constitutional rights in the forming, or in the enforcing of such standards.
My community is my state, and or county.
States, counties, and communities are bound to obey our constitution by the Supremacy Clause.
Learn to live with it aggie.
Do you realize that the rumor went out that baking banana peels and smoking them would get you high, when I was in high school, and we ALL went and blazed away on banana peels. Everyone I knew tried it. We all got nothing but headaches, except for those few that claim they felt something.
Puleez. I have done that PLEANTY o time. I can get the same feeling if I stand on my head for a few minutes. Or if I down a couple of Two Way pills from the gas station.
So you do know that tobacco can get a user high; should it therefore be banned? What about "Two Way pills"---or headstands?
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