Kieran, Orange County (Calif.) Superior Court Judge James P. Gray (who once held the record for the largest drug prosecution in the history of the Central District of California, and is a veteran trial judge) just wrote a book "Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It" to help you understand.
"The results of our country's Zero Tolerance Drug Prohibition policy are multifaceted, overlapping, and overwhelmingly negative," ... "I have learned from over twenty years of experience that although the War on Drugs makes for good politics, it makes for terrible government."
"[Although] there may be a few judges in this country who believe that our current drug policy is working, they are surely a small minority,"
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Gray's treatise is punctuated with critiques from some of the judicial community's most prestigious members, including Gilbert S. Merritt of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Nashville, Senior Judge John K. Lane Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Denver, Idaho Supreme Court Justice Byron J. Johnson, and Phoenix Appellate Judge Rudolph G. Gerber. Taken together, their remarks offer one of the strongest denunciations to date of America's misguided drug-war policies. Coming from judges, it will be hard for the usual gang of drug-war proponents to dismiss it as irresponsible or self-serving.
Unlike many previous indictments of U.S. drug policy, Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed also proposes some solutions. From an individual perspective these include educating ourselves to viable drug-policy alternatives, looking critically at television and news coverage on illicit drugs, and publicly confronting those with vested economic or psychological interests in maintaining the status quo. On a national level Gray recommends "de-profitizing the illegal drug market" (by which he means treating currently illicit drugs like other regulated intoxicants or prescription medicines already sold in the market), rescinding America's international anti-drug treaty obligations, turning drug policy over to the states, eradicating mandatory minimum sentencing, reforming asset forfeiture laws, licensing physicians to prescribe medical marijuana, and ending federal subsidies for growing tobacco.
As is the case throughout the book, the author's conviction in his principles is unwavering. "I am so convinced of the rightness and benefits of the course I am proposing that I will end this discussion with a guarantee," he writes. "If we abandon our failed drug policy and implement the programs I have outlined here, crime in the United States will be reduced by a minimum of 35 percent." That should attract some attention.
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I'd be interested to know what controls you believe will work if drugs are legalized.
You can control sales and advertisemants to the children. With drugs selling for the price of alcohol, the companies would not find it attractive to hire illegal "pushers" to hook up our kids.
You may be moved, but willingly moving the line only gives the other side a better position from which to push.
Which "other side" do you mean? If it's your children, you can still prevent them from doing drugs like you prevent them from smoking or alcohol.
If it's criminal drug-lords, their business will collapce because enormous profits will evaporate.
miko
