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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 7/12/09

Congress: End the Insane Drug War Now!

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Carmen Yarrusso
Message Carmen Yarrusso

This patently wasteful and highly destructive war against human beings continues unabated because the various special interests that profit greatly from prohibition have sufficient control over you, the honorable representatives of the American people.

These special interests are well aware they would lose billions in profits if you were to find the courage to end prohibition, again.

If prohibition were to end again, the illegal drug industry (cartels, dealers) would lose billions. Industries spawned by prohibition (drug testing, incarceration) would also lose big money. But the most significant special interest group that would lose billions if prohibition ended again, the special interest group with by far the most political power, is our own government.

Prohibition has become an extremely lucrative, institutionalized part of our government. At least fifty government agencies profit greatly from this war against real human beings. Millions more taxpayer dollars are spent on patently deceitful propaganda to keep fooling Americans about prohibition and to keep taxpayer billions flowing to these agencies.

These government agencies are quite literally addicted to drug money. They're hooked on the taxpayer billions they waste each year as they pretend to fight an enemy created and sustained by prohibition itself.

When will you find the courage to tell the truth about drug prohibition?

Arguments against prohibition

Any one of the following arguments should be sufficient to convince reasonable people that prohibition is an egregiously immoral policy.

Argument 1) Prohibition is blatant government fraud-guaranteed to fail

Prohibition pretends to fight drugs. In fact it guarantees massive profits to anyone in the world who can produce and deliver prohibited drugs to our streets. It pretends to regulate drugs. In fact it completely abandons regulation. It pretends jailing drug dealers is "fighting drugs". In fact this just creates lucrative job openings for more efficient, more ruthless, eager replacements.

It pretends intercepting large quantities of illegal drugs is "winning the war". In fact only a small percentage of drugs are intercepted and those seized are easily and cheaply replaced. Prohibition pretends to be protecting us from "dangerous drugs" (such as marijuana) while legal nicotine and alcohol kill 500,000 Americans each year.

Prohibition is a massive government fraud. It creates, sustains, and handsomely rewards the illegal drug industry while pretending to fight that very same industry. Like the classic mafia "protection racket", our government creates a perpetual problem and then charges us big money to "protect" us from it.

Argument 2) Prohibition violates our most basic human right

Prohibition denies us the right of sovereignty over our own bodies and gives this power to our government. Does any other human right make sense if we don't have sovereignty over our own bodies? There's a word for people who don't have sovereignty over their own bodies: slaves.

Prohibition declares our master (the government) has ultimate control over what we individuals can and cannot put into our own bodies. Should we disobey our master, and trust our own minds, we can be punished-often very severely.

If we find using marijuana as medicine eases our suffering, we must get down on our knees and beg our owners at the state level to get permission to put this medicine into our government-owned bodies. But even if we get permission, our slave master, the federal government, can still put us in chains.

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Carmen Yarrusso, a software engineer for 35 years, designed and modified computer operating systems (including Internet software). He has a BS in physics and studied game theory and formal logic during his years with the math department at (more...)
 
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