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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 1/6/09

How to Stop the War on Drugs

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Debaters debate the two wars as if the civil War on Drugs against Woodstock Nation did not yet run amok. A failed program that costs multi-billion dollars - without accountability, oversight, milestones, or exit plan - surely deserves debate. Continuing the vendetta against all present at the peaceful public assembly of Woodstock Nation in August 1969, and their legions, cannot be good for America. Foreign enemies are at the gate, and they have a cash cow of ours, the market for psychoactive substances. The USA incarcerates a higher percent of its people than any other country on the face of the earth. If we are all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home?

The negative numbers that will have to be used to bottom-line our legacy to the next generation can be less enormous. The witch-hunt doctor's Rx is for every bust to numerate a bigger tax-load over a smaller denominator of payers. Spend more on prisons than on schools. My second witch's opinion is herbal remedy. Homegrown being free, discretionary funds won't be depleted.

A clause about interstate commerce provides the required pretext of constitutionality. Any excuse is better than none. So, how is that interstate commerce going, which allegedly requires the Controlled Substances Act? The CSA mantra is eradicate, do not tax, the country's number-one cash crop. When supply is dry, robust demand bids prices up. Gifted with margin to frustrate interdiction, peddlers' bags do not carry coals to Newcastle. The founders' purpose to authorize federal meddling in interstate commerce was not to undermine national security and impoverish the treasury, yet that is the only justification given for the CSA. Justice Thomas's dissent in Gonzalez v. Raich is well-taken.

In 1933, America decided against substance prohibition in the case of the substance alcohol. Drug prohibitionists knew better than to attempt an amendment sanctioning drug prohibition. They simply declared that they don't need any stinking amendment. This bluff has not been called for 38 years, by force of tyranny against the powerless Woodstock Nation.

Old England coerced conformity on the puritan nonconformists, so they came to New England, rather than submit. Then the puritans coerced Quakers by whippings, cutting off of ears, hangings, and land forfeiture for absence at church, but they did not submit. The Toleration Act of 1689 granted freedom of worship to Quaker nonconformists. The War on Drugs attempts coerce conformity on a double-digit-demographic of nonconformists.

The 1641 Massachusetts Liberties [item 94.2] echoes the Mosaic Law that witches having or consulting a familiar spirit shall be put to death. In 1692, teenage girls, claiming to channel invisible spirits and devils, sent 19 people, who their parents disliked, to the gallows for witchcraft. In 1693, the court stopped accepting spectral evidence. Gaols emptied. Fourteen years later, the leader of the accusers confided, "It was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, where I justly fear I may have brought upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood."

The scheduled substances have never had their day in court. Nixon promised to supply supporting evidence later. Later, the Commission evidence wasn't supporting. No matter, civil war against Woodstock Nation had its charter. No amendments can assure due-process under an arbitrary law that itself never had any due-process. Marijuana has no medical use, period. Open and shut cases clog the kangaroo courts. Peers are excluded from juries. Lives are flushed down expensive tubes.

The CSA is anti-science. Redundantly, there is no accepted use, nor will there ever be, when all use is not accepted. Research by Myron Stolaroff, Alexander Shulgin PhD, and Rick Doblin PhD is shut down. LSD was hailed as a breakthrough drug until the CSA halted research. America's drug policy should seek light from, not ignore, experts who are familiar with the scheduled substances at first-hand. How many politicians have studied the book, LSD, My Problem Child, by the Nobel Prize Committee member Albert Hofmann (1906-2008)? Google knows about the full text online.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act restores choice of sacrament for the Native American Church to eat peyote. All Americans, without distinction of church, should be extended the same freedom of religion as the RFRA extends to the NAC, to select a scheduled sacrament to mediate communion, twixt the soul and its source within, in the rituals even of single-member sects.

To speak freely, one must be able to think freely. To create, one must be in a receptive mood. How could a slacker such as I hope to achieve a great work such as ending the War on Drugs? What was I smoking? The Constitution, as amended, does not enumerate any power to impede outside-the-box thinking or arbitrate states of consciousness. How and when did government acquire this power? Politicians who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction. Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, says the First Amendment. The CSA derails speech, such as these addled words of mine, onto mental roads not taken.

Common Law must hold that the people are the legal owners of their own bodies, to do with as they please, absent harm to others. That would include corporal components such as the various receptor sites. The people should have the same liberty to move about in their spiritual abodes as they have in their material apartments.

The people have a right to get drunk in their apartments, be it folly or otherwise. Some find self-medication to be a way to comply with the dictum of Socrates to know thy self. Let not those who appreciate their own free choice of personal path in life deny the same to others. Live and let live. The Declaration of Independence gets right to the point. The pursuit of happiness is a self-evident, God-given, inalienable, right of man. The War on Drugs is a war on the pursuit of happiness.

The books have ample law on them, sans CSA. The usual caveats, against injury to others, or their estates, remain in effect. Employees can be fired for poor job performance. People should be held responsible for damage caused by their screw-ups. No harm, no foul; and no excuse, either.

The annual dollar cost of the War on Drugs at federal, state and local levels totals what, only 50 or 100B USD? If anybody is counting, please share. There is no lower-hanging, riper, or higher-yielding budgetary fruit than to kick the addiction to the third war, cold turkey. Repeal the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.
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Bill Harris Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

My mission is to bring the War on Drugs to a screeching halt by promoting repeal of its charter, the unconstitutional Controlled Substances Act of 1970.
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