The United States Government has no legitimate role in reducing the cultivation and production of illegal drugs in other countries, or in the dictation of drug policy the governments of other nations.

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The United States Government has no legitimate role in reducing the cultivation and production of illegal drugs in other countries, or in the dictation of drug policy to other governments.-

When the US regains some credibility as a world leader, the opinions of our officials might be taken seriously.-

After eight years of misdirected aggression and war crimes abroad, an unprecedented orgy of corruption, incompetence, greed and looting, against a background of utter disdain for individual liberties at home, the US government is not in a position to point the finger at anyone. However America may be able to assist with the existing movement away from hysteria and ignorance and towards rational and cost-effective drug policies.

The implosion of the US economy may superficially be attributed to "bubbles," and other such nonsense. However calmer minds on both the left and right saw the present crisis coming a long time ago. The money is gone, looted and flushed down a toilet by the Bush administration and its corporate sponsors, and the idea that the United States can act unilaterally as a global police agency, or even domestically as a public babysitter is obsolete.

The domestic policy that has done the most damage economically and socially to the United States, as well as to citizens of drug producing nations, is the "War on Drugs." Its main result, The Prison-Industrial Complex in America is an unqualified crime against humanity. The time for damage control is upon us, and the first order of business is harm reduction.

FOUR LAME ARGUMENTS

There is a predictable group of standard arguments against the repeal of drug prohibition. They are worthy of examination, but none of them stand up to reason and reality. Here are four of them:

1. "Drugs are really, really bad."

Of course "hard drugs" are measurably harmful, or fatal to large numbers of people worldwide. Drugs of abuse and addiction are a major threat to public health globally, and it is possible to rationally advocate the complete repeal of drug prohibition on a global scale while recognizing this fact.- The reality is that as long as a public health issue remains driven underground, and entire populations are criminalized by religiously and racially based policies, the ability of qualified personnel to address the problem is impeded to the point virtual elimination.

2. "We have to protect the children."

Drugs and alcohol are not appropriate playthings for persons still in their formative years, yet they seem to get a hold of them anyway. However, the "crack store on the playground" will not materialize upon legalization. When was the last time you saw a liquor store owner giving away free samples to school children? How many children have been wounded or killed by stray bullets from gunfights between liquor company executives since the end of alcohol prohibition? And finally, when did it become the state's responsibility to teach the values and survival skills that you want your children to enter adulthood with?

3.- "Terrorists Deal Drugs"

This is also very true, and hard drugs are an ideal hard currency for the international illegal arms trade. The value of drugs to terrorists is another direct result of prohibition and the obscene profits it makes possible. Vigorous drug enforcement tends to drive independents and amateurs out of the business, and harsher penalties for traffickers tend to increase the use of lethal force in the drug trade. Temporary reductions of production and restrictions on traffic cause existing inventories to increase in value, something the Taliban was well aware of.

Legalization would cause such a drastic drop in the cash value of existing inventories that it would be a disaster for the drug lords, and for the terrorists who depend on drug sales to finance their operations.

4. "We Can Reduce Demand by Punishing Drug Users"

This approach has not worked, unless creating a level of incarceration that surpasses Stalin's Gulag was the goal, in which case it was a phenomenal success. There are so many risks involved in the use of hard drugs, most of which stem from their illegality, that incarceration loses credibility as a threat. Someone who has already become a hate-object - vilified, hunted, pitied, and given uninvited "help," facing potentially lethal situations on a daily basis - has little to lose.-

It is true that neighborhoods can be "cleaned up" and open-air drug markets can be shut down. Drug users can be banished from sight, back into alleys, abandoned buildings, cheap motels, and ultimately, as gentrification takes hold, out of an area entirely. They do not just go away, however, "dope corners" reappear in even more blighted areas, and the whole phenomenon just becomes "someone else's problem".

"Demand Reduction" by deterrent is another unproven theory, and while the draconian penalties applied to possession of crack cocaine are cited as a possible cause for its decline in popularity, the use of heroin and methamphetamine has increased. When the consumption of a given drug declines, the disenchantment of its users with its effects, or a decrease in the quality of the product itself are the most likely explanations.

In the case of methamphetamine, efforts to control the profusion of small labs producing a questionable product in America succeeded to some extent. This created a market vacuum that was rapidly filled by super-labs in Mexico and China, resulting in an increase in the quality of meth on the American market. Meth consumption rises and falls with the quality of the product. Yet another "meth epidemic" was the result.

BY DEFINITION, INSANITY

Over 500 years ago the inquisition was burning Peruvians at the stake for chewing coca leaves. Sir Walter Raleigh and his crew were jailed for smoking tobacco. Neither of these drugs has disappeared, but some progress has been made in America against tobacco, and this is in no small part due to the ability to hold its purveyors accountable in the context of civil law.

Conversely, the local cocaine dealer cannot be taxed, sued, or forced to disclose the damaging effects of his product, and while he can be jailed, there is always someone ready to take his place. The "War on Drugs," has had a long enough trial period.

In the language of drug treatment, insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different result. The self-appointed moral authorities of the world are addicted to control, and their continual feeding of their addiction has had the same results, over and over again for hundreds of years.

PROVIDING A NEGATIVE EXAMPLE

All that the US Government, the DEA, and the symbiotic drug dealing/drug enforcement/drug treatment/ industries can speak of with authority is what has been proven ineffective and harmful. Drug policy in the United States can provide a shining negative example to the rest of the world, and the US needs to look to the examples set by other nations for fresh ideas.

If the United States is capable of creating a sane domestic drug policy, and if opium, coca, and marijuana gain the same legal status as coffee, tobacco and alcohol, the economic incentives to produce these crops in other nations could possibly be reduced.

However, the United States needs to address its own prohibition and poverty fueled violent crime rate, and the explosion of STDs, HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancies, and an economic disaster brought on by the addiction to wars and prison building. Until these issues can be constructively addressed, the US government will continue to lose credibility as a moral role model, and the bullying of nations experimenting with alternative approaches to drug and disease control by the US will increasingly be ridiculed, as it should be.

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-Previously published at Helium.com, Pulitzer Center

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Authors Website: http:/v-vector.com

Authors Bio:

I was born in NYC in 1959. I grew up in the DC area, the product of suburbia and liberal parents with doctoral-level educations. I dropped out of the public school system in eighth grade, and from all schooling by the age of 16. My life rapidly became a typical story of downwardly mobile suburban youth in the late 70s and early 80s.

I worked for low wages, hung around the fringes of various 60s-relic left-anarchist factions, drank and used drugs as much as possible and had sex with pretty much anyone who was available.

One day, early in the fall of 1984, at an outdoor concert on the Monument Grounds in DC, a couple of undercover cops jumped out of a bush at me while I was smoking some cannabis with a few people I'd just met. I pulled a knife; for some reason they didn't shoot me, and when I saw the badges and guns, I dropped the blade. Charged with APDW (Assault on Police Officers with a Deadly Weapon), I feared that I would be going to prison for a really long time (I would be, but not for this case).

I had the good fortune of entering my plea before the Hon. Rufus King, a liberal judge now retired and active in efforts to reform the criminal justice system.

After a conviction for one count of misdemeanor assault, and receiving 2 years of Federal probation, I moved to Colorado, was accepted to Naropa University in Boulder (Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics) got married, had a kid, dropped out again, got divorced, and returned to my pattern of downward mobility and anti-social behavior.

I was arrested and sentenced to the Colorado Department of Corrections on multiple drug and robbery convictions in 1995, served over seven years in prison, and five on parole.

I discharged my parole on July 1st of 2008 and moved back to the east coast, meanwhile having married a woman I met in DC in 1983.

I wrote for the now defunct Associated Content and Helium, and published one article with Reason (online)

I currently have several works in progress, and recently completed a prison memoir, which I am now editing for publication.

My political views are hard-line left-libertarian, and I am dedicated to the idea of ending the new prohibition and the ridiculous "War on Drugs," as I have seen its result, the American Gulag from the inside, and consider it to be an ongoing crime against humanity.