Lit_Match

21-year 'war on drugs' spirals into web of injustice
09-23-07|Tennessean.com|By DWIGHT LEWIS

They marched by the thousands Thursday in Jena, La., to protest a terrible injustice against six teenagers there, and rightfully so. As the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his famous April 16, 1963, Letter from the Birmingham Jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.''

Now that the injustice toward those six young African-American teenagers in Louisiana has been brought to the nation's attention, it's time for those of us in Tennessee and elsewhere around the United States to move toward protesting another gross injustice that's been hanging around for far too long.

That's the war on drugs, which officially was started under President Reagan's administration in 1986.

"Our goal in this crusade is nothing less than a drug-free generation,'' Reagan was quoted as saying in October 1988 as he signed a $1.7 billion bill, which at the time doubled the federal government's budget for chasing drug dealers and smugglers and stiffened penalties for traffickers. At the time, it was the most sweeping anti-drug program ever passed by Congress.

"Today marks a major victory in our crusade against drugs,'' Reagan said that day in Washington before signing the new legislation. "The American people want their government to get tough and go on the offensive.''

But a newly released report says that "war on drugs'' has been mostly a failure:

• Drug arrests triple since 1980: 82 percent of arrests are for possession offenses.

• Prison treatment programs lagging: Drug abusers are less than half as likely to be in treatment as in 1991.

• Racial disparities: African-Americans are 14 percent of drug users, but 37 percent of those arrested and 56 percent of those imprisoned for drugs.

"The number of people in the nation's prisons and jails for drug offenses has swelled by 1,100 percent since 1980 to a record half-million people,'' a report released Thursday by the Washington-based Sentencing Project says. The analysis, done by the national nonprofit organization engaged in research and advocacy on criminal justice policy, found that the "war on drugs'' has increasingly targeted low-level offenders for arrest and incarceration and is largely failing to provide adequate treatment in prison.

Now, isn't this an injustice that merits our undivided attention?

"This report opens up the discussion in a more significant way than has taken place in the last 20 years," said Marc Mauer, who along with Ryan S. King authored the new report titled, "A 25-Year Quagmire: The War on Drugs and Its Impact on American Society."

"We're seeing bipartisan interest in reform, and we're also seeing criticism of the war on drugs coming from a broad-based spectrum of constituencies," Mauer said. "We've also got some good models in place for more cost-effect measures to deal with substance abuse.''

The report coming from The Sentencing Project is based on an analysis of 25 years of government data regarding drugs and the criminal justice system. Mauer and King, along with others from their organization, found that the tripling of drug arrests since 1980, to a record 1.8 million by 2005, largely bypassed the "kingpins'' of the drug trade. The report said in 2005, four of five (81.7 percent) drug arrests were for possession offenses and 42.6 percent were for marijuana charges.

During the 1990s, the report added, fully 79 percent of the total growth in drug arrests was attributable to marijuana possession.

The report recommends:

• Shifting funding priorities toward prevention and treatment.

• Repealing mandatory sentencing laws and granting appropriate discretion to judges.

• Increasing treatment options within the criminal justice system through drug courts and other measures.

• Utilizing public health approaches that emphasize prevention and treatment.

Again, thousands and thousands of people came from all over the nation Thursday to march in protest of an injustice in Jena, La., and it was merited. Now, we need to contact our lawmakers, both locally and nationally, to urge them to take a new look at our drug policy. Some are already doing just that because the old "war on drugs'' is failing us.

What good does it do to lock up a low-level drug offender and the trafficker goes free? What good does it do to lock up a drug addict and he comes back on the street without having been treated?

I think you know the answer, but we must act on it just as we have done in Nashville with our Drug Court.

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Donation links to NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) | MPP (Marijuana Policy Project)

Victor_vicious

Thats is all very imteresting, it also means they think we should just continue to lie. If you want to control drugs you will have to tell the truth. And the truth is MJ "There is nothing wrong with a Responsible adult using MJ as their drug of choice. NO drug court or treatment is necessary. If you read the information in the studies done about legalizing Marijuan in Mass. you would see that they estimated savings for law enforcement is only around $29mil. When you add the savings for court and follow up, it jumps to $125mill. And while I certainly agree incarcerating folks for MJ is wrong, so is making them seek treatment by court order. It won't save any money that way. VV

biggdoc12

wow all that money being wasted all these years! just because the federal government and some actor thought they knew whats best for the american people. 20 some years later and i could still have a bag of weed delivered to my front door like it was a pizza. yet if i wanna drink a beer, i have to drive to liscened dealer, show my id (drive back home if i forgot my id), and pay taxes on the beer i bought. what a pain in the ass! the government makes it so much easier to get weed by putting it on the black market. just think if they legalized it. we would have to drive to get it, show id, pay taxes, minors and high school kids wouldn't be able get it anymore because liscened dealers won't sell it to them. it would be a complete mess!

reggie_the_dog

Once it is legalized I will need 4 months and I will never BUY weed again. I will grow inside and oudoors, but hey, I smoke a lot..People that use less or have no place to grow it may just be happy to buy it.

Buzzby

Unless you are particularly fond of gardening, growing your own might be more trouble than it's worth.

I grow around 60 lbs. of potatoes every year. I do it because I enjoy gardening and it's like Christmas morning when I finally dig up the potatoes and see what I've got. I have to dig holes to plant them, fertilize them, keep ahead of the weeds, deal with insects, dig them up, cure them, and store them. When you consider the time and materials I put into them, my 60 lbs. of potatoes costs $400 (mostly labor). I could buy 60 lbs. of potatoes at the supermarket for less than $30, ten pounds at a time.

Growing high-end pot outdoors is chancy, especially if other people are growing it nearby (males). Growing high-end pot indoors requires a lot of electricity, a lot of equipment, and, unless you're highly automated, you can't be away from home for four months.

I guess it all depends on how they price the legal stuff and how much you use. If I could buy an oz of KB for $20, it would definitely be cheaper than growing it. (An oz of KB would last me 3 months.) OTOH, I'm a gardener, so I'd probably grow it anyway.

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reggie_the_dog

I grow for the love of it. I spend lots of time, each plant I put in the woods (which I have one one plant harvested for 35 I have put out (theives drought etc.)) represents a bag of dirt put on my bake and ridden out on my mountain bike. It was worth it though, 2 years ago I harvested my first plant, a 100% sativa strain from Réunion Island known as Zamal. It was so gratifying knowing that I was smoking something that I planted. It had an excellent taste, some seeds, and was strong but not too strong. I love mid quality outdoor grown grass and really do not like the indoor grown and hash you can buy on the black market. Outdoor grown, good tasting mid quality(seeds and all) is my favourite and I have enough land to be able to grow all I want of that once it is legal.

You must be the same with your potatoes, they just seem to taste that much better to you because of all the work you put in.