I meant to include that. Indeed, while Barack Obama sees a city in need of a couple more drug cops, DPA sees a glaring example of how stretching our criminal justice system to its limits everyday has left us unprepared for a crisis of this magnitude. There's no role for the drug war in repairing Louisiana, rather this is a great opportunity to talk about moving beyond prohibition and building a sustainable criminal justice system.

I was just thinking yesterday, on how great it would be, if we could take a metropolitan area, like New Orleans, and try the "Grand Experiment"!
"What is that?", you may ask!

Try something different. Why not start in the only large city to be under such stress, as had been brought on by Katrina. Did I read that the murders are up, there?!? Law enforcement officials are complaining, they can't do their job!. What about regulating drugs in the metropolitan area of New Orleans and finding out if the crime rate will actually drop? We really can't damage it any more than an act of nature did! Another, fascist, DEA office, is not going to help. It has long been shown that they are failing to deliver what they are being PAID FOR!!

By making the drugs more freely available, through regulation or decriminalization, we would be putting drug dealers out of business. That would, in my mind, stop a lot of the killing. Someone has to start practicing "harm reduction" or we will just keep harming our society with wasted bureaucracy and law enforcement.

That is not considering the damage being done to society with laws that encourage the incarceration of people that truely need medical care. The last thing I read says that the dealers are a dime a dozen! And, when one is busted, another person takes his place! We need NEW ideas and thinking, to take the advantage away from the collective known as "drug dealers"! Destroy their market! And, destroy the illegal drug trade (eliminate the profit), while we are at it!!

Whether the media won't allow it, or the candidates don't want to talk about it, neither will bring up the war on drugs and its cost and effects.

It's a $69 billion a year failure. By making substances illegal it creates a market for such illicit substances.

That in turn generates $500 billion a year in street sales. That is the primary source of funding for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Too, the war on drugs is the cornerstone of US foreign policy. Nations won't get US funding if they don't impliment a similar war on drugs.

So why won't the policiticans address these legitimate national and international issues?

Why won't the news media raise these questions and force the politicians to answer them?

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

— Thomas Jefferson