Didn't work.

There's no need to ask for that return.

Our nation, including all politicians sworn into office, is obligated to uphold our Constitution.

"Didn't work." is a cheap, reckless response when it's very clear that it was never really tried, thanks to an immediate revolution by public servants against the limitations of power clearly expressed in our Constitution, and supported by many Americans through today to achieve their filthy agendas.

If there's "no need to ask" then everything must be fine, right? Obviously, it's not that easy. I'm afraid there's no magic button you can push that makes the U.S. government suddenly defend your right to the pursuit of happiness.

Sorry. I meant "Misunderstood" to be in reply to Scott's "?".

I didn't mean that liberty didn't work. It's my fault for being vague, but you seriously misunderstood what I was saying.

What I meant was that asking the government to stop telling us what to do isn't some kind of silver bullet strategy. It's been tried. The drug warriors don't vanish in a puff of dust and bones when you read them the constitution.

Perhaps the reason I "seriously misunderstood" is that I know of no instance when "It's been tried" with any reasonably intense organization and effort, which I think is what the original commenter was suggesting.

Based on general public servant attitudes, I agree that simply asking our public servants to do the right thing will likely fail when we don't have enough money or intense public majority support as additional incentive.

Given this context (stopthedrugwar.org), I assume that the original commenter was suggesting that we ask our public servants to end drug prohibition, because the written American foundation (U.S. Constitution and U.S. Declaration of Independence) basically calls for such.

How different is the reform movement effort, dominated by directly engaging the government, from what the original commenter asked?

The answer is that the reform movement basically ignores the written American foundation, and relies on science, stories of power abuse, etc. The result?

It doesn't work.

The reform movement needs to first strongly promote our cause to gain reasonably intense public majority support, then engage our public servants directly backed by that support.

We need a simple message that resonates properly in the public mainstream. Since most people don't use illicit drugs, we can't rely on the likes of "Yes we cannabis!"

The fact that drug prohibition undeniably opposes the written American foundation is rationally the basis for a successful promotion campaign.

We need to:

1. Constantly broadcast the 'Drug prohibition is unconstitutional.' message throughout American society to the best of our abilities as a surface promotion campaign (using a positive, polite, sober, and respectable presentation style that embraces the mainstream).

2. Constantly invite prohibitionists to publicly provide evidence proving their forewarned disaster resulting from previous drug-related penalty reductions (e.g. state medical marijuana and decriminalization), to discredit them when they forewarn us next time a proposed reduction is on the table.

3. Constantly suggest a comprehensive alternative to more effectively reducing substance abuse including alcohol and tobacco (basically a 'war' on unhealthy stress).

This well-organized and intense effort has never been tried.

Is it really a crazy idea?

If only I had the resources to try it.

I am impressed with your response. It is well thought out and completely in line with demanding the government follow the law! What a plan! And you did it all with calling anyone stupid! But, I never got the impression that this group would fall in line with the "yes we cannabis" people. Thank you for the good response.

"Perhaps the reason I "seriously misunderstood" is that I know of no instance when "It's been tried" with any reasonably intense organization and effort, which I think is what the original commenter was suggesting."

You are absolutely correct, that is exactly what I was suggesting, thank you for filling out my outline so well. Your suggestions are excellent and I hope to see them put into action, not only by the prohibition reform movement, but by ALL organizations (and there are many) which see the error of the way our federal government has unconstitutionally usurped the power (and stolen the money) of the people and the states.

One of the first moves which should be made is to wrest our schools out of the hands of government and the NEA. Government controlled education is why so few American really understand the real meaning of the Constitution -- that it was supposed to be a LIMIT on the power of the federal government. It was not written to control the people it was written to control the government in order to protect the unalienable rights of the people and the rights of the sovereign states. We can thank Lincoln for the greatest blow to the liberty of the people and the rights of the states and it has all gone downhill from there. Please google separation of school and state, to find organizations working for that end and support them in whatever way you can, education goes hand in hand with prohibition reform.

Thank you both for your replies.

Paul Armentano, David Borden, Pete Guither, Scott Morgan, Ethan Nadelmann, Allen St. Pierre, and many in the reform movement are not stupid (quite the contrary).

While I tried to start a formal entity to put my plan into action, my very "full plate" (overflowing, actually :-) prevented success, and so I occasionally place my two cents here and there when I can, hoping that someone(s) in a better position than I will seize the opportunity to effectively use the Internet to communicate to the masses, bypassing the ignorance of the mainstream media to finally break the prohibitionist lie machine that keeps drug prohibition going.

What that requires is the elimination of elitism against the public majority who prefer their consumption to be simple. Just because some people have less brain processing power doesn't make them objectively inferior, and since we need their fairly passionate support, we need to tailor our message for them.

While I love the freaky "hippie drug" culture (and am a proud member of it), that culture has been successfully demonized in the mainstream, and therefore we need to initially put that culture aside when communicating in the mainstream (perhaps gradually bringing that culture in as our credibility rises).

I'm guessing that at least the vast majority of the reform movement is made up of people who enjoy marijuana and psychedelics, realizing that proper use falls well in line with "acceptable risks" (contrary to our public servant findings in the CSA).

The reform movement needs to do a much better job countering the "It's all dope!" proclamation, separating each drug as appropriate. Putting marijuana and heroin under the term drugs is like putting lettuce and steak under the term food (although I love a good steak on occasion and will avoid heroin even if legalized).

We need to show the public majority that we care about drug abuse (noting that we really should care, because users are obviously at the greatest risk of falling into the abuse trap), but there is a much better way to address the problem other than violating the U.S. Constitution.

We need to politely and prominently use the prohibitionist words against them (my dad, a trial lawyer for roughly four decades, taught me this verbal Jiu Jitsu move, a great advocacy tool not effectively used by the reform movement today). Prohibitionists constantly make ridiculous proclamations, exposing a serious vulnerability.

I agree with the point regarding education.

We need to find a good way to break the monopoly that is public-servant-controlled "education" (a monopoly with respect to those who can't afford other forms of education) used to weaken "We the people", and I will check out the mentioned search criteria.

Education, not coercion, is the way to a better society (using power to defend society from 'rights invaders', not to enrich oneself -- such enrichment being false and indicative of ignorance requiring proper education to correct), but there is a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to improve education (including avoiding education being a euphemism for coercion).

How to share information with the ignorant? Entertain them well (so it never occurs to them that they are being educated). This is a great challenge, but not proven impossible.

Humanity is fortunate to have the far greater communications capabilities of the Internet, but we can never become complacent, because power abusers are working hard to control the Internet to maintain their corrupt ways (using their popular "to protect the children" scam, of course).

Bypassing the mainstream media using the Internet is working for the reform movement, but there are ways to turn the resulting fairly tiny cracks in the prohibitionist dam into a critical blow.

That requires serious action on our part, and while I will continue to do my best to help out, my hands are unfortunately tied (including financially), limiting my efforts to words in the comment thread.

If "drug prohibition is unconstitutional" became a widely heard phrase, imagine teachers (from elementary school to college) trying to explain to their students otherwise.

I did find a recent study, started in 2005 and updated in 2008. I think it was on how the medical marijuana laws the affected teen use. It looks like all of the teen marijuana use dropped substantially,up to 40 to 50%, in those states included in the study. Problem is it seems to have been sponsored by an anti-drug war group. That means the people against reform will pull that trump right out when dealing with the study. Likely, even if the study is valid, they will go public with the source of the study to prove its "unreliability"!

Since we arguably have no perceived credibility from the perspective of the public majority (thanks to a successful demonization campaign by the prohibitionists), we need a different strategy.

Instead of spending precious resources defending ourselves with "possible-reform-movement-biased" research, we need to publicly warmly invite (not harass) the prohibitionists to provide the proof to back up their proclamations.

After all, it's in their best interest to monitor the results of drug-related penalty reductions and use the monitoring results to prevent further reduction ("best interest" assuming they are right of course, which we know is not the case).

Otherwise, they rely on the mainstream media continuing to hide their lies, a dangerous move on their part, especially now that the mainstream media's credibility is in serious question, naturally sending many people to the Internet for their information, the Internet thankfully being where we dominate, a place where their lies don't fly, thanks in part to credible online information providers having comment sections like this one.

Then, we get into the problems, we have to deal with, when we have drug czars (and the, other, same minded groups) that openly lie! The other side is just as bad about putting out misleading information, i.e. changing the stats to support their cause! We have to be smart on getting the truth in print. It will not be easy!

Promoting the truth against the power establishment is never easy.

The only reason drug prohibition still exists is the mainstream media doesn't properly challenge the prohibitionists to publicly justify the enormous cost of drug prohibition (cost including violating the Constitution, lives ruined, and taxpayer expense).

They don't challenge them, because they don't find it newsworthy, and/or they need to protect their access to authoritarians (most of them prohibitionists) who constantly provide newsworthy information (the better the access, the more exclusives, etc.)

This basically leaves us two options:

1. Use public relations expertise to get the mainstream media to see the benefit in properly challenging prohibitionists.

2. Use public relations expertise to bypass the mainstream media.

We should exercise both options to the best of our abilities using prohibitionist words against them and provide a comprehensive alternative to reducing drug abuse (including alcohol, tobacco, and prescribed drugs) when drug prohibition ends.

There's a reason why public relations exist. It works.

It works in part due to simple, catchy messages tailored for the public. Such simplicity helped prohibitionists successfully demonize us (drugs destroy society, drugs hurt children, etc.)

Live by simplicity, die by simplicity.

We have truth on our side, but we don't present it right.

The reform movement needs good public relations to fix this problem. Though I suggested this need months ago, there has been no perceivable change in focus, nor a refute against the idea, just business as usual.

We can spend precious resources directly working the government without adequate power behind us, hoping the prohibitionist "dam" breaks under its own weight (prison overcrowding, etc.)

Or we can turn our attention to public relations to first gain the power that comes with reasonably passionate public majority (and their financial) support and then use that power to pressure our public servants to promptly enact change we really can believe in.

If I'm missing something, please enlighten me.

I went there cuz I got an email about it (since signing up to comment last time), the email warned about the deadline. The open question thing was only open for about 36 hours, if the time stamp on the email was any indication.

I was surprised to find there were already over 8000 questions. I didn't have time to go thru all of them, looking for "end prohibition" slanted questions to vote them up. I did take the time to post my own question about returning the federal government to the limits imposed upon it by the Constitution.

It was important to get drug reform questions on top again. The public is incredulous. Even if it seems we won the first round, those people who are against drug reform or who don't know about drug reform still probably didn't process the importance of our questions. Who cares if we look like narrow ideologues; we know we're not, we know this is an important issue, and we definitely should keep bringing it up.