I'm sure Phil will be writing something for the Chronicle about this, but in the meanwhile, I wanted to post a quote from the article by Mike Males, the researcher who authored the study:
"The War on Drugs is not intended to solve the drug problem -- it's intended to maximize the harm drugs cause in society."
I strongly agree with this and I think it sums up one key aspect of our prohibitionist policy. It's not that most supporters of the drug war think this consciously. It's that the drug war support is incoherent and emotionally based. Drugs have to continue to harm people, and more than they might do on their own without public intervention, so that we can continue to point out how bad drugs are.
If the harm that drugs do can be reduced -- and the harm of drug policies of course counts as harm from drugs, that's how incoherent it is -- there would be less reason for people to refrain from drug use, and less opportunity to tell people not to use drugs or to say we told you so. Given how low marijuana falls on the harmful substances scale, it's especially important for zealots to focus on marijuana. Otherwise people might get the idea that it would be okay to legalize it. (Oh wait, that's happening anyway...)
duh...
and how is the filthy rich drug-war-industrial-complex supposed to get filthy richer if they dont maximize the harm drugs cause??...
obama lied
We are the 99% fighting for the middle class
even the smoker
A whole population is denied the right to participate in the free market enterprise system, a whole population regardless of how hard they work- whether they play by the rules or not, they are denied a win. They can use economic warfare against the undesirables; “Disaster Economics” (Harper’s magazine) this applies to a good group of people; they work hard play by the rules and are forced to work just above slave labor. The more they squeeze the middle class the more the corporations can profit, the more people drop off the edge for the middle class has been under attack for decades as more and more of them are squeezed into poverty keep falling off the edge.
The working poor are one or two paychecks away from being homeless and broke. Unemployed trying to seek welfare or a job, becoming homeless and then criminalized, loitering- vagrancy- tickets- all the while health care denied- and the right to self-determination, self-enforcement and self-responsibility demonized, demonized for having a smoke or a beer as the pharmaceutical companies flood the streets with their chemicals. Sleeping on the streets begging for change until they steal, and then feed the prison empire where the state will torture and convert them, after they break their spirit.
It is the people of the 99% that are working not only to help the homeless, that some of them already are; but the 99% is working toward truth liberty justice individual freedom ,economic justice, and an end to corruption not just for the poor but for the middle class too,
whether or not you want to accept it, it is the protestors who are working to help the middle class, for when you end the suffering for others you can end the suffering for yourself. It was the unions that brought America the weekend now it’s time for them to bring us a 30 hour work week with no loss in pay read more in the book( ABOUT CHRISTIANS AND FREEDOM) @ Amazon.com
Or (AN OPENING FOR THE LIVING) ALSO @ Amazon.com www.Smokingspirit123.com
Occupy2012@hotmail.com
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