Advocates Urge Media to Look Beyond the Surface, Ask Critical Questions About Raid's Long-Term Implications for Drug Trade (or Lack Thereof)
SDSU SSDP protest, empty graduation chairs represent the arrested students
"Cocaine was banned in 1914, and marijuana in 1937," said David Borden, executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org, "and yet these drugs are so widely available almost a century later that college students can be hauled away 75 at a time for them. That is the very definition of policy failure."
Borden, who is also executive editor of Drug War Chronicle, a major weekly online publication, continued: "Since 1980, when the drug war really started escalating under the Reagan administration, the average street price of cocaine has dropped by a factor of five, when adjusted for purity and inflation. (1) Given that the strategy was to increase drug prices, in order to then reduce the demand, that failure has to be called spectacular." Drug arrests in the US number close to 1.5 million per year, but to little evident effect as such data suggests.
Ironically, San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis painted a compelling picture of the drug war's failure in her own quote given to the Los Angeles Times: "This operation shows how accessible and pervasive illegal drugs continue to be on our college campuses and how common it is for students to be selling to other students."
"While SDSU's future drug sellers will probably avoid sending such explicit text messages as the accused in this case did, it's doubtful that they will avoid the campus for very long," Borden said. "In fact the replacements are undoubtedly already preparing to take up the slack. By September if not sooner, the only remaining evidence that 'Operation Sudden Fall' ever happened will be the court cases and the absence of certain people from the campus."
"Instead of throwing away money and law enforcement time on a policy that doesn't work, ruining lives in the process, Congress should repeal drug prohibition and allow states to create sensible regulations to govern drugs' lawful distribution and use. At a minimum, the focus should be taken off enforcement," said Borden.
Click here for information on the well-reported student protest.
1. Data from DEA STRIDE drug price collection program, adjusted for inflation using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index figures. Further information is available upon request.
Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
Comments
DEA
Yea U guys R wasting your time, maybe the DEA should go after The Mexico Drug Cartels and not SDSU. There is no harm dunn by these students. where do u think they get it from Mexico thats the bottom line. The kids are grttin there Majors not there AA Bottom line the same thing was going on 30years ago but the people that made it by sellin drugs then think there better then the kids now, so it was OK for them to sell every drug on the plant. but my friend sell POT yea POT not Cocain not meth. pot and they want to sent him to prison.LOL let the crack heads roam freely and lock up the pot dealers. If anything U guys R on drugs.
OH YEA
ALL THE D.A. AND A.D.A. R FULL OF shit I do every Kind of drug with The A.D.A. in SAN DIEGO
Solve the "Problem" through Marijuana Re-Legalization
One troubling aspect of this bust is the fact that Illegal Mexican Drug Smugglers were supplying the drugs. So by perpetrating a policy of Marijuana Prohibition we are, in effect, rewarding the Mexican Drug Cartels.
Luckily, the solution is really quite simple. Legalize Marijuana for adult Americans in such a way that erases any "black market" profits.
Not only will this rob the Mexican Drug Cartels of their profits, it will also likely diminish the violence along the border as "no one" will be making any more profit off of Marijuana!
The best model to acheive this end is the MERP Model. In order to implement it we need to FORCE our federal representatives to take Marijuana off the Controlled Substances Act (1970), thereby, relinquishing all federal oversight over the cultivation and consumption of Marijuana by adult Americans.
===========
The MERP Project
The Marijuana Re-Legalization Policy (MRP) Project
http://www.newagecitizen.com/ReLegalization01.htm
http://www.newagecitizen.com/editorial_on_the_marijuana_re.htm
Bruce W. Cain Discusses the MERP Model, for Marijuana Relegalization, with "Sense and Sensimilla"
http://senseandsensi.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=270029
Why Lou Dobbs Should Support Marijuana Legalization
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VKf5YfQb7s&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enewagecitizen%2Ecom%2F
Video Biography of Bruce W. Cain
http://www.newagecitizen.com/Videos.htm
How Continuing the Drug War could make Nuclear Terrorism a Reality
by Bruce W. Cain
http://www.newagecitizen.com/Editorials/v8n1NuclearTerrorism.htm
legalize it (marijuana)
Lets start By making weed legal,...and go from there,....
Nice timing too...
..with the release of the NIDA findings on depression ,which is all over TV. The drugwar ...it go's on ,and on ,and...it's depressing, you know?
SDSU Drug Bust a Bust!
Please keep watching as this story develops...the actual number of students arrested is now down to 33 (not 75) and most of those arrests may be for simple possession. This was a "made for tv" bust and the administration is just hoping it will go quietly away...keep on it!
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