April 1, 1909: The Opium Exclusion Act takes effect.
March 30, 1961: The UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is convened in New York City, the first of the three international treaties binding signatory nations into prohibitionist systems.
March 30, 1992: Bill Clinton, during the 1992 presidential campaign, says, "When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale."
March 29, 2000: CNN reports that a multi-nation drug sweep known as Operation Conquistador nets 2,331 arrests, 4,966 kilograms of cocaine, 55.6 kilograms of heroin, and 362.5 metric tons of marijuana. The 17-day operation takes place in Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Montserrat, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua, Anguilla, St. Martin, British Virgin Islands, Barbuda, Grenada, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Aruba, Curacao, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Drug availability is not reduced in the operation's wake.
April 1, 2000: Canada's premier national newspaper, The National Post, editorializes in favor of legalizing marijuana.
March 31, 2001: An editorial in The Lancet -- the United Kingdom's top medical journal -- criticizes the futility of drug prohibition and America's present anti-drug strategies.
March 26, 2002: A unanimous US Supreme Court rules that public housing tenants can be evicted for any illegal drug activity by household members or guests, even if they did not know about it.
March 28, 2002: Federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan rules that the Barr Amendment, which blocks the District of Columbia from considering a medical marijuana voter initiative, infringes on First Amendment rights.
March 28, 2003: The Hemp Industries Association, several hemp food and cosmetic manufacturers and the Organic Consumers Association petition the federal Ninth Circuit to again prevent the DEA from ending the legal sale of hemp seed and oil products in the US.
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
Why haven't our society learned anything from "Prohibition"?
I don't understand why our lawmakers haven't learned anything from the prohibition of alcohol which ended in 1933. This war on alcohol started our modern day organized crime as it is today. They havn't learned a thing. They are putting inocent nonviolent drug offenders in prisons for long periods of time, where they have to learn to be violent just to stay alive. They have to align themselves with prison gangs, the develop a hatred for everything we stand for. Then they are paroled out onto our streets, and we have to live with what we created, more and more hardened violent criminals. Most of these non violent offenders they lock up for 10 or more years, many on their first offence, could be dealt with in a much more productive way. First of all, I believe with all my heart that all drugs should be not neccessarily be legalized but at least the most dangerouse ones should be decrimilalized. Most drugs should be totally legalized. Then we will have won the war on drugs, because thes drugs will only be able to be obtained through legal means. Clinics which legaly sell these drugs to adult citizens, who may be addicts or abusers, given legal clean sanitized places in which to inject themselves if that is their choice. The end result of this, is that we break the back of the cartels that are causing all the violence, fighting over turf to sell their merchandise at enormousely inflated prices, causing our addicts to have to steal and break the law to obtain the drug the so crave. The US economy would save millions, billions of $ on the space saving effect in their prisons, and have enough room to keep their true violent criminals where they belong. Off our streets. There would be plenty of excess money from the taxes charged on the drugs dispenced in these clinics to open many many more programs to help these addicts to kick their habits, at least the ones that so desire. I am one individual that wholeheartedly believes that there would not be much of an increase in the amount of drug addicts in our society than there already are. It is a proven fact, that in practically all industrialized countries all over the globe that there are between 10 and 12% of our citizenry who suffer from one addiction or another. That figure is meant to cover all addictions, from gambling and alcoholism, to heroin, marijana, prescription drugs that get diverted to the street market, where a .50 pill goes up in price from its normal price to 5.00 to 10.00 per pill for your average pain pills, etc... I believe that in the long run our addiction rate will actually decrease rather than increase, because you are taking away the fear factor of trying these things for the first time. Isn't it time to try something different, when for the past 100 years our war on drugs has failed and only managed to break the national bank with the money it takes to keep these sick individuals warehoused in prisons, where it cost 100s of thousands of dollars for each offender locked up for just one year. Our entire system is flawed. Imagine what could be done with the tax money from these legal clinics, combined with the money saved by not having to lock millions of people up for years at a time, and then let out as hardened criminals! Does this make sense to anyone out there at all?
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