The case for legalising drugs is unanswerable

5 posts / 0 new

Sun, 2009-09-13 10:54

Sven

"The war on drugs is a failed policy that has injured far more people than it has protected. Around 14,000 people have died in Mexico's drug wars since the end of 2006, more than 1,000 of them in the first three months of this year. Beyond the overflowing morgues in Mexican border towns, there are uncounted numbers who have been maimed, traumatised or displaced. From Liverpool to Moscow, Tokyo to Detroit, a punitive regime of prohibition has turned streets into battlefields, while drug use has remained embedded in the way we live. The anti-drug crusade will go down as among the greatest follies of modern times."

[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/13/legalise-drugs-john-... case for legalising drugs is unanswerable[/u][/color][/url]

Sun, 2009-09-13 12:10

Tommy_Paine

A decade or so ago, it could be argued that the evidence was not yet in on drugs. No one has ever believed illegal drug use could be eliminated, but there was a defensible view that prohibition could prevent more harm than it caused.

Maybe a decade or so ago, the author thought so, but going much further back many people realized, even before the "war on drugs" that making drug use illegal had already been discredited by the previous experiment with alcohol prohibition.

It's an odd situation. Do political parties, who surely in their heart of hearts know this is true not end prohibition because they feel the general public has not caught up to that realization, and they pay for that at the polls if it was part of their platform? Maybe. Or is it because our modern day Al Capone's and Frank Nitty's know enough to let the money flow just a little higher than the beat cop, prosecutor and the odd judge?

I mean, if you owned any of Canada's banks, purely from a money perspective, which side of prohibition would you be on?

All those U.S. dollars that are exchanged for BC Bud just don't sit around collecting dust. It ends up in cash registers, and bank accounts, eventually. It impacts our GDP. And, eventually, has a positive contribution to bank CEO's bonuses.

The end of prohibition would threaten all that.

However, maybe politicians are better than all that. Perhaps they are already doing their best to decriminalize, and if not legalize, regulate drug use. I think we see that with opiates, namely oxycontin. The only problem is that this route is so back door, no one has given doctors the heads up. They'll give you enough to become addicted, but then when you are addicted they'll turn off the tap.

That's bad business, and someone aught to clue them in.

Sun, 2009-09-13 16:16

500_Apples

The war on drugs has a significant accomplishment - it deblitates the African American community.

African-Americans account for about 14 percent of the nation's drug users, yet they make up 35 percent of those arrested for drug possession, 55 percent of those convicted for drug possession, and 74 percent of those sentenced to serve time.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/041200-104.htm

I suspect that is one of the aims, as such I expect the war on drugs to either continue or to be brought down following a massive fight.

Fri, 2010-04-09 02:15

Fidel

[url=http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18522]Opium and the CIA: Can the US Triumph in the Drug-Addicted War in Afghanistan?[/url]

Quote:
Banks and Drug Money Laundering

Other institutions with a direct stake in the international drug traffic include major banks, which make loans to countries like Colombia and Mexico knowing full well that drug flows will help underwrite those loans’ repayment. A number of our biggest banks, including Citibank, Bank of New York, and Bank of Boston, have been identified as money laundering conduits, yet never have faced penalties serious enough to change their behavior.22 In short, United States involvement in the international drug traffic links the CIA, major financial interests, and criminal interests in this country and abroad.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has said that “Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis.” According to the London Observer, Costa said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result…. Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said.23

A striking example of drug clout in Washington was the influence exercised in the 1980s by the drug money-laundering Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). As I report in my book, among the highly-placed recipients of largesse from BCCI, its owners, and its affiliates, were Ronald Reagan’s Treasury Secretary James Baker, who declined to investigate BCCI;24 and Democratic Senator Joseph Biden and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, the ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which declined to investigate BCCI.

The Source of the Global Drug problem is not Kabul, but Washington.

Fri, 2010-04-09 16:01

Fidel

[url=http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CIAdrug_fallout.html]Drug Fallout[/url] Alfred McCoy 1997

Quote:
In Laos in the 1960s, the CIA battled local communists with a secret army of 30,000 Hmong-a tough highland tribe whose only cash crop was opium. A handful of CIA agents relied on tribal leaders to provide troops and Lao generals to protect their cover. When Hmong officers loaded opium on the ClA's proprietary carrier Air America, the Agency did nothing. And when the Lao army's commander, General Ouane Rattikone, opened what was probably the world's largest heroin laboratory, the Agency again failed to act.

[url=http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/28/a_woman_among_warlords_afghan_dem... Woman Among Warlords(and drug lords and their US-CIA dope dealing friends)[/url]

Quote:
You know, my people call him “Small Bush” in Kandahar province, this brother of Hamid Karzai. But he’s—this is not the first time that New York Times wrote. Recently also, I wrote that he’s a famous drug trafficker. And many others who have high posts in Karzai’s government, sometimes his ministers, expose each other that they—for persons who had high posts in Karzai government, they are drug traffickers. And the government says stop planting of opium, but the governor commanders of the same province is drug traffickers. This eight years, $36 billion the government of Afghanistan received, while they themselves give report. Most of this money went into pocket of warlords, drug lords, [inaudible] lords, these donors and officials themselves. And at least this example should be in of that right now. Even some important media is writing and sometimes exposing these drug lords and these warlords in Afghanistan, that right now I say that, for example, brother of Hamid Karzai is receiving millions of dollars through dirty business of opium.

[url=http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/webb.html]The Dark Alliance[/url] Drug money for the Contras Gary Webb 1996

The American CIA is the world's biggest dope delivery service. Theyve been using Haiti as a conduit for running drugs to the mainland for a long time. They would very much like to transform Cuba into its former glory for being a part of the pipeline for running Colombian drugs to the states. There will likely never be a free market in illicit drugs. Capitalism is all about creating false shortages and monopolizing commodities. Drugs are too lucrative to be anything other than a monopoly. The Yanks have taken over from the British as global drug lords.