Nevermind, Barack Obama Wants to Arrest Marijuana Users After All
For one brief glorious moment, we thought Barack Obama supported marijuana decriminalization. He said so in 2004 and his campaign reiterated it yesterday, only to subsequently retreat and pledge support for current marijuana laws.
At first, Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that the candidate had "always" supported decriminalizing marijuana, suggesting his 2004 statement was correct. Then after the Times posted copies of the video on its Web site today, his campaign reversed course and declared he does not support eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana possession and use.
The other day I posted a diary (now updated) which unfortunately turned out to be incorrect. The war on drugs is a Political war, waged not by scientists and doctors but by police officers and politicians. The American Medical Association classifies drug addiction as a disease, not as a crime or a moral deficiency. The historical ignorance in regards to narcotics among politicians of both parties is not so surprising considering their lack of any real understanding about the pharmacology of drugs.
The drug war is misdirected. It is foolish. It is stupid, unworkable, disastrous, tragic and sad. But beyond all that it is evil.
The drug war is grounded in an evil premise: that people do not own their bodies, that they have no right to control what they do with their own lives and their own property, that it is appropriate to lock them in cages if they produce, distribute or consume chemicals in defiance of the state.
This is a monstrosity. As long as America has the drug war, it is not a free country. Politicians who support it and expand it, knowing the evils it entails, have no business lecturing us on morality.
The ideology of the war on drugs is the ideology of totalitarianism, of communism, of fascism and of slavery. In practice, it has made an utter mockery of the rule of law and the often-spouted idea that America is the freest country on earth.
Like so many other wars, the drug war is constructed on a mountain of lies. Politicians have lied over and over about the dangers of specific drugs, the percentages of drug offenders in prison, the success of various anti-drug programs, and the motives they have for waging the war. But even if it weren’t for these acts of brazen dishonesty, the drug war would still be evil.
The war on drugs is murderous. Militarized police forces frequently raid homes and assault or even slaughter innocent people – some of whom did not even break the unjust drug laws. And those laws are just that – unjust. Remember it always. The war on drugs is an unjust war of aggression. Its agents are in the wrong. Under the current system, if you defend yourself against this homegrown war of aggression, you might be killed instantly or put on death row like Cory Maye. The authorities will get away with it.
The war on drugs is not a program that should be reconsidered, reformed, or reinvented. It needs not a different set of priorities or a restructuring. It needs to be repealed completely. Its prisoners need to be released without an instant of hesitation. Its greatest victims should be compensated as much as possible out of the pockets of the aggressors. Those at the top of this war must be held responsible for their illegal and immoral acts.
I am sometimes told that libertarians are too obsessed with the war on drugs. I disagree. I think that people in general, including many libertarians, should be more concerned with it. We are talking about the longest war in American history, one that has hundreds of thousands of innocent people locked in cages, many of whom are raped and beaten by convicted brutes as the prison guards laugh, all at an exorbitant cost in tax dollars and liberty. We are talking about a program that has decimated every article in the Bill of Rights. We are talking about a modern-day witch-trial and inquisition, all wrapped up into one, and multiplied in its evil effects and destructiveness many times over. We are talking about the precedent for so many other evil policies, from prohibitions on so-called "money laundering" and the criminal enterprise known as civil asset forfeiture to the egregious civil liberties violations conducted today under the guise of combating terrorism.
He's exactly right the war on drugs is evil. Sadly people who are addicted to narcotics as well as those who use marijuana a non addictive relatively harmless substance are mere pawns or prisoners in a political game of chess. The prevalence of drugs in American society not only cocaine and heroin and marijuana but also alcohol and tobacco and prescription drugs will never reduced until it's properly addressed as a public-health question. As long as myths and propaganda are allowed to win out over science and medicine expect more cops , more prisons, and more drugs.
The solution to ending the war on drugs as well as reducing narcotics addiction is easy and is fully explained in the video below.