Point: Steve Bonney
Cultures continually change, usually so slowly that you don’t notice, sometimes for the better, and sometimes not. Change comes from discoveries and inventions that are preserved. Rapid change is caused by cross-cultural contact. Usually this results in a dominant and a minority culture, but the weaker culture never really goes away. American Indian culture is an example of this.
Drugs are misused because we have lost the cultural context of the experience. Altered states of mind are the goal of the user and when peyote is used in a ceremony, in sacred space, it can be a transformative, spiritual ritual. Peyote can also be used for medicine. In a 1960 study by J.A. McCleary et al. in “Economic Botany,” it was found that peyote is also used successfully to treat pain, and as an antibiotic.
In the urban drug culture, users want an altered state of mind, but they have no cultural context to make that state meaningful. They use drugs to blot out reality. Most users belong to the lower class and they turn to drugs because of hopelessness and despair. The white culture has criminalized the use of drugs, but that is a mistake. It makes just as much sense to criminalize poverty and lock up poor people. Why not help people find meaning and purpose in their lives instead of victimizing them? Possibly it’s because of Puritan religious values, and the attempt to legislate morality. This conflicts with our secular Constitution. Laws should serve a practical purpose.
The drug war is a case of blaming the victim. I know we can’t fight crime by legalizing it, but drug use is not a crime. Prohibition bans substances that arguably we have a right to use. We are adults and we can make our own decisions. Prohibition, not drug use, creates the violence of the black market, burgeoning prisons and ruined lives. The drug war can be stopped by simply telling the soldiers to stand down.
Drugs are blamed for the failure of our youth to succeed, but I think it’s the other way around. The expectation of failure causes drug use. Kids with a reasonable hope for success do not often become addicted.
Drug laws should be evaluated by a cost-benefit analysis. The costs are huge, with interdiction, enforcement, incarceration, and murder, and the big fence on the Mexican border, not to mention the lost tax revenue. And what are the benefits? Oh yes. People who fight the drug war make money off of it. People who build and staff the prisons make money. People who look the other way make money. Police who confiscate drugs and re-sell them make money. Supposedly, the reason for the drug war is the eradication of drug abuse, which would be a great benefit. When pigs fly.
Get real. We need a more compassionate approach to drug use; treat it as a public health problem with counseling, education and jobs programs. We need JOBS.
Counterpoint: Steve DiMarzo
The supposed “War on Drugs” is dismal failure just as the “War on Poverty” was and is almost 50 years later. Why??What people want to use, try and ingest, people will get and obtain regardless of the efforts of the government and the laws they pass and try to enforce to prevent that from happening. Ever since 1913, when drugs became illegal at the request of those who believed that this was for the good of society, we have had nothing but chaos, death, personal destruction and heartache from attempts to quell the spread, distribution, sale and use of those drugs that have been deemed as illegal by our government.
When you look at the death rates and usage rates for cigarettes and alcohol, which are both legal drugs, how can one not say to themselves, “Why not ban or get rid of these drugs, as well?” If one looks at the taxes and revenue generated by the sale of these items, is it any wonder why they have never been banned, as these other so called hard drugs like heroin, cocaine and the opioids? Think of what revenue could be generated if all drugs were legal to purchase, but under strict guidelines as they now have with cigarettes and alcohol??
Think of it, the drug cartels would be brought to their knees and almost put out of business almost overnight! Drug gangs would no longer have a monopoly over areas in a city, town or a group of people dependent upon such drugs for their survival. Plus, people who had the desire to use could go to controlled places that would dispense these drugs to those who were qualified. I realize nothing is perfect here, but people are doing terrible things to get their drug fix now, even killing others in the process. Why not allow needed tax revenue to be obtained and brought into the treasury by the legalization of all drugs? Who knows, maybe our debt can be eliminated if we do this in the right way.
Unfortunately, the members of the liberal persuasion would take all of this new revenue and spend it foolishly as they are doing now, instead of helping this country lower its debt expense. Their track record of wisely spending is something not in their chemical makeup unless it is to support and further their hold on and proliferation of remaining in power in order to dictate their controlling ideas, their liberty constricting laws and their total dominance over our lives. Drug legalization is the right choice for this country now, but without the liberal mindset to use it for a foundation for staying in power into perpetuity.