It's time for my state legislators in Maryland District 42 to step up to the plate. Are you listening, Sue Aumann, Jim Brochin, Bill Frank and Steve Lafferty?How much misery can a policy cause before it is acknowledged as a failure and reversed? The US “war on drugs” suggests there is no upper limit. The country’s implacable blend of prohibition and punitive criminal justice is wrong-headed in every way: immoral in principle, since it prosecutes victimless crimes, and in practice a disaster of remarkable proportions. Yet for a US politician to suggest wholesale reform of this brainless regime is still seen as an act of reckless self-harm.
Even a casual observer can see that much of the damage done in the US by illegal drugs is a result of the fact that they are illegal, not the fact that they are drugs. Vastly more lives are blighted by the brutality of prohibition, and by the enormous criminal networks it has created, than by the substances themselves. This is true of cocaine and heroin as well as of soft drugs such as marijuana. But the assault on consumption of marijuana sets the standard for the policy’s stupidity.
Same goes for Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, Senator Cardin and Senator Mikulski.
In my book, all of them get an "F" for their (non)effort on drug policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment