Jim Finnel
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex News Moderator
For years, proponents of legalizing marijuana tended to be easy-to-ignore cranks like me ... although the support of people like William F. Buckley Jr. did give the movement gravitas.
Today it has growing momentum. Over the last month it has gotten boosts from columnists as disparate as the PNJ's Reginald Dogan and Time magazine's Joe Klein. Even the normally staid Economist editorialized recently for legalization, writing that "the war on drugs has been a disaster. ... By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless."
It's also getting a boost from Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. In proposing major reform of our criminal justice system, he points to the waste in money and lives involved in prosecuting and jailing nonviolent drug offenders.
Underneath it all is an undeniable force: common sense.
In Time this week, Klein wrote that, "As Webb pointed out ... the U.S. is, by far, the most 'criminal' country in the world, with 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5 percent of all arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money ... that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure - or simply returned to the public."
We might also be the most self-unexamined nation in the world.
Plenty of Americans believe the United States has an innate moral superiority that justifies it acting unilaterally in the world. Many believe God blesses our nation's actions over those of other nations.
If so, how has it has come to be that our prisons are stuffed even tighter than those in totalitarian countries?
One of the most powerful tools of a totalitarian state is a "legal" system so trip-wired with illegality that everyone is a criminal. The only difference is that some have been prosecuted, and some haven't.
But is legalization practical?
It was done in Portugal, in 2001 - for all drugs, not just marijuana. A recent study, conducted for the libertarian Cato Institute, concluded that it has been a virtually unqualified success.
Contrast that with the violent conflict in Mexico among a variety of drug gangs and the government. A contributing factor is that the military, police, judicial system and politics have all been seriously corrupted by drug money.
An estimated 450,000 Mexicans are employed by the various drug cartels. The busiest? Those growing, selling and transporting marijuana.
That corruption is spilling across the U.S. border. Drugs gangs are growing pot in national forests and inside houses in neighborhoods across the West and Midwest. In Phoenix a plague of kidnappings has hit the city, and some Americans - columnist George Will among them - find grim optimism in the fact they primarily target those involved in the drug trade ... and their families.
Recently, President Barack Obama ducked a question at a public forum about the legalization of marijuana. He caught a lot of criticism from progressives, but made the politically smart decision. As Klein noted, "an unexpected answer on marijuana would have launched a tabloid firestorm, diverting attention from the budget fight and all those bailouts.
"In fact, the default fate of any politician who publicly considers the legalization of marijuana is to be cast into the outer darkness. . Such a person would be lacerated by the assorted boozehounds and pill poppers of talk radio. The hypocrisy inherent in the American conversation about stimulants is staggering."
Hypocrisy? Maybe that's what Mexican officials are talking about when they note that the root cause of the chaos is the multibillion-dollar demand for drugs in the United States, while opponents of legalization object that it would mean ... a lot of people smoking pot.
They already are.
News Hawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: Pensacola News Journal (FL)
Copyright: 2009 The Pensacola News Journal
Contact: pnj.com | Pensacola Letters to the Editor submission | Pensacola News Journal
Website: pnj.com | Pensacola News Journal | Pensacola news, community, entertainment, yellow pages and classifieds. Serving Pensacola, Florida
Author: Carl Wernicke
Today it has growing momentum. Over the last month it has gotten boosts from columnists as disparate as the PNJ's Reginald Dogan and Time magazine's Joe Klein. Even the normally staid Economist editorialized recently for legalization, writing that "the war on drugs has been a disaster. ... By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless."
It's also getting a boost from Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. In proposing major reform of our criminal justice system, he points to the waste in money and lives involved in prosecuting and jailing nonviolent drug offenders.
Underneath it all is an undeniable force: common sense.
In Time this week, Klein wrote that, "As Webb pointed out ... the U.S. is, by far, the most 'criminal' country in the world, with 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5 percent of all arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money ... that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure - or simply returned to the public."
We might also be the most self-unexamined nation in the world.
Plenty of Americans believe the United States has an innate moral superiority that justifies it acting unilaterally in the world. Many believe God blesses our nation's actions over those of other nations.
If so, how has it has come to be that our prisons are stuffed even tighter than those in totalitarian countries?
One of the most powerful tools of a totalitarian state is a "legal" system so trip-wired with illegality that everyone is a criminal. The only difference is that some have been prosecuted, and some haven't.
But is legalization practical?
It was done in Portugal, in 2001 - for all drugs, not just marijuana. A recent study, conducted for the libertarian Cato Institute, concluded that it has been a virtually unqualified success.
Contrast that with the violent conflict in Mexico among a variety of drug gangs and the government. A contributing factor is that the military, police, judicial system and politics have all been seriously corrupted by drug money.
An estimated 450,000 Mexicans are employed by the various drug cartels. The busiest? Those growing, selling and transporting marijuana.
That corruption is spilling across the U.S. border. Drugs gangs are growing pot in national forests and inside houses in neighborhoods across the West and Midwest. In Phoenix a plague of kidnappings has hit the city, and some Americans - columnist George Will among them - find grim optimism in the fact they primarily target those involved in the drug trade ... and their families.
Recently, President Barack Obama ducked a question at a public forum about the legalization of marijuana. He caught a lot of criticism from progressives, but made the politically smart decision. As Klein noted, "an unexpected answer on marijuana would have launched a tabloid firestorm, diverting attention from the budget fight and all those bailouts.
"In fact, the default fate of any politician who publicly considers the legalization of marijuana is to be cast into the outer darkness. . Such a person would be lacerated by the assorted boozehounds and pill poppers of talk radio. The hypocrisy inherent in the American conversation about stimulants is staggering."
Hypocrisy? Maybe that's what Mexican officials are talking about when they note that the root cause of the chaos is the multibillion-dollar demand for drugs in the United States, while opponents of legalization object that it would mean ... a lot of people smoking pot.
They already are.
News Hawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: Pensacola News Journal (FL)
Copyright: 2009 The Pensacola News Journal
Contact: pnj.com | Pensacola Letters to the Editor submission | Pensacola News Journal
Website: pnj.com | Pensacola News Journal | Pensacola news, community, entertainment, yellow pages and classifieds. Serving Pensacola, Florida
Author: Carl Wernicke
