Doesn't Miss Dixon understand that being "tough on drugs" usually means locking up more people and decimating families and communities, usually minority and urban ones? The "war on drugs" is a war on us, the people, and it is directly responsible for drug related violence, more drugs coming into this country, the selling of drugs to kids and everything else that she seeks a solution for.
Doesn't anyone remember the lessons learned from prohibition and all the violence and problems that experiment caused? It's the same for drugs. Drug use in and of itself does not create violence (except, in some cases, alcohol, which is legal). People should be allowed to put whatever they want in their own bodies, they are not hurting anyone else. Our prisons are bursting at the seams with non-violent "offenders." We are locking up an entire generation and turning many non-violent people onto a life of crime from inside a prison cell.
If the "war on drugs" were ended tomorrow, all the international gangs and terrorist rings who make money on the black market selling cheap drugs at hugely inflated prices would be out of business. (I'm not talking about the gangs you see in the cities here, I'm talking about big-time players like Al Qaeda etc.) Ending the "drug war" would also eliminate the need for users to steal in order pay for their drugs (although this is not by far the major cause of all violence relating to drugs, it does happen).
Drug use is a public health issue--when are people going to start seeing it this way? We are never going to completely eliminate drug use, and people like Miss Dixon who say they want to eliminate the flow of drugs into the city are dreaming. Our goals in drug policy should be harm reduction; let people take what drugs they want, if they want, but eliminate the black market so that insane amounts of money cannot be made by terrorists selling drugs. Users will then be able to afford to pay for their drugs without robbing anyone, having to prostitute themselves or having to sell drugs themselves. Offer needle exchanges and rehabilitation help to those who seek it, without forcing anyone into treatment (except maybe for cases where a person will die or cause irreversible harm without medical care), because forcing people into treatment will only make them resentful and resistant to it in the first place.
The point is, the drug on war is a modern day witch hunt where we lock up our youth and people of color in insane numbers--this is not the mark of a free society. It needs to be stopped, and people need to change their tune. We have let ourselves believe all this ridiculous propaganda about drugs, namely that they are more dangerous than they actually are (more people die from alcohol and cigarettes each year than all illegal drugs combined). For all those who will tell me, "Well, you obviously haven't known anyone who was addicted or has died," I can say I am more than familiar with the experience. And those of you who would blame the user, say they are immoral, and see no problem in locking them all up are missing the bigger picture of how communities are destroyed by this type of thinking. It's the "drug war" that causes more harm, breaks apart more families, causes more economic damage, wastes more precious resources and does by far more harm than the actual drugs themselves. Our country will not slip into chaos if we end the "drug war" and 99 percent of the people who currently don't use drugs now will not all of a sudden start going out and using drugs tomorrow. And if none of what I just said makes sense to proponents of the "drug war," than just think about this: Who profits by drugs being illegal? (And I'll give you a hint; it's not the users or the small-time dealer you see on the corner.)
Nicole Catherine
Brooklyn, NY
01/07/2008 @ 9:13pm
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