There are two reasons for the war on drugs. The first is to keep the violent drug cartels, the violent street gangs, and the global terrorists in business and flush with American money. The second is to feed the prison industrial complex. All those prison builders, prison suppliers, prison staff, not to mention the private prison stockholders, have to have jobs and make money some way, don't they?
If, somehow, by some miraculous act, Congress took their heads out of where the sun doesn't shine and repealed the biggest rights-violating scheme of laws in the United States (the war on drugs) and re-established the principle of inalienable rights, the drug cartels, street gangs and global terrorists would be put out of business immediately. And I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that, especially, the major drug cartels have money in this game to keep the war on drugs going. They have too much to lose otherwise.
The prison-industrial complex also lobbies Congress hard for mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug crimes. It's their bread and butter. Long sentences equal job security. And, for the prison guards, non-violent prisoners also means job safety.
But, if you are intellectually and philosophically honest, you have to ask yourself how non-violent, non-larcenous, consensual adult behavior, which almost all drug behavior is, can be consider a crime. It doesn't violate anyone's rights. It is well-documented that the vast majority of drug users are honest, peaceful citizens who just like to alter their perceptions with a drug other than alcohol. You may find it to be immoral, but that's a religious concept and, I'm sure, there are many things you find to be immoral in our nation today that are legal . . . because they don't violate the rights of others.
You might say we have to protect the children. But that's just the problem. The war on drugs actually makes these substances more available to minors. The dealers don't care who buys them as long as they have the money to pay for them. That is a direct parallel with the war on alcohol--prohibition.
Prior to prohibition, saloon-keepers could have been put out of business if caught selling alcohol to minors. After prohibition, the people making and selling booze didn't care who bought it, just as long as they had the money to pay for it. The alcoholic rate among teen-agers went up during prohibition, as well as a disregard for the law.
The issue of drug use, including alcohol and tobacco, is a personal morals issue, not a secular, criminal one. An adult, under the principle of inalienable rights, owns his or her body completely and can, or should, be able to do with it whatever he or she wants to do, just so long as in so doing they do not violate the rights of others. How does the mere use of a drug violate the rights of others? Almost all of the violence associated with the presently illegal drugs is caused by their being illegal. However, the drug alcohol is the drug most associated with violent behavior merely from its use. Ask any honest cop.
The anti-drug-use laws are based on the moral principles of certain religious people. (Check out who lobbied the hardest for the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914.) Basically, certain religious groups got their version of morality passed into federal secular law. (Which would seem to be a violation of the First Amendment's "establishment" clause.)
Let me give you an example. If a man sits in his house all day drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes and not bothering any one, he can drink until he pukes and passes out and there are no legal grounds to arrest him, even if the neighbors know what he is doing and tells the police. However, if the same man was in his house, again, not bothering anyone, smoking pot, or even snorting coke, and his neighbors knew it and told the police, then the police could get a search warrant, bust down the man's door and, if they found the presently illegal drugs, they would arrest that man and they could confiscate his house, too. Two examples of non-violent, consensual adult drug use with two very different outcomes. The law does not equal justice.
By the way, did you know that prior to 1914 and the Harrison Narcotics Act, there was no criminal justice problems associated with the use of the drugs that are now illegal. The drugs were legal, cheap, and there was no violence or threat of violence in the purchase or use of them. That is, the government created the problems that we now associated with the drug trade. Now that's criminal.
So, yes, the drug war is being fought to protect the money that the drug cartels, street gangs, and global terrorists are making and to protect and preserve the prison-industrial complex. Despite anything a politician or policeman might say about protecting society, those are the only two reason for the continuation of the war on drugs because the war on drugs is not only a failure, it has also created more harm and misery than any harm and misery it was meant to prevent. And anyone with half a mind knows it.
America has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's imprisoned population. We stopped being the land of the free and the land of liberty long ago. And it's all predicated on the war on drugs which, in reality is a war on the right of all adults to the full and complete ownership of his or her body and mind.
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Showing posts with label war on drugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war on drugs. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
Self-Mutilation Versus the War on Drugs
I came across an old newspaper clipping the other day from 1996. The article was about two different men who self-mutilated themselves. One cut his penis off, the other one shot himself in the groin with a shotgun. The mutilations happened in Phoenix.
Why I saved the article was the lie that the Phoenix police spokesman told when asked about the incidents. He said, “It’s no crime. You can do whatever you want to your own body.”
Why is that a lie? Had those two men been smoking a marijuana cigarette and had the police spokesman, Sgt. Mike Torres, observed them, he would have arrested them for possession of a controlled substance. They would only have been doing what they wanted to with their “own bodies,” and they would not have been violating the rights of others.
A person can horribly mutilate himself and its not a crime. Okay, fine. I can understand that. But merely using a recreational drug—one that every government commission that has ever studied it has concluded is less harmful than alcohol—is a crime? It might be a sin by some moral standards, but how can it be a crime? A real crime should involve harming some other person.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that we really don’t own our bodies. The government does and the government decides what behavior, to your own body, you can and cannot do even if that behavior does not harm other people.
So what is the so-called war on drugs all about? If the government actually has the legitimate constitutional power to stop people from using recreational drugs then shouldn’t the government make the most harmful of those drugs a priority?
The substance, tobacco, is the most harmful recreational “drug” in America, racking up more than 400,000 deaths per year. Then there is the disease and suffering and lost production leading up to those deaths that tobacco causes. That would seem a really good drug for the government to fight a so-called war over . . . if the government had the legitimate power to do so, and if the government’s purpose was to protect us from ourselves.
Then there is alcohol, not nearly as bad as tobacco in sheer numbers of deaths. I’ve seen estimated as low as 85,000 deaths per year from the use of alcohol to as high as 200,000. But what is really interesting about alcohol, according to the federal government’s own statistics, is that it is the number one violence-causing drug in America.
The use and abuse of alcohol leads to more than fifty percent of all violent crime, including murders, rapes, and robberies. It’s abuse by pregnant women is also the number one cause of retardation in newborns. So, again, if the government has the legitimate power to fight a war on drugs and the legitimate power to protect us from our own bad choices, then alcohol should the number two enemy in the war on drugs.
But of course the government doesn’t have the legitimate constitutional power to tell people what they can and cannot do with their bodies as long as those people are not violating the right of others. The government took the power and the U.S. Supreme Court legitimized it. The so-called war on drugs is a war on the inalienable rights of otherwise honest, peaceful citizens and it is based on a religious principle that those drugs are immoral therefore they should be illegal.
In a truly free and liberty-loving society, one in which the government upheld the principle of inalienable rights and protected those rights, then an adult (no minors allowed) would not only have the right to mutilate his or her body, but to use any drug they wanted, just as long as their behavior did not violate the rights of others.
I do not advocate drug use by anyone, even tobacco and alcohol. And I strongly suspect that those people who would seriously mutilate their bodies, as well as drug abusers, need counseling and the active support of their family and friends to help them overcome their problems..
Why I saved the article was the lie that the Phoenix police spokesman told when asked about the incidents. He said, “It’s no crime. You can do whatever you want to your own body.”
Why is that a lie? Had those two men been smoking a marijuana cigarette and had the police spokesman, Sgt. Mike Torres, observed them, he would have arrested them for possession of a controlled substance. They would only have been doing what they wanted to with their “own bodies,” and they would not have been violating the rights of others.
A person can horribly mutilate himself and its not a crime. Okay, fine. I can understand that. But merely using a recreational drug—one that every government commission that has ever studied it has concluded is less harmful than alcohol—is a crime? It might be a sin by some moral standards, but how can it be a crime? A real crime should involve harming some other person.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that we really don’t own our bodies. The government does and the government decides what behavior, to your own body, you can and cannot do even if that behavior does not harm other people.
So what is the so-called war on drugs all about? If the government actually has the legitimate constitutional power to stop people from using recreational drugs then shouldn’t the government make the most harmful of those drugs a priority?
The substance, tobacco, is the most harmful recreational “drug” in America, racking up more than 400,000 deaths per year. Then there is the disease and suffering and lost production leading up to those deaths that tobacco causes. That would seem a really good drug for the government to fight a so-called war over . . . if the government had the legitimate power to do so, and if the government’s purpose was to protect us from ourselves.
Then there is alcohol, not nearly as bad as tobacco in sheer numbers of deaths. I’ve seen estimated as low as 85,000 deaths per year from the use of alcohol to as high as 200,000. But what is really interesting about alcohol, according to the federal government’s own statistics, is that it is the number one violence-causing drug in America.
The use and abuse of alcohol leads to more than fifty percent of all violent crime, including murders, rapes, and robberies. It’s abuse by pregnant women is also the number one cause of retardation in newborns. So, again, if the government has the legitimate power to fight a war on drugs and the legitimate power to protect us from our own bad choices, then alcohol should the number two enemy in the war on drugs.
But of course the government doesn’t have the legitimate constitutional power to tell people what they can and cannot do with their bodies as long as those people are not violating the right of others. The government took the power and the U.S. Supreme Court legitimized it. The so-called war on drugs is a war on the inalienable rights of otherwise honest, peaceful citizens and it is based on a religious principle that those drugs are immoral therefore they should be illegal.
In a truly free and liberty-loving society, one in which the government upheld the principle of inalienable rights and protected those rights, then an adult (no minors allowed) would not only have the right to mutilate his or her body, but to use any drug they wanted, just as long as their behavior did not violate the rights of others.
I do not advocate drug use by anyone, even tobacco and alcohol. And I strongly suspect that those people who would seriously mutilate their bodies, as well as drug abusers, need counseling and the active support of their family and friends to help them overcome their problems..
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
First Amendment Violations of the Drug War
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . .” First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The word “respecting” can be replaced with “regarding” or “on the subject of”. Therefore we can say that “Congress shall make no law [regarding] an establishment of religion” – or “no law [on the subject of the] establishment of religion.
So what is a religion? I am a strongly agnostic Libertarian and to me, the term religion in its broadest form means the totality of one’s belief system about Life, the Universe, and Everything and what is right and wrong behavior.
I believe that right behavior, under a secular government that protects inalienable rights, means you can do whatever you wish just so long as you do not violate the rights of others. Your personal moral values should not be an issue. A truly secular government should only care that your behavior does not harm others or their property without good cause.
In my article, “The Myth of Inalienable Rights,” I define those rights as follows: Any and all non-violent, non-coercive, non-larcenous, consensual adult behavior that does not physically harm other people or their property or directly and immediately endangers same, that does not disturb the peace or create a public nuisance, and that is done in private, especially on private property, is the inalienable right of all adults.
Please note that I am only talking about adults. Minors do not have full adult rights.
So just what does the “establishment” clause mean? One point of view is that there is a “wall of separation” between the government and religion. Another point of view is that the federal government is prohibited from creating a state church.
The anti-drug laws, starting with the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, came about because religious groups lobbied Congress to pass a law to control drugs because their non-medical use was considered to be immoral. That is, the use of certain drugs are immoral therefore they should be illegal. The fact that there was no criminal justice problem associated with their use at that time (when they were legal) was not considered. Certain religious groups got their version of religion enacted into law to enforce their personal moral/religious views as to right and wrong behavior. The wall of separation between Church and State was breached.
And even though the federal government has not established a church that we must all attend, by passing the Harrison Narcotics Act, and subsequent drug prohibition laws, the federal government has promoted the religious and personal moral views of some of the people at the expense of others. That is the same as forcing us all to adhere to a specific religious belief upon pain of punishment if we do not.
But of course, millions of people don’t go to that church and don’t believe in that religion, yet they are forced by a supposedly secular government to obey the religious beliefs of some people or risk arrest, fines, loss of property, and imprisonment. Should a person resist strongly enough, they risk being murdered by government agents for their peaceful, honest, consenting adult behavior. (In fact, many innocent people have been murdered in botched drug raids by the police.)
I am in no way promoting any drug use by anyone. To use a mind-altering, possibly addictive, possibly dangerous drug, however stupid that is, should be the right of all adults under a truly rights-protecting, secular government. That would include the legal drugs alcohol and tobacco which are several times more harmful to individuals and society than all the illegal drugs combined, with alcohol being the drug most likely to cause violent crimes.
The so-called war on drugs, while good for the Prison-Industrial Complex and campaigning politicians, does more harm overall than any good it was supposed to do. The drug laws are clear violations of the principle of inalienable rights and are actually religious laws masquerading as secular laws. I would like to see some major civil liberties organization attack those laws as violations of the “establishment” clause of the First Amendment.
The word “respecting” can be replaced with “regarding” or “on the subject of”. Therefore we can say that “Congress shall make no law [regarding] an establishment of religion” – or “no law [on the subject of the] establishment of religion.
So what is a religion? I am a strongly agnostic Libertarian and to me, the term religion in its broadest form means the totality of one’s belief system about Life, the Universe, and Everything and what is right and wrong behavior.
I believe that right behavior, under a secular government that protects inalienable rights, means you can do whatever you wish just so long as you do not violate the rights of others. Your personal moral values should not be an issue. A truly secular government should only care that your behavior does not harm others or their property without good cause.
In my article, “The Myth of Inalienable Rights,” I define those rights as follows: Any and all non-violent, non-coercive, non-larcenous, consensual adult behavior that does not physically harm other people or their property or directly and immediately endangers same, that does not disturb the peace or create a public nuisance, and that is done in private, especially on private property, is the inalienable right of all adults.
Please note that I am only talking about adults. Minors do not have full adult rights.
So just what does the “establishment” clause mean? One point of view is that there is a “wall of separation” between the government and religion. Another point of view is that the federal government is prohibited from creating a state church.
The anti-drug laws, starting with the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, came about because religious groups lobbied Congress to pass a law to control drugs because their non-medical use was considered to be immoral. That is, the use of certain drugs are immoral therefore they should be illegal. The fact that there was no criminal justice problem associated with their use at that time (when they were legal) was not considered. Certain religious groups got their version of religion enacted into law to enforce their personal moral/religious views as to right and wrong behavior. The wall of separation between Church and State was breached.
And even though the federal government has not established a church that we must all attend, by passing the Harrison Narcotics Act, and subsequent drug prohibition laws, the federal government has promoted the religious and personal moral views of some of the people at the expense of others. That is the same as forcing us all to adhere to a specific religious belief upon pain of punishment if we do not.
But of course, millions of people don’t go to that church and don’t believe in that religion, yet they are forced by a supposedly secular government to obey the religious beliefs of some people or risk arrest, fines, loss of property, and imprisonment. Should a person resist strongly enough, they risk being murdered by government agents for their peaceful, honest, consenting adult behavior. (In fact, many innocent people have been murdered in botched drug raids by the police.)
I am in no way promoting any drug use by anyone. To use a mind-altering, possibly addictive, possibly dangerous drug, however stupid that is, should be the right of all adults under a truly rights-protecting, secular government. That would include the legal drugs alcohol and tobacco which are several times more harmful to individuals and society than all the illegal drugs combined, with alcohol being the drug most likely to cause violent crimes.
The so-called war on drugs, while good for the Prison-Industrial Complex and campaigning politicians, does more harm overall than any good it was supposed to do. The drug laws are clear violations of the principle of inalienable rights and are actually religious laws masquerading as secular laws. I would like to see some major civil liberties organization attack those laws as violations of the “establishment” clause of the First Amendment.
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