Societal cognitive dissonance

"Preaching to the choir" is a term that I can relate to. I talk about the drug war to a wide variety of people and have found that a wide variety of people agree that the "War on Drugs" is not the right strategy to take. I was talking to some workmates the other day and they were making comments about how conversations change when people find out that the person they are talking to is a police officer. I made the observation that when I learn that someone is in the law enforcement business, I almost immediately begin talking about drug policy. So far, I have truly enjoyed my conversations with police officers with regards to drug policy. To date, every single one of them has agreed at least in part with my views on drug policy. I find it truly puzzling that so many in law enforcement think that the drug laws should be abolished in an environment where our society is so repressive. The same goes for the lawyers, judges, jailers, and other people involved in the law enforcement establishment with whom I have discussed the issues revolving around America's longest war. The same goes for people of all walks of life with whom I have debated the various pros and cons of our drug policy. From teachers to CEOs, virtually nobody has advocated keeping the drug war going and with two exceptions, all that I have talked with told me that they would support some form of regulation of the currently prohibited substances. Unfortunately, the two people who have advocated the continuation of prohibition are representative of the kind of people who will continue to keep the drug war going and are the people who are creating the cognitive dissonance in our society regarding the drug war. These two people were US Representative Nick Lampson and my mother. Representative Lampson was at a fundraising Bar-B-Q event in a small town south of Houston in a district that was destroyed when Tom DeLay had the Texas legislature redistrict the state just before the 2004 elections. I spoke to him briefly and asked him whether he thought the drug war should continue. He told me that he did and said that he thought that the majority of those at the event would agree with him. I took an informal poll of those in attendance and came up with a vote of 68-7 in favor of reform when I asked "should we continue the drug war as-is or should we regulate currently illegal drugs?" Lampson did not have an intelligible response when I brought this tally to him, but he did show me one of the most formidable hurdles drug law reformers have: politicians who are wedded to the current drug war ideology for one reason or another. My mother represents another major obstacle to reform. There are a lot of people in this country who have been so steeped in the drug warriors' propaganda that they simply cannot see past it. Unfortunately, I am one of the problems in this regard as I am a smart, well spoken individual who has not taken it upon himself to have this conversation in the interest of "letting sleeping dogs lie" rather than bringing it up and perhaps ruffling my mother's feathers. Keep in mind that there are a ton of people out there who are not privy to the information that reformers have gathered and compiled. These are people who, without intervention, will continue to believe that we are doing the right thing with regards to drug policy. In the spirit of this new website, I resolve to continue to talk with people who might not be like-minded on this issue and further resolve to have this difficult discussion with my mother. The people who are most important to us should be the first, not the last, people we talk to on this issue. This is doubly true if they are opposed to drug law reform as the facts clearly do not support the continuation of prohibition. The only way to cure the cognitive dissonance that currently afflicts our society with regards to drug policy is for people like us to bring up the problems with prohibition in an intelligent manner devoid of the shouting and name calling so prevalent on the other side of this debate.