Excellent article...but all those earnest facts and logical reasoning will go to waste unless you accept that the "drug war" is not an accident.
The people who make these decisions aren't stupid, or misinformed. They're as smart as you and I, and know exactly what they're doing.
They say the drug war costs billions, but the truth is that the people saying that are profiting enormously from the war. (As they do from all the wars they instigate.) When the "government" loses money, it's the taxpayers who foot the bill. But when every offender is who processed through the system has to pay tens of thousands of dollars, the American people don't see a penny of that money.
Probation for a single person in Los Angeles County costs $4,000 for 3 years. Obviously, with all the people on probation, the probationers are paying for the entire probation office and staff.
Asset forfeitures are almost NEVER contested. When they arrest a single offender, they take the person's vehicle, cash, jewelry...and keep it all. Getting it back is a Herculean task, one that the majority of offenders cannot afford (not that a lawyer would be much help).
We all know that the prison system generates a LOT of money for mystery persons out there who are never unmasked...the cronies who get the contracts to supply the prison food, uniforms, security, blankets, phone calls...
Reasonable arguments and civilized attempts don't work when you're facing a greedy tyrant who's gotten accustomed to a steady, lucrative influx of cash and is willing to do whatever it takes to guarantee the permanency of that income. Especially when he's got a wife and kids who are busily snorting through his ill-gotten gains.
If you really, genuinely want to stop the drug war, please concentrate on dismantling the automated system the Bad Guys have set up to milk the people like so many fuel sources in the sci-fi movie "The Matrix."
Here's the system as I've figured it out so far:
1) The school system is designed to weed out only those who will: "sit down, shut up, and do as you're told."
2) The college system has become more of the same.
3) Parents never get to parent their kids.
4) Relationships are strongly discouraged in the academic and corporate world.
5) People do drugs because they're miserable at school, work, and at home.
6) Miserable people make great victims.
7) Strong people make bad victims.
9) The sole purpose of the "justice" system is to ensure that the people who are arrested pay the price.
10) Because they have criminalized behavior that is natural to all of us - due to the misery imposed on everyone by the people who make up the rules - everyone is terrified.
This combination doesn't happen this often in nature. This is not an accident.
Do some deep research~ guaranteeing that people are so miserable, lost, and alone is not as easy as you might think. It takes an intricate bureaucracy staffed with regular people doing all the evil work. This complicated system is not an accident. It is very intentional. And unless we recognize the roots of our problems for exactly what they are, no amount of lobbying and legislating is going to help.
In fact, part of the biggest problem is that like many excessively wealthy men that have gone before, our nation's true leaders have begun to think of themselves as God. And instead of Ten Commandments, we now have millions of tiny, complicated, stupid rules to control our behavior, thoughts, and actions.
But that's another topic~ kind of.
Too True
What you have said is true, but what can you do about it? Short of insurrection, the only weapon on your side is the truth. Disseminating that truth is the hardest part of fighting the system as it is, because the very people who control the system also control the media. But hard as it may be you still have to try. The important thing is to identify those in power for what they really are: Nazis! Oh, they won't call themselves that. In fact, they drape themselves in the guise of champions of truth, freedom and democracy. But when you look at the way they operate, it's easy to see they have adopted the Nazi system - lock, stock and smoking barrel.
First, there's the close alliance between the state and big business. Many of those tried for war crimes at the end of WW2 were businessmen. Their symbiotic relationship with the Nazi party is mirrored in the modern state and for much the same reason. Big Business needs the power of the state to ensure the continued flow of wealth at the expense of the lower classes and other states. The government needs the wealth "created" by business to pay for all the tools (the military, the police, the courts, the prison system and the media) needed to maintain power.
Second, the suppression of dissent through control of the media may not have been invented by the Nazis, but they certainly honed it into the instrument which it has become today. It is no surprise that control of the media is limited to a few very rich individuals and they control what people will think by controlling access to information. The internet has provided some counter to this, but it's only a matter of time before control of this source of information falls to those who control the system.
Third, the Nazis made great use of their legal and prison systems to deal with members of their society who were perceived as a threat. It was standard policy to oppress and persecute minorities because they were seen to be naturally opposed to the majority view. One of the best ways to stifle any voices of dissent is to concentrate them in prisons, away from the rest of society and forever diminished in regard by being branded a "criminal". The adoption of this policy by the government is one of the most obvious manifestations of the infiltration of Nazi ideology into the modern system and it is borne out by the over-representation of minorities in the prison system.
Finally, the Nazis recognized that, in order to keep the population afraid and willing to follow those who displayed strength, the state needed an obvious and immediate threat to its stability and security, whether the threat was real or imagined. For the Nazis, the Jews provided the perfect scapegoat for internal fears, while the Communists provided the perfect external nemesis. The fears and prejudices engendered by these foes could then be exploited to justify whatever means were considered "necessary" to counter them. For internal enemies, the ultimate expression of this policy was the "final solution". For external enemies, the ultimate expression becomes the never-ending war.
At this time, the government hasn't adopted a "final solution" approach but, there are some who advocate it. However, the government has adopted the "never-ending war" strategy as a justification for the increasingly tight grip under which cititzens must live. First there was the "Cold War", then came the "War on Drugs" (which is still being waged at ever-increasing expense), and lately there is the "War on Terror". This last war was deemed necessary when it was realized the "War on Drugs" did not provide a sufficient external threat to the state to justify its stupendous military expenditure, nor could it adequately justify further erosions of the rights of the masses without arousing resistance. The "War on Terror" achieves both these aims easily, while providing a readily identifiable enemy (radical muslims), and has provided the perfect replacement for the "Cold War".
Once these parallels are brought to light, it is easy to see that this is not a representative democracy. That is just a sham, a cover for the real system of government: fascist plutocracy. It is a powerful, centralized apparatus ruled by the rich for the benefit of the rich. Anyone who is a threat to that order will first be marginalized, then penalized and ostracized, and finally, if that doesn't work, quietly eliminated. The only hope is to make people aware of the true nature of those at the top, to wake them up - a la "The Matrix". The only way I can see this happening is if we start calling these people by the most appropriate name (NAZI) and pointing out the methods they are using to achieve their ends. The more people are made aware of the adoption of Nazi methods by the government, the easier it will be to garner the support necessary to defeat them. Those who have adopted these methods would prefer they remained in the shadows. The opprobrium which is attached to Nazi ideology might shame them if enough people recognize it, but it will not dissuade them from the continued pursuit of their agenda. They will merely crank up the propaganda machine and drown out those who disapprove. However, if enough people see the light, then the mechanisms are available to turn the tide. There is still hope. Best of luck!
All but #5
Most people who use drugs, legal or illegal, do so because they like the way the drugs make them feel. Relax, ease the pain, go to sleep, wake up, ease the side effects of other, life-saving drugs. The assumption that any illegal drug use is addiction or abuse and that drug addicts are necessarily "miserable" is a drugwar tactic -- "We have to rescue these unfortunates by destroying their lives."
The only way to end the war is to END it. We don't need an "exit strategy." We need an immediate and complete end to prohibition.
I agree, but there are different levels of the drug war machine
I don't think this whole thing has been masterminded that perfectly, it's just been a coming together of opportunists: a few of them very sociopathic (the Harry Aslinger types, the ones you're referring to), some of them just regular selfish people who are not so ignorant of what they're doing, and the rest of them (the masses of people who ignorantly or semi ignorantly support the drug war) just comfortably letting it happen because oppressing "druggies", arresting drug dealers, and making sure the poor remain poor keeps them on top.
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