There are no victories in the war on drugs, only victims

Submitted by dguard on Wed, 03/25/2009 - 1:31pm

There are no victories in the war on drugs, only victims.
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There's a war going on, adding more victims each day. Stories such as these, representing less than one-month's-worth of drug war abuses, are still far too common:

1.	An estimated 6,290 drug-related murders occurred last year in Mexico, six times the standard definition of a civil war, according to a leading scholar at the Brookings Institution.
2.	Within 24 hours, the president and the army-chief-of-staff of Guinea-Bissau, a small country in Africa, lost their lives following violent explosions linked to the drug trade.
3.	Engaged in a "battle against drug trafficking" along a busy highway connecting Houston with Louisiana, police in Tehana, Texas have been increasing city coffers by seizing cash from black motorists - including a grandmother and an interracial couple - without charging them with a crime.

stacks o cash

4.	Two executives with the Mutual Benefits insurance company have been charged with orchestrating a billion dollar Ponzi scheme that allowed narcotics traffickers to purchase life insurance policies payable upon the deaths of people with AIDS and other fatal diseases.
5.	After a disabled Colorado medical marijuana patient was busted for growing a couple of marijuana plants, police checked county records, found that he had paid off his mortgage with accident settlement money, and started forfeiture proceedings against him, profiting their agency while seizing his home.

swat team pic

6.	After learning of vandalism and several thefts in a Baltimore neighborhood, about two dozen SWAT officers, wearing all black with guns drawn, raided a nearby mobile home belonging to a computer analyst with no criminal record; they handcuffed his wife and shot his dog near his bed.
7.	Suspicious of drug sales, an Ontario, Canada, high school vice principal took away a student's cell phone, deleted its numbers, summoned the holders of the numbers to his office, and forced them to confess to drug trafficking.
8.	A farm purchased and operated by widows from Colombia's civil war was decimated by the chemical defoliant spray used by U.S. contractors to kill coca plants on 2.6 million acres of Colombian land at the cost of a half billion dollars.
Angry Yet?

There are actions that you can take to end this failed and costly drug prohibition. Here are several suggestions:

newspaper

a.	Write a letter. Articles about each of these atrocities (see references below) can be found in our DrugNews Archive, http://www.drugnews.org. Each article contains an e-mail address or web link to directly contact the source publication. It's "point and click" access to editors and Websites that want to hear what you think.
b.	Join local, state or federal groups working on drug policy reform here and around the world. Our Drug Policy Central provides web services to more than 120 drug policy focused organizations. Check out http://www.drugpolicycentral.com/hosting/clients.htm for a group in your area.
c.	Hate the drug war, but can't locate a group near you? Join DrugSense at http://www.drugsense.org to find and network with thousands of like-minded people.

scales of justice

DONATE. We're able to get the word out about the incredible harms of the drug war and alternatives to prohibition because people like you DONATE. It's quick, easy, and secure. Just visit http://www.drugsense.org/donate.

Help stop this war on our personal rights and freedoms.

Get involved. Write. Join. Donate.

Mark Greer
Executive Director