Drugs

The issue of whether or not certain drugs should be legal or not, isn’t really an issue about drugs at all. It’s actually an issue of freedom. There is no question that forcing or deceiving another person into taking drugs harmful to them should be punishable as a criminal offense - of course it should. I believe however, that an adult human being should be able to do whatever they wish to do with their own bodies as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. Society should make information available about things that are healthy and unhealthy, but ultimately every individual should be able to decide for himself or herself the path they wish to take. If I want to ingest strychnine, what business is it of yours or anyone else? If we do not control our own bodies, we are not free - we’re living under tyranny and are the property of the government. Far too many laws have already been passed that aim to protect people from themselves. Lots of people take unnecessary risks to get a thrill or just because it makes them feel good (bungee jumping, parachuting, etc). Does anyone seriously think that society should make all things illegal that are the least bit dangerous? What a dull life it would be!

Even use of drugs that are demonstrably bad for a person (amphetamines, heroin, etc) should be left to individual choice, but what is incredible is that because of puritanical moral views that any kind of pleasure is bad, drugs that are almost completely harmless are outlawed. The hemp plant (marijuana) has been in the U.S. since before the founding of the nation, no one has ever died from it, and yet marijuana law violators make up 28% of California’s prison population, in many cases displacing hardened criminals there for crimes of violence. Thomas Jefferson, like many colonial farmers, grew marijuana – over 100 acres of it, that’s more than 70 million plants. The crop was used for cloth, rope, and other essential industrial products, and still is today. Many products from manufacturers such as Orvis, LL Bean, Addidas, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, etc., are made from processed hemp. In fact, the Constitution of the United States of America was written on paper made from the marijuana plant!

Marijuana can be grown in the garden just like any other plant. There’s nothing sinister about it, and it has some very beneficial medicinal uses. The only adverse effects of marijuana are the legal penalties and the financial burden placed upon those who purchase it. I would have thought that by now enough people would have smoked marijuana, especially in the 60’s and 70’s, to know from personal experience that’s it’s harmless, and to have repealed the laws that punish those who choose to use it. Perhaps hypocrisy is a part of growing older – it certainly is for President Clinton and George W. Bush.

The only effect of legalizing drugs would be a reduction in crime. Lower income people who must steal in order to get the money to pay the exorbitant price of illegal drugs wouldn’t have to commit crimes, and those who can afford it wouldn’t have to deal with and support criminals, because prices would drop so dramatically that it wouldn’t be profitable enough for criminals to sell anymore. In the case of marijuana, the price would drop to near zero, since anyone can grow it in their garden. In fact, drugs would probably be less attractive if they weren’t forbidden. For seven good reasons for ending the war on drugs, see ‘‘7 ways to make your neighborhood safer’’.

Besides, what’s so wrong with allowing people a little pleasure? The world would be a better place if people enjoyed themselves more and weren’t so stressed out.

Here’s an example from a February 11, 2000, Libertarian Party Press Release that shows how tyrannical and immoral our drug laws have become: Arizona prosecutors put a woman with no arms and only one leg in prison for a year for selling $20 of marijuana (four grams) to a police informant – and then being caught with a small amount of marijuana in her home after being placed on probation.

Because Deborah Lynn Quinn, age 39, was born with no arms and only a partial left leg, she can’t be sent to a regular prison. So, the state will pay $126,000 – or $345 a day – to keep her imprisoned in a special medical unit.

By comparison, it costs the Arizona state government only $90 a day to keep a violent felon in a maximum security prison, and only $45-$50 a day to keep a typical inmate behind bars. More people were arrested nationwide in 1998 for marijuana charges (682,885) than were arrested for murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault combined (676,020), according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report.

US Becomes History’s Biggest Jailer        (from the Liberator OnLine, Vol. 5, No. 4)

The US reached a ghastly milestone on February 15, 2000 according to the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit research group that advocates alternatives to incarceration. On that date, the US prison and jail population reached a record 2 million persons. More than half of those imprisoned are nonviolent offenders. And the largest single category of prisoners are drug law violators. The US comprises 5% of the world’s population, yet has fully 25% of the world’s prisoners. According to the November Coalition, a drug law reform group, the US has a higher proportion of its citizens in jail than any other country – in all of history.

The Libertarian Party, in a media release, pointed out the following:

• America has more prisoners in one state (California) than do the nations of France, Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Holland, and Singapore – combined.
• In 1970, fewer than 200,000 Americans were behind bars. By contrast, in the 1990s alone, 840,000 Americans were sent to prison.
• Over the past two decades, one new jail or prison has been built in America every week.
• Violent crime has dropped by 21% since 1993 – but the number of Americans being incarcerated has grown by 5%-6% each year since then.
• Less than a third of the people sentenced to jail each year have been convicted of a violent crime, and at least 400,000 inmates are serving time for non-violent drug offenses alone.
• By one estimate, as many as 750,000 people are in jail for victimless crimes – like gambling, violating censorship laws, not wearing a seatbelt, or consensual sex.
• The cost of keeping 2 million prisoners behind bars is $40 billion a year – or about $20,000 for every man, woman, and teenager serving time.
• 30% of all African-American males will be sent to prison at some point during their lives. A major reason for this: While only 15% of all drug users are black, 74% of the people in prison for drug crimes are black, according to government statistics.

(Sources: The Guardian [UK newspaper]; November Coalition; Justice Policy Institute; Libertarian Party media release)

Meet One of the Two Million

In the story above we pointed out that the U.S. jail and prison population has reached a record 2 million. Now meet one of the new breed of prisoner. On Thursday February 17, Louis E. Covar of Richmond County, Georgia began a seven-year prison sentence. His crime: smoking marijuana.

Covar, age 51, is a quadriplegic. He broke his neck July 4, 1967. He has been in a wheelchair since. He is unable to do more than raise his shoulders. He suffers from severe and painful muscle spasms. Doctors have prescribed many different drugs to help him control the spasms and ease the pain, but Covar says prescription narcotics cloud his mind and disorient him. Like many other paraplegics and quadriplegics, he discovered that marijuana effectively relieved the pain and spasms and left his mind clear.

In March 1999, Covar was given seven years of probation for a felony offense of marijuana possession. At that time his judge, after hearing Covar’s plea for the use of marijuana as medicine, told Covar: ‘‘I’m not telling you to violate the law, but keep it to yourself. Don’t get others involved.’’

‘‘I was keeping it to myself,’’ Covar insisted after his latest arrest.

That arrest came on January 25, 2000 when six armed Richmond County officers entered Covar’s home and found 36 grams of marijuana. The police obtained their search warrant based on ‘‘anonymous tips’’ on a telephone drug hotline. Police claim that, prior to the raid, they stopped and searched people leaving Covar’s home and found marijuana. However, in court they couldn’t answer questions about how many had been stopped or what their names were. Nor was anyone charged with drug offenses after the alleged stops.

The same judge who had urged Covar to ‘‘keep it to yourself’’ revoked Covar’s probation, and Covar was ordered to jail to begin serving a seven-year sentence.

Does everyone feel safer knowing that this dangerous criminal is at last behind bars?

(Source: The Augusta [Georgia] Chronicle)