Illegalization Wars or Peace and Freedom?

You have your right to an opinion and I have mine.

But please don't misrepresent what I have said.

I am opposed to the war on drugs as it is now practiced and am actively working against it.

Total legalization to me means just that--making the stuff available to anyone anywhere without controls. And I am opposed to that.

I do however think marijuana should be decriminalized. Perhaps coca leaf and tea or drinks or potions with diluted amounts of coca extract should also be legal.

But I am opposed to making the extreme distillates of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, LSD, PCP, and others available without controls. By the way, when cocaine and heroin were legal in this country, they were not used in the present form, nor delivered intraveiniously.

There is not a single IV drug in this country that can be used without a doctor's supervision.

Although I do think hard drugs should remain illegal, I favor alternative ways of controlling them.

Addiction should be treated as an illness, not as a crime.

I do not favor long prison sentences for those that violate the law and sell these substances. Perhaps we should conisider imposing fines on those caught doing so. In extreme cases, short sentences (perhaps in the range of a month), to be spent in solitary confinement could be imposed, and some sort of monitoring associated with the realease back into the community.

I also favor incentives for those that do not use drugs like favored status for health insurance and perhaps even tax rebates.

I have been a recipient of some of the treatment you describe. I have been arrested for drugs no less than ten times, shot at, in every case by cops or those representing themselves as cops, thrown to the ground, strip searched hundreds of times and incarcerated while my family suffered because of my absence.

Don't put me in the camp of the "illegalizers".

People who want to end drug prohibition are a broad and diverse group.  Many people want an effective strategy to reduce the harm done by drugs themselves, some want to end the violence against and jailing of drug users, some believe in the right to stick anything you want into yourself, and some want to remove a key weapon of repression against the poor of an entire hemisphere.  All of these goals require the end of the current prohibitionist system of illegalized drugs, criminalized users, and militarized attack on those in the lowest levels of the business of growing or making, transporting, and distributing drugs.

Although there can be complete overlap in all these goals, there is also a lot of infighting between factions.  People coming from one perspective often see large differences in the depth of commitment to ending prohibition from people in others.  This may often be true.  Practically, though, all of us who are serious about ending drug prohibition can take advantage of the breadth of the movement to meet our political ends.  And whether the outcome is won through new laws, court orders, a practical shift in policy, or revolution, a necessary precondition is the winning of people's agreement and support, which is something beyond winning public opinion but also requires a political strategy.  This is especially relevant in the context of the current defeat of the harm reduction movement in Brazil.

We must use two of our largest factions to meet the common goal, and move toward liberty and justice for all while we're at it.  The two largest groups, whether or not they have the most people with a deepest commitment to ending prohibition, are probably the individual liberty and the harm reduction wings of the movement.  And they present a terrific opportunity for political outflanking.  All of this is leading up to a very simple idea.

Prosecuting and jailing people for doing something that is not directly hurting anyone else, the vast majority of drug use, is simply wrong and has to be stopped now.  This is a matter of basic freedom, of liberty, and it is not negotiable.  This has resonance with a lot of people, at least in the United States, but even people who agree with this will raise all sorts of seemingly practical objections to ending drug prohibition.

Which is why it's so great to have a whole other perspective.  The harm reduction movement has always been about alternative policies that reduce the harm to individuals and society of drug use more than the current prohibition.  The point is we don't have to argue for the harm reduction perspective on solely its own merits, point by point with the current system, to meeting vague goals like reducing the harmful impact of drugs on society.  Instead, we have a moral need to end the current system, and the harm reduction movement has the practical answers.

We need the two wings do less fighting between one another, and more to make their separate public stands stronger.  We then all need to ensure that the political and practical synergy between the two standpoints clear to more people.

There is no moral choice to ending drug prohibition.  It must be.  We cannot say this loud enough.  But as a whole the movement to end drug prohibition must also state that the policies of harm reduction, including treating drug addiction from a medical standpoint, give us a practical framework from which to do it.

For those wishing to see drug legalized, I am interested to hear how you envision this working.

Obviously there have to be some sort of controls: in the manufacturing, the distribution, etc.

It's one thing to rail against what we now have, but quite another to come up with workable alternatives.

If you were king, how would you administer the business of production and distribution of drugs? Or better yet, what would you like to see our politicians do to make things better?

Hello colleagues. Thank you for your support and all your comments which I am still digesting. And, please bear with me a little bit longer in the exploration of illegalization.

I support the illegalization of murder, theft, and child molestation. Therefore, I am authorizing armed government agents to point guns at and arrest murderers, thieves, and child molesters. Therefore, I am personally responsible for pointing guns at those people and puttng them in prison. Force is the heart of law enforcement.

Many drug illegalizers believe that they are not pointing guns at their fellow human beings. These illegalizers are not being honest or they do not understand the true nature of illegalization and law.

For example, if you support the illegalization of cocaine and opiates such as morphine and heroin, you are authorizing armed government agents to assault, rob, and arrest all those people who possess those drugs. You are sending armed agents to point guns at those people. You are also authorizing these agents to kill anyone who resists. Law enforcement officials can legally use whatever force necessary, including deadly force, in order to subdue their targets. That is the nature of law and enforcement. If a person resists being arrested, he will be squashed like a bug. He might be swatted even if he doesn't resist.

As a drug illegalizer, you are also pointing guns at a lot more people than possessors and peasant farmers because there are thousands of other anti- opiate and anti-cocaine laws such as chemical precursor laws, money laundering laws which have been accurately described as the criminalization of everything, conspiracy laws, distribtion laws, laws prohibiting cash and cash transactions, paraphernalia laws, and presence laws. More and more people are being arrested for "knowingly being in the presence of drugs".

As a consequence of all these drug laws, every illegalizer is responsible for pointing guns at millions of people which are mainly poor people, young people, minorities, political dissidents, and politically weak people. Powerful people can usually get whatever they want. I remember reading that Nancy Reagan, a strong supporter of illegalization, was a heavy drug user all her life and, according to a book written by her daughter, she had many doctors prescribing whatever drugs she wanted.

On a bright note, it is good news that most illegalizers do not understand the true nature of their illegalization laws and wars because, when they discover the violence and inhumanity that they are supporting, they will choose not to be illegalizers. There will be less support for drug wars. Hence, it is important to educate people about these issues.

Rick Eramian   freeman@shore.net