Jimmy Carter: Call Off the Global Drug War
Lawrence O'Donnell read from some of former President Jimmy Carters' latest op-ed at the New York Times, calling for an end to America's "war on drugs."
The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.
These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”
These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.
This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.
More at the link above so go there to read the rest and good for President Carter for speaking out on this matter.
Start at 3:12.
O'Donnell talks with Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow" - how the "War On Drugs" has predominantly been a war on poor people of color.
Call Off The Global War On Drugs! President Jimmy Carter NYT Op-Ed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9uxWAer_oU
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
the fact that drugs are illegal is the thing that makes it very profitable to deal it. Don't make it totally legal. Keep large amounts illegal. Also forbid any commercial entity from dealing in it. And don't allow any kind of ads. Leave dealing to amaeturs. Hopefully having a lot of small dealers should greatly diminish the profits for the large dealers. And this should reduce the supply.
I liek my drugs, i liek my alcolol. I woud off myself a long time ago. Fecking trufax!
Bite my shiny metal ass.
http://www.startalkradio.net/
Enforcing pot laws made based on lies told to Congress in the 30's by that evil fuck Harry Anslinger--truly fucking stupid. And so's the rest. 'Gateway drug' my arse.
me-oww!
I'm on gateway music. After listening to AC/DC i killed some twerps. Then i got into slayer and created a massacre.
Damn!
Bite my shiny metal ass.
http://www.startalkradio.net/
Alcohol is the "gateway drug," if you ask me.
far left loon >.<
Alcohol kills far more people and it's usually not the user that dies.
First order of business, let Marc Emery go free. He should not be in prison.
Kudos to Jimmy Carter.
Federal and state government has a long history of contracting out specific services to private firms, including medical services, food preparation, vocational training, and inmate transportation. The 1980s, though, ushered in a new era of prison privatization. With a burgeoning prison population resulting from the War on Drugs and increased use of incarceration, prison overcrowding and rising costs became increasingly problematic for local, state, and federal governments. In response to this expanding criminal justice system, private business interests saw an opportunity for expansion, and consequently, private-sector involvement in prisons moved from the simple contracting of services to contracting for the complete management and operation of entire prisons.[9]
AS USUAL, FOLLOW THE MONEY. Privatized prisons, privatized armies, it's about taking customarily government functions and letting insiders make a profit on privatization.
Turk Meister
Ron Paul
...birds of a feather?
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Yeah, likes doves. The most
retardedstupid birds ever. If you hit one of those dumb things there will be feathers all over the place.Bite my shiny metal ass.
http://www.startalkradio.net/
Wait, i have to say that doves have one cool thing and that is falling like a brick from the sky to avoid falcons. That's pretty awesome. For the rest they are just dumb twats.
Bite my shiny metal ass.
http://www.startalkradio.net/
you live alone,shocker.......have you ever brought anything worthwhile to the conversation?
....the fools do not realize,a population that can ,..... not paticipate .............in the 'economy'...,can not keep it viable!..........."we are listening,.......and we're not blind.,......this is your life....this is your time."
if not every time. You just have to know what to look for.
me-oww!
And he's very amusing. Hey Alerta.
far left loon >.<
not in the least.
me-oww!
...or 4 things in common huh?
they both ran for president
both pretty much anti war
both want to legalize drugs
and they are both older than 70 with young ideas...?
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
And Jimmy Carter is not. So they both ran for Pres. Thing is only one ever was pres. The other will be as successful as Ross Perot.
And they're both over 70? Hey, they're both over 25 too. So are millions of others.
So they share two beliefs? So the fuck what? I share those two beliefs too, but I'm nothing like Ron Paul. I'd like to see Paul slap on a tool belt and help build houses for poor people, but I don't think altruism is part of the guy's agenda. He's pimping the selfish bullshit that appeals to racists and thugs and stupid idiots.
Jesus H.
me-oww!
Are they per capita, or absolute? If they're per capita, all points built on them hold. But if they're absolute, only the use of opiates really rockets past the growth in the human population. Cannabis use in fact is slower than the rate of population growth by that metric.
Personally, I don't use pot (or any currently illegal drug--caffeine and a lipostatin are all I use, not even alcohol). I can't stand the smell of pot smoke. But I am fully in favor of decriminalization at the very least, and ideally legalization on the model stewartm0205 mentions. The decriminalization of most drugs makes sense to me, although the opiates and many narcotics create dependencies that, unlike cannabis and many "lighter" drugs, directly impair function and therefore are bad for society at large.
...would cost the CIA, MI6, Mossad, ISI and the KGB to lose a lot of business.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
and a few states' Governors.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
MEN
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Clinton, for example?
...free markets!!!
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Hooray for crap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDDJ0QxbVQA
Bite my shiny metal ass.
http://www.startalkradio.net/
done this a long time ago....look at the money wasted fighting this 'war'.
Legalize the stuff, tax it like booze, make places available to buy it and use it.
If someone causes an accident or goes to work stoned USE THE SAME LAWS WE HAVE as if was a alcohol related thing.
This is the biggest war we ever lost.
Bad idea. I can't take the pay cut.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
'Cause your paycheck is definitely worth the wasted lives of thousands of people rotting in prison.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
"look at the money wasted fighting this 'war'"
This isn't quite correct - certainly, if one takes the stated goal of the War On (Some) Drugs at face value (namely, reducing use) then it's a miserable failure. If, on the other hand, one reflects on the *actual* intentions when most of these substances were banned it's pretty clear that the point was always to provide the state with an excuse to imprison "undesirables". By that measure, it's been a rousing success...
President Carter is an Evangelical Christian...one that uses the sense that God gave him...not like so many other "evangelicals".
He's a good example of the fact that being a Christian does not automatically make one an idiot.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Compartmentalization is a valuable skill.
Ability to recognize the good in one's beliefs and act on it is the mark of a good person - no matter what those beliefs might be.
If you're looking for sympathy for your religion bashing, you've come to the wrong doorstep, kiddo.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Do you realize you just made a case for compartmentalization?
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
I don't need sympathy, I'm pretty sure I'm right.
Oh, sorry, I forgot...
either "kiddo" or "old tool" depending upon which condecending term applies to you.
Were someone to say that to me I'd prefer 'kiddo'. My $0.02
("Tiger' or 'sport" would be OK too, in a pinch.) ;^)
far left loon >.<
Just how much stupider have we gotten as a people? It only took the nation 14 years to figure out that prohibition was a colossal failure and a wholly counterproductive effort that did more harm than good. We've been at this stupid effort for 40 fucking years. We apparently have gotten 25 years stupider. Obviously somebody is making some big bucks off of this fucked up "war" on drugs.
has been a corporate boondoggle since its inception. A massive failure and Nancy Raygun's contribution to the corporate coup in America, has always been a manufactured problem designed to fund corporations from public coffers and a starting point for the destruction of civil liberties. Pot smokers, Blacks, Latinos . . . ID'd by the Corporate Reich to be the pariahs to distract and divide Americans, blinding them to the real problem facing the country . . . Corporate Oligarchy.
So in the 80's, the Replutocans shifted drug policy from a demand-side model to a supply-side model. And supply-side policy utterly failed there too. Wow, sounds like we have a trend here...
...in a position to do something about it.
Are you from 88, or are you a fan of HH?
Bite my shiny metal ass.
http://www.startalkradio.net/
"Do You Support the War on Drugs? Then You are a Murderer"
http://www.dollarvigilante.com/blog/2011/6/17...
force, harsher punishment, etc. It's the same thing with "underage drinking", by which I'm referring to the 18-20 year olds, who though treated like adults in every other respect, aren't allowed to legally have a beer. Instead, they're cracking down with more draconian enforcement and stiffer punishment. Somewhere in the vicinity of 80+ percent of young adults break this law. They recognize the inherent injustice of it. It's turned into a money making bonanza for many communities.
The war on drugs is a colossal scam. The only thing it does is provide obscenely high and artificial monopolistic price supports for criminal enterprises, including such luminaries as the CIA. the only way to control drugs is to legalize them all. Let the government run the equivalent of drug ABC stores. Make them available so cheaply that there is no longer any incentive for the criminals, who are practicing capitalism at it's very maximum of souless efficiency (filling a vacuum to obtain extremely high yields for minimal risk, and not giving a shit about who they hurt or kill in the process through their ruthless competition with each other). contract with peru, Columbia, Afghanistan to buy their entire crops and flood the market. The control comes from the ready availability the is made possible from the ABC store set up, which is run as an absolute monopoly that is more aggressively defended than any mafia operation ever dreamed of (i.e.: if you muscle in on our operation, there's no place in the world you can go where we won't find you). Make it a severe crime to provide drugs to underage persons. Make marijuana available at the same age that beer and wine is available (many states it's 18). Tax it. Use the taxes in part to fundrehabilitation for those who will get into trouble with it, use the rest to help fund universal healthcare.
By legalizing everything, it removes the social stigma from use and might encourage people who would lose their jobs if they sought help to actually get help: Presidents, judges, cops, law enforcement like prosecutors, doctors, nurses, teachers...not just DFH's.
It would also take some of our government agencies out of the criminal rackets business, ones that over the decades rhave aised billions (trillions?) for off the books projects that completely by-pass public oversight, control. and accountability.
It would also help stabilize the governments of those countries that have been corrupted, subverted and over run by drug-based criminal enterprises.
We'll never see it happen, because being "tough on crime" is too easy a mindless, low-hanging fruit for gutless, opportunistic politicians to grab onto and use to manipulate a credulous, unthinking electorate.
Take a look at this: The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School A Speech to the California Judges Association 1995 annual conference
This has been going on for a lot longer than most can believe. The '40 year' business is not historically accurate.
The drug laws do exactly what Michelle Alexander says they were meant to. But not just against minorities. Tricky Dick thought he could hurt his political opponents by having legislation and law enforcement going after pot even more viciously than before. And he thought that drug law reform was some kind of Jewish conspiracy. And in the process helped create the kind of police state where if you argue with a cop you risk death from 'non-lethal' tasering. The fascist attitude demonstrated by most cops comes from the powers they assumed thanks to the increasingly authoritarian laws passed to 'save the kiddies from druuuuuuugs!'
Nice to see the 'progressives' are finally beginning to take this issue as seriously as it should have been all along. Pity it's taken so long for them to realize how much of a political Achille's Heel it is, as the drug laws disenfranchise the Democrats' natural allies, to the benefit of Rethugs. And any Dem who votes in favor of punitive Rethug-sired drug laws is shooting themselves in the foot as a result...and have only themselves to blame.
the war on drugs has been a complete failure--unless, of course, you are a drug dealer, a dea agent, a pharma exec, or owner of stock in the prison-industrial-compex. then the drug war is your bread and butter.
i would love to see dea thugs out of work as much as i would love to see illegal drug dealers out of biznatch
the war on drugs (like the war on terror) is merely a way to ramp up the national security state, funnel govt money to corporations, trample civil rights and make the situation they propose to "war" against much worse.
legalize it. don't criticize it. (then regulate and tax)
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