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Welcome To U.S. Border Fire Report
Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. Marijuana can be harmful if abused, but jail cells are inappropriate as health interventions and ineffective as deterrents. Marijuana prohibition has failed miserably as a deterrent. The only clear winners in the war on marijuana are drug cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs politicians who have built careers confusing the drug war's collateral damage with a relatively harmless plant.
Robert
Sharpe,
policy
analyst,
Common
Sense
for Drug
Policy,
Washington,
D.C.
Learn from history It is obvious from Mark Pothier's essay that drug policy is merely a political football, one which is constantly fumbled. When does a drug user harm society? When he robs for his habit, kills for his habit or injures another while satisfying his habit. When he drives up costs of incarceration with poor physical and dental health that society must pay to treat. When does the dealer harm society? When he wars with his competition and with law enforcement. When he pressures customers to use more powerful, more dangerous drugs. When do governments and politicians harm society? When their drug policies make criminals out of victims, users who must rob to support their habits. When they create a multi-billion-dollar market for dealers willing to operate outside the law.
Governments
incarcerate
users
instead of
treating
addiction.
Governments
create drug
cartels and
cannot stop
them. When
they fail to
learn from
history;
from the
Volstead
Act, the
failed "war
on drugs"
and instead
play on
public fears
and poor
science in
the
never-ending
search to
stay in
power, while
hypocritically
clinking
glasses of
Scotch. Gary Funderburk, Dallas
No cease-fire in drug war A scientific ranking of the risks associated with drugs is always useful but hardly new. Yet the bloody drug war rages on, and the Drug Enforcement Administration continues to claim that marijuana is as dangerous as heroin and has no medicinal use. Crime bills and drug laws are not based on science. They are passed like all other laws are passed, with heavy influence from special interest lobbyists and their money.
Concerned
citizens
armed with
scientific
studies can
reform drug
laws, but
progress
will
continue to
be difficult
and slow. Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Forum of Texas, Dallas |
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