The Dallas Morning News today published a
couple of opinion pieces regarding marijuana legalization in Colorado and
Washington. In response to the opposing view I sent a letter to the
editor and on the off chance they don't post my well reasoned and insightful
thoughts I've pasted my letter below. Because the DMN will only give
letter writers 200 words I wanted to comment on my blog which effectively gives
me a billion words-not that anyone would read such a treatise but those are the
facts.
What I didn't refer to in my 200 word allotment is that the current war
on drugs model is fully supported by an entrenched, money hungry bureaucracy
that has heretofore escaped public awareness. This bureaucracy is the
private prison model. From 1980 to 2000 the US experienced a 5x growth in
private prisons. And, now, while the US has only 5% of the world's population we, shamefully have 25% of the world’s
prison population. Wow, you say, I guess there're a lot of people
committing a lot of crime. BUT, not so much!! From 1980 to 2009
crime has actually DECREASED by approximately 32% and
current crime rates essentially equal those of 1968.
This brings us close to the point I made in
the letter. Our current war on drugs is decimating individuals, families
and communities. Once a person is caught up in the legal system for drugs
a long line of hilarity ensues that essentially traps the individual in the
bureaucratic snarl. A young man nabbed a second time for an ounce of pot,
now legal to possess in Colorado, can be charged with a felony, and if
convicted can face revocation of his voting privileges, limitations to housing
and employment options, and even, potentially, to his options regarding custody
of his children.
Really? Is that the world we want to live in? Do
we want the lives of countless young men and women to be ruined because of our
inability to objectively view a relatively harmless drug? Do we value the
entrenched bureaucracy of for-profit prisons and thinly disguised racism more
than the inherent decency and potential of generations of young men and women?
NO. Given the choices the majority of Americans would do the right
thing. Dismiss the war on drugs for what it is: paternalistic, racist,
ineffective and wrong.
DMN letter:
Mr. Roper is ill
informed and his ignorance isn’t benign: The US does not classify marijuana as
a narcotic and marijuana is not physically addictive. Studies indicate
that marijuana is less damaging than alcohol, and, finally, conflating
marijuana with heroin and the issues associated with it are inaccurate,
confusing and not helpful.
The real damage made by Mr. Roper’s arguments
stem from his very premise that we must outlaw marijuana to care for our
impressionable children. We are losing generations of young black men to
disproportionately enforced drug laws. During the halcyon days of the
late 90s and early 2000s that Mr. Roper refers to, 1 out of every 14 black man
was incarcerated compared to 1 in 106 white men even though the majority of
users and dealers were and are white. These statistics refer to drug
violations (vs. violent crimes) and according to Ms. Alexander’s The New Jim
Crow “the vast majority of arrests have been made for minor offenses, such
as possession of small amounts of marijuana”.
We are losing the children
Mr. Roper intends to protect.
The war on drugs is immoral and must be
stopped. Legalizing and controlling marijuana is a logical and needed 1st
step.
