Which Way Marijuana

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 1^st step.