Communities with problems

came out of class and work today to find my bike was stolen right off campus. its not a surprise really i kinda of expected it because my lock just broke. im getting kind of immune to being robbed my cars been broken into twice everyone i know has either been victim of some similar crime or worse or knows many people who have been.
yesterday i happened to attend a meeting at our town hall about reforming the drug laws in the city. a narcotics agent told his story about how when the drug war started there wasnt even a real problem and how they would just go around and hang out with groups of kids and eventually bust them. talked about how the drug war in essense has created the huge drug problem we know have. an economist takled about how much money the city and nation could save. but i already knew most of the things they were saying but what moved me was some of the things the community members had to say.
everyone here and in many other cities knows the problems that come from the crime associated with drugs. but it was really nice to see that so many people realized its not the drugs it the laws. one kid got up and talked about how if we had more jobs in the city there wouldnt be this much drug dealing/use becasue people would be working. one kid got up and talked about how since hes got a felony over his head and our laws are so strict he cant move on with his life. he paid his time was his point and hes going back to school trying to get his life in order but the community needs to do more to help people who want to reform get back on track becasue right now all it does is hold them down. another guy who was pissed got up and said how he was beaten up by a cop for no reason cause they wanted so search his car for no reason. its crazy there was a lot more but im sure everyone knows what im talking about. most of the stories and problems all stemmed from the same thing the problems associated with the war on drugs not the drugs themselves. even a reverand came up and said that. it was intense people were getting hyped they all want change.
the council who the meeting was speaking too didnt seem to have a clue about what to do about the situation. thats what disturbs me. i mean we know what would solve many many of the problems. first make marijuana not a crime its just rediculous and a waste of money, second open institutions that provide addicts with safe drugs and a specified amount of them and social programs for them to get a job etc. this would cut out the crime associated with drug use. but how does a city of state or country pay for this?? do they use the money they save from not incarcarating people etc? do they raise taxes? do we bring in jobs? there is another meeting in a few weeks so im hoping the momentum that people started yesterday keeps going and hopefully we have more solutions to bring to the table. what do you guys think about the war on drugs its problems? what about solutions to drug associated crime etc? stories facts tell.

the war on drugs is self perpetuating
the propaganda serves to keep the servile population in agreement with rash images of white girls getting gang raped over a couple bowls of refer- or the kid shooting himself with his father's handgun while smoking a bong

education is the key here
we know that federal prison spending has increased by thirty percent while education spending has decreased by eighteen- prison is big money, those that hold the keys get all kinds of government subsidies

and where would the dea agents work if not in the dea? they too would be out of a few jobs if our country laxes it's prohibition

i've never met a pothead that has caused violence under the influence of pot, they usually just want to stay stuck to the couch and wait for the simpsons to come on, and i've never met a pothead that will steal because they need their refer fix. i imagine there are a few out there, but that's not a symptom of pot use by far

it's going to take a lot of folks being challenged on their ideas of what is right and wrong when it comes to drugs for these things to change, maybe if more communities go broke then more people will consider dismantling the programs that support the drug war and the ideas behind the drug war- get 'em where they live, the pocketbook, then mebbe they'll listen

Seattle recently passed a law that makes pot the "lowest priority of the Seattle Police Department". The cops and the DA said it wasn't necessary because pot already WAS the lowest priority. lol. A few years ago when my daughter was a teenager in Seattle, and going through what we nearly all do, the cops found her weed several times. The worst they ever did was dump it out on the ground. Twice, after searching the kids car for guns/etc., the cops handed their pot back to them, and said to have a nice day. I think the rest of America can learn a bit from the 'left' coast.

Where I live, if they find ANYTHING, seeds or stems even, your ass is GOING to jail.

Werd up, the Northwest is a rad place.

Sorry for the massiveness of this post, it's a
paper I wrote for a class last semester. It
started as a reform of marijuana laws, but soon
spread into a reform of all drug law. Curious
as to what ya'll think.

According to the ideals of a free society, that which is done by the individual that does not harm others is legal. At the same time, when an individual does something that does harm another, it is considered illegal. If a government attempts to hinder what an individual does without showing how it causes harm to others, there must be a change made in the law. Our government is based in this concept, and yet it has great difficulty holding up to it sometimes.

Marijuana was originally made illegal in 1937, along with most other illegal drugs, when the FDA was created and the first drug laws were passed. Interestingly, marijuana was not seen by most people as a drug because they knew it by the name “cannabis,” which refers to the whole plant and not only the leaf that is smoked. In the mid-1930s, hemp cannabis was the second-largest textile industry in America next to cotton, with cotton products slowly declining as better quality hemp products were produced. Half of the imported fabrics contained cannabis hemp that was made illegal after marijuana was scheduled (as “smokable marijuana” must have at least 1% THC, but this was not discovered until the 1970s – most hemp has far less than 1%, but this did not stop the government from destroying countless hemp crops and imports). This, coupled with the knowledge that marijuana was an intoxicating substance, led the government to make it illegal. It is referred to as a “Schedule I” drug, meaning is has no medicinal value, being in the same category as opiates, cocaine, LSD, etc.

After it was made illegal, the cotton industry boomed, and the government began was is known as the “Reefer Madness” campaigns, based on a propaganda film of the same title, similar to current anti-drug advertisements by the government. The ads depicted youth smoking marijuana and behaving in “bad” ways; the argument was that marijuana led one first to immorality and then to criminality. As it happened, after the Marijuana Tax Act was passed in 1937, so few people knew that marijuana was also hemp that Popular Mechanics published an article in 1938 claiming that cannabis would save the American economy.1 “Nothing to fear except fear itself” being the slogan of the time, it is peculiar that so many people were so terrified by drugs, as if the government had somehow deflected the problem of the Depression and following recession and subtlety attributed the pains of society to substance abuse, which is amazing since, eighteen years earlier, the outlawing of an intoxicant helped to bring about said Depression.

Alcohol prohibition is a great way of viewing American freedom. At the time of the depression, it was legal to ingest anything into one’s body, despite the outcome. Americans made and sold every drug that was available at the time, including many that are illegal today. In 1919, there was enough public outcry to make a Constitutional Amendment banning alcohol, mainly from religious groups and feminists who saw alcohol as the greatest scourge in America. How it was passed is beyond me, since what followed obviously defeated any argument that could have been made by prohibitionist groups (other than alcohol causing lots of problems which it still did). Instead of husbands getting drunk and abusing people, then getting arrested for it, the same guys got just as drunk and abusive, only the money went into the black market instead of “good citizens” or the government. It took ten years for the government to realize that having poor quality drugs readily available was worse than quality drugs, and far less people killed people over bottles of booze when there wasn’t a law against it. Prohibition allowed citizens to be poisoned from bad cocktails and at the same time helped build organized crime in America. When one criminalizes things that aren’t crimes, one still creates real criminals.

As said, it is strange that Americans would be so apt to make drugs illegal, except for the obvious. At the time, less than 10% of the population used drugs that were found on the Federal list of illegal substances, so there was no real voting power against it; that coupled with alcohol being readily available for the first time in over a decade prompted most Americans to not care at all about making a bunch of things illegal that they don’t use. And, after it became illegal, use stayed about the same, just like with alcohol prohibition. The difference this time was that those that did not use drugs were suddenly made to fear them, especially marijuana, since it was the most readily available, America having fields of natural cannabis. The other change was with the Italian mafia, who had run the alcohol industry during prohibition, generally didn’t like drugs, despite the excessive profit involved. The availability of drugs stayed the same as it had before it was made illegal, but more people were afraid of it.

In the 1940s and 50s, white Americans began to do what they had done in the earlier part of the century. When immigrants came to America and took over a neighborhood, “old-blooded” Americans would settle in a new place. At the same time, those neighborhoods grew to having a predominant ethnic base, which continues today. White people kicked the Indians off their land, so it was only a matter of time until a group came to uproot the whites from where they were. In this case, it was minorities, specifically black and Hispanic people, which moved into the areas. As the Civil Rights Movement hadn’t happened yet, they were all still very oppressed and poorly represented, especially in the media. The hyperreality of the “dark-skinned urban male” set in and people started freaking out. Dark-skinned people took over the neighborhoods, which turned to ghettos, and white people moved to the suburbs where they could be safe from all the evil drugs.

The whole idea of drugs being “bad” is interesting. Drugs should certainly not be illegal, but really, when one really gets down to it, this has all been about morality since the beginning. Tobacco kills over 440,000 people each year, alcohol claims 50,000, and marijuana has yet to kill anyone in the history of documented literature. The Canadian Cancer Society states, “some [studies] estimate smoking 3 to 4 marijuana cigarettes per day is roughly equivalent to smoking 20 tobacco cigarettes.” While this statement is highly ambiguous as to the chemical makeup of marijuana, it does base marijuana in simpler terms. Marijuana, while having some carcinogenic chemicals, has far less than tobacco, making it’s long-term effects less than tobacco; however, marijuana is rarely smoked with a filter, unless smoked in a water pipe (however, it is speculated that by using a water pipe one filters tar as well as THC, ergo one must smoke more), and the smoke has a better ability to coat the lungs than a filtered cigarette . Unfortunately, the fact is that marijuana, medically, is no more harmful than many legal substances in the United States. The nicotine contained in a single cigarette when eaten can kill a baby. The nicotine contained in five cigarettes can kill a healthy adult. The caffeine in about a hundred cups of coffee, taken in pill form, is lethal. A liter of whisky in one night can kill an adult. A tube of sleeping pills can cause liver failure. Swallowing about fifty aspirin tablets will lead to unstoppable stomach bleeding that can be fatal. By comparison, an adult would have to smoke two pounds of marijuana to run a risk of a fatal overdose. So, it isn’t because marijuana causes medical risks, despite the government saying it has no value, it has similar value to legal substances only without the detrimental affects, which I puzzling to say the least. The DEA claims that the reason marijuana is illegal is because things that are smoked have no accepted medical value, therefore a drug called Marinol was invented.

In 1976, the government stopped all research of marijuana except for one group, which was given millions to concentrate the active ingredient in a worthless plant and market it as a pill. Dronabinol is synthetic THC, and is a Schedule III drug, meaning it is a controlled pharmacological substance, similar to general painkillers or antibiotics .. Solvay pharmaceuticals, the group that was funded to make the pill, is the only company that markets dronabinol in America, with no generic alternatives that are available in countries that have decriminalized marijuana. Cannabis, the plant that holds the THC, has no value, and yet the THC itself does when it is not within the plant. What is most interesting is the side-effects of Marinol, having a history of not working or only working for a short amount of time. Some doctors speculate that the appetite-stimulant/pain reliever that dronabinol is used for is ineffective because a user needs the other 400 chemicals also found within the plant for the THC to work properly. Some that have tried Marinol have become paralyzed based on usage, but the death counts remains at zero, even with the concentrated versions of THC being available.

Now is where marijuana myths are laid down, and there are a lot of them. The actual effects of marijuana are varied but closely-knit. For example, some will smoke weed and it will relieve nausea, and others will vomit from it. Some people relax and others get extremely tense. What must be understood about marijuana, not merely THC, is that it is a hallucinogen, meaning it changes one’s perceptions, sometimes dramatically. Full-on hallucinations can occur or absolutely nothing can happen; the drug itself is very dependant on the user as far as how it will affect the body (which explains dronabinol’s occasional ineffectiveness). The effects, regardless of what they are, usually last less than a few hours and rarely extend over four. For most users, cannabis causes a mood lift, release of tension, mild sedation, increase in appetite, and a greater sense of awareness. Negative effects are generally mild and wear off quickly, including coughing, fatigue, muscular tension, increase in respiration, increase in heart rate, and anxiety.

Now “The Number Myths,” which are aggravating. Research done in the field of marijuana is garbage, for the most part, especially considering the government outlawed virtually all of it in 1976. As we saw from the effects, it is difficult to buckle-down exactly what marijuana does; the isolation of the active ingredient into pill form has done little for the drugs medical explanation, since the plant has all the effects that the pill does. This is when rhetoric comes into play. For example, when asked if drugs should be illegal in America, 82% of the population says “yes.” But when asked if the War on Drugs is effective, 76% say “no.” The Partnership for a Drug Free America is the headliner of the modern rhetorical statistic. On the “Children’s Section” of their website, they show that less than 20% of high school students smoke weed frequently, a statistic designed to make the youth not feel pressured into using the drugs; then, in the “Adult’s Section,” they state that over 60% of high school seniors have smoked weed, a slightly different statistic with a much larger number attached in hopes that parents will be so worried about the problem that they will talk to their kids about using. According to government statistics, twenty million Americans smoke weed every day, and 100 million have tried it. Making all this easier to read, 5% of America smokes every day, and a quarter of the nation has tried it; 20% of high school seniors smoke every day, and almost three quarters of them have tried it.

This brings us into the next point, going back to an older point, about how readily available drugs are. The fact that drugs are illegal has, if anything, made more traffic for the substances, since some of it is confiscated. Heroin, a substance virtually no one advocates use of, is over sixty times as pure today as it was thirty years ago. Interestingly, people try to use the same argument in making marijuana seem dangerous – that the potency of cannabis has gone up since the 1960s. In order for cannabis to be considered marijuana, it must have at least 1% THC present in it. Hemp (the stuff that was competing against cotton), used in making clothes, paper, and such rarely gets above .1% High quality leaf can have up to 25% THC by volume. The laws of nature have not changed in the last fifty years, and the same holds true; capture of plants, however, has changed. Before 1978, the average THC content of confiscated marijuana was between .3% and .7%; after 1978, when the government realized it was seizing lots of legal plants, the numbers rose to the point that, in the early 1980s, as the “War on Drugs” got into full swing, marijuana looked extremely frightening at 5% THC, even though that is still considered low-quality weed.

Another “Reefer Madness” campaign was launched at the end of the 1970s (which grew into the Partnership for a Drug Free America in in an attempt to change the sway in public opinion about weed brought about by the 50s Beatniks and 60s hippies. In 1971, Richard Nixon said, “America’s public enemy number one, in the United States, is drug abuse.” Not the countless citizens getting shot in Vietnam, but the potheads running around our streets. The propaganda did its job well – “voodoo pharmacology,” as it is called, as never been to scare those interested in the drugs, but to make those who are weary of the drugs more afraid, both of the substance and the user. In 1971, Nixon led the first drug initiative, spending 350 million to eliminate the threat of drugs. With the creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1973, that number went through the roof, resting today at about ten billion dollars a year. That means that the government spends $1,000 on every frequent user of marijuana on the streets of the United States, locking up 723,626 of them each year. Of that total of marijuana arrests, 641,108 charges are for simple possession, leaving 82,518 dealers, traffickers, and cultivators; at a little over $20,000 per year per inmate of any given prison, $12.8 billion of taxpayer’s money goes to jailing marijuana users.

The worst part about the laws is the variance. Federal Law regarding marijuana is fairly tight – possession of any amount is a year, and goes up as offenses increase. Dealing less than 50 kg (110 pounds) is five years in jail and a fine of $250,000, jail time and financial penalty going up significantly (up to $4 million) as the amount of weight increases. The law has mandatory minimum sentences for all convictions with conditional release for first time offenders. On top of these laws, they are also extremely strict about selling within school zones, arcades, parks, swimming pools, or to children in general. While possession laws vary from state to state, and this obviously being one of the problems involved in the dispute over marijuana laws, they all do have penalties for the possession, sale, and cultivation. While some of these laws are fairly rational (California lets possession of less than an ounce off with a $100 fine) others are much less (any amount less than two pounds in Rhode Island is a mandatory year in jail, and it gets much worse), which means that a standardization of law is needed. The reason for marijuana’s illegality is simple – while the synthetic THC is controlled by pharmaceutical companies (who, in turn, are controlled by the government), grown marijuana is controlled by private citizens; companies can be controlled much easier than individual people. This is a euphemistic way of saying the government likes those that are rich and would like to keep them rich; they also like the poor to stay exactly where they are. It is within this premise that marijuana law is what it is. However, state-by-state, laws differ slightly, especially where it counts – mandatory minimum sentences and conditional release programs for first time offenders.

Seventeen states support mandatory minimum sentences and thirty support conditional release for first time offenders. Of the thirty that support conditional release for first time offenders, only eight also support mandatory minimum sentences, meaning a fifth of the country that have mandatory imprisonment do not parole if the infraction is a first conviction while almost half have disagreed with federal scheduling and have, at least somewhat, decriminalized marijuana.

The greatest irony of both the illegality of marijuana and all Schedule I drugs is the amount of usage since they because illegal. Virtually no one smoked marijuana before 1930, and most that did found it growing wild or grew it on their farm along with hemp. Since that time, the increase in users of drugs has gone up; since 1992, marijuana arrests alone have increased over 110%, from about 350,000 to 725,000. At the same time, usage is up amongst teens, not amongst habitual users, but amongst occasional smokers, which shows that marijuana is getting more and more mainstream acceptance. This also shows that people, especially our generation, is listening to less of what the government says and more of what actual facts say. People know that marijuana doesn’t lead to heroin any more than tobacco leads to cocaine, unless one looks at exposure, in which case keeping marijuana illegal merely forces ordinarily good citizens to seek drugs in places where other drugs are, exposing them to worse things. No one goes into a doctor’s office for Attention Deficit Disorder and walks out with a prescription for Oxycontin; if all controlled substances were simply on the same list, regulated the same way, then all kinds of problems would stop.

The final fact that brings it all together is simple. In nine states, medical marijuana is legal – which is to say almost a fifth of the country has recognized that the cannabis plant has medicinal value. This puts it in a category with virtually every other drug that is illegal in the United States – doctors are trusted by the federal government to handle opiates (morphine and heroin, as well as the synthetic codeine), amphetamines, tranquilizers (ketamine, xanyx, valium), and cocaine (as well as its synthetic derivatives, Novocain and Procaine), but they still don’t trust them with marijuana. In 1978, the year Marinol was invented, the U.S. government began a program to supply its citizens with medical marijuana. Not the new pills they wanted so much, since the cannabis plant had no medicinal value but the pills did, but actual plant material grown by the government to be smoked as medicine. At its peak, the government supplied thirty people with over a pound each, every week, until the day they die, based on a federal prescription that will never expire. Each of the seven people left today would die if not for smoking marijuana – the pills do not work for them, just like many other people. In 1992, George Bush ended funding for the program, stopping any new federal prescriptions from being issued.

Our society doesn’t make laws based on what people can do to themselves, we make them based on what they can’t do to others. American crimes include things like sexual assault, burglary, fraud, arson, assault and battery, holding illegal weapons, counterfeiting, homicide, sabotage; these are crimes that actually hurt the government and its people. No one arrests a homeless person for being homeless, and no one arrests people for being intoxicated (unless they’re causing harm on others). Drugs do not inherently harm – used properly, all drugs have a purpose that can be utilized by our culture, medically or recreationally. The problem is that more people do drugs now than ever, but there is a record low crime rate for violent crime.

We have to stop treating drug users as criminals, because we are all users of drugs. We have to start reorganizing our drug policy and put all drugs, grown or stamped, under the same guidelines. The government and society will only gain from it – take the $10 billion given to the DEA each year and give an extra two million to each state to put into their justice system to prosecute more of the crimes that we’re worried about, like those in the previous paragraph. Americans fear criminals, and even when a person is not a criminal, his/her association with criminal elements leads people to that conclusion of fear. The irony is that some get so afraid that they go to their doctors and get prescribed something for it, wearing an American flag on their lapel in an effort to save the country.

Sources:
Eastman, Peggy. New, Improved Medical Marijuana Drug Readied For Testing. Oncology Times, Volume XX No. 5 p. 75, May 1998.

Gasnier, Louis J. Reefer Madness. Fox Home Entertainment, 1936.

Gieringer, Date. Marijuana Smoke Study Demonstrates Waterpipes To Be Ineffective. National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law official statement, October 26,1995.

Mann, Ron. Grass. Public Media, Inc., 1999.

Marijuana Arrests For Year 2001 Second Highest Ever Despite Feds' War On Terror, FBI Report Reveals. NORML Magazine, October 28, 2002.

Marijuana Law Reference Guide. www.norml.org

New Billion-Dollar Crop. Popular Mechanics. February, 1938.

Turner, John, Ph. D. Lecture notes, October 3, 2000.

US Code Collection, Title 18 – Crimes. Cornell University Website. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/

Nice paper. I'd have given you an A even if I disagreed with your results. Well written.

[shedthemonkey]

What RR said.

Now if only rational people were listening.

Excellent job.

[Myst_Hunter]

If This Isn’t Convincing, I Don’t Know What Is

Alright, so I’m not the first person to admit it, but this world has many problems, so many problems in fact that it would be damned near impossible to solve them all. However, there is one giant problem that can be solved right now with little difficulty and a huge payoff. (Psst…I’ll give you a hint…41.7% of Americans have used them illicitly (“Drug” 1)) Yes ladies and gentleman, drugs. I propose that all drugs, especially cannabis should be legalized. But how ever shall I prove this? I know, all of my sources will come directly from the US governments’ websites. The United States government knows what is best for us don’t they? I will prove the current establishments’ failures by using words from their own online publications. Yes, every single source is straight from the U.S. government itself. So technically they said this, not me.
First off I’ll start my paper by using the generic example of a counter-argument. Hmm…let me think for a second, the counter-argument is “drugs are bad” (Grassley 1). Well, let’s analyze this. Are there any facts presented supporting their argument? The statement further informs us that, “drugs will damage your brain and your body, and that drug use will hurt you, your friends, your family, your community, and your future” (1). Despite the fact that there are numerous things that can have these same effects, they remain legal, such as alcohol, nicotine, and other activities. Hell, playing too many video games can cause a withdrawal from society and family. So can getting too involved in music, school, hobbies, and plenty of activities. And Cannabis has not been found to cause much damage to anything but the lungs, and this is only after smoking 5 joints a day does it do the same damage that a full pack of cigarettes would do (“Marijuana: Facts Parents Need To Know” 13). (For your information, 5 joints a day would get quite expensive, not to mention almost no one smokes that much) And if anyone has suffered more damage than that, it was because it could’ve been laced with something else. If legalized, no one would have to worry about that. Nor is it that I believe that cannabis causes a separation from society and family. However, it has been shown that other drugs such as Cocaine, Ecstasy, and others do cause damage; no one is denying this (“Substance” 1). But what relevance does that have? As I have already shown, there are plenty of things that are dangerous; however the government hasn’t outlawed them. If the government was actually concerned with our well being and freedom of choice, then they should just have people sign a waiver before they purchase formerly illicit drugs, warning them of the possible dangers and placing all responsibility on the consumer. It would be just like signing a waiver before sky diving.
The key is moderation and personal choice. These are our choices to make, not the governments. This country was founded on freedom of choice, to pursue happiness. There are many dangerous activities to pursue, but it is the responsibility of the person to determine what they should and should not participate in. The government isn’t always right, so how can we trust that they are making the correct decisions for us? Bush claimed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Were there, no (Warner 1). Was going to war in the first place just? I think not.
Need some more convincing? Well, hemp (A variety of cannabis) is also very useful in terms of the products that it can be used in. “Hemp oil is being used as an ingredient in body-care products, such as lotions, moisturizers, and shampoos, and sold in health food stores as a nutritional supplement” (“Industrial” 1). Also, “Hemp seeds and flour are being used in nutrition bars, tortilla chips, pretzels, beer, salad dressings, cheese, and ice cream” (1). Hemp can also be used in textiles, paper, and paint. And it has a big advantage over current materials being used for these purposes; it doesn’t need to be de-gummed or bleached. This means there would be fewer chemicals in the things we use every day making these things safer and it would also cut production costs. I’m not going to even go into the medical uses. Not only this, but it can also be used as fuel, bedding material, an additive to plastic, a recycling additive, insulation, upholstery, and even carpeting (12). It is would also be preferred because of its “length and strength” as compared to other materials (18). And as a fuel, hemp is also cleaner burning than coal, creating less air pollution. Lastly, when paper is used for trees, you have to cut down hundreds of thousands of trees. This destroys an entire ecosystem that lives and feeds off of the trees. When a field of hemp is harvested, no where near the same amount of damage is done to the environment, not to mention it would be easier to harvest than cutting down trees.
Not only for these reasons, but just look at the amount of money this country is wasting, these are our tax dollars. Earlier this year, the Federal Drug Control was asking for 11.7 Billion dollars (“Drug Control” 4). Then, take into account the amount of people in jail convicted for drug trafficking or possession, which was 314,626 people in 1998 (8). Now, this is probably unrepresentative of the overall population in jail. This number is probably higher, but if an individual was jailed for murder and drugs, then they’d show up under the more serious offense, murder, not drug trafficking or possession. But, for simplicities stake, I’ll stay with the lower number. Multiply 314,626 by the average cost per inmate in 2001, which was $22,650 (Stephan 1). What do we arrive at? $7,126,278,900 dollars. Let’s call it 7.1 billion. So add 7.1 billion in prison costs and 11.7 billion dollars in costs for agencies like the DEA. Now the cost is up to 18.8 billion dollars. But wait, there’s more. Apparently, in 2000, Americans spent an estimated $64.8 billion dollars on illegal drugs (“Drug Data” 3). (My guess would be that this number is lower than the actual.) Supposedly, the average tax on cigarettes in the US is 41% (“Tobacco” 1). If drugs were legalized and taxed, we’d have an additional $26,568,000,000 dollars, round it to 26.5 billion. Add it up with the previous numbers, 18.8 billion plus 26.5 billion, that’s a whopping 45.3 billion dollars. But even still there is more. In St. Louis, the average cost of a drug court trial was $7,793 in 2001 (“A Cost” 5). Every person in jail had to go to court right? Well, multiply the number of inmates (314,626) by the average drug court cost ($7793) and we arrive at about 2.4 billion. That’s now a total of around 47.7 billion dollars. Think about it, that money could be used for such better things than stopping drugs. That number doesn’t even take into account the people in federal prisons, the productivity gain to society due to former gang members pursuing legitimate careers that would be taxed, the reduced cost of police forces nation wide, or the revenue gained from new hemp consumer and industrial products.
Oh, and you’d think that with all this money going into services like the DEA, that not a whole lot of drugs would get by them, right? Well, you’d think wrong. Turns out that the demand for most illicit drugs have stayed pretty steady, and if anything are projected to go up (“National Drug Threat Assessment 2004: Threat” 1). And a survey administered by The Monitoring the Future Study found that, “between 83% and 90% of every senior class have said that they could obtain marijuana fairly or very easily” (“Marijuana, 2” 10). So it’s pretty obvious that it’s available. Now let’s contemplate how many drugs this country actually seizes and confiscates. Apparently the reported amount of cannabis that was seized in 2000 was about 3.25 metric tons. Not too bad right? Well, it’s quite the opposite. The estimated import of cannabis in 2000 was projected at 7,500 metric tons. So let’s see, they captured about .00043333333333% of the total cannabis coming into this country, wow, how useless (“Drug Threats” 3). And that number didn’t even account for the amount of cannabis grown in the United States, or cannabis smuggled from Canada, Jamaica, and other nations. Plain and simple, making drugs illegal doesn’t lower their demand, and it doesn’t work.
So, anymore convinced than before? Hopefully so. You see the few counter arguments that the opposition has are weak, and this country will gain freedom of choice, billions upon billions of dollars, and lower crime among other benefits. There is no practical reason to keep drugs illegal. But sit back, sit back and watch as this country ignores these arguments, wastes your money, and insults your decision making abilities. But most of all, remember, all of my sources came straight from the government.

Works Cited

“A Cost-Benefit Anylasysis Of The St. Louis City Adult Felony Drug Court.” Institute Of Applied Research. 2004. 30 Nov. 2004.
“Drug Control Funding Tables.” ONDCP. Feb. 2004. 30 Nov. 2004.
“Drug Data Summary.” ONDCP. Oct. 2004. 11 Nov. 2004.
“Drug Threats-Marijuana.” ONDCP. Oct. 2004. 11 Nov. 2004.
“Fact Sheeet: Drug-Related Crime.” Department of Justice. Sept. 1994. 11 Nov. 2004.
Grassley, Chuck. “Floor Statement on Drug-Free America Act of 2001.” U.S. Senate. Jan. 2001. 29 Nov. 2004.

“Industrial Hemp in the United States: Status and Market Potential.” . Economic Research Service. Oct. 2001. 11 Nov. 2004.
“Marijuana.” Office of National Drug Control Policy. Nov. 2004. 11 Nov. 2004.
“Marijuana, 2.” Office of National Drug Control Policy. Feb. 2004. 1 Dec. 2004.
“Marijuana: Facts for Teens.” NIDA. May. 2003. 8 Nov. 2004.
“Marijuana: Facts Parents Need To Know.” NIDA. Jan. 2003. 29 Nov. 2004.
“Marijuana Myths & Facts.” Office of National Drug Control Policy. Nov. 2004. 11 Nov. 2004.
“National Drug Threat Assesment 2004.” NationalDrugIntelligenceCenter. April. 2004. 11 Nov. 2004.
“National Drug Threat Assesment 2004: Threat Matrix.” Department of Justice. April. 2004. 11 Nov. 2004.
Stephan, J. James. “State Prison Expenditures.” Department of Justice. June. 2004. 11 Nov. 2004.
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[Frank_Happy]

It begins and ends with appetite. This war on drugs is nothing more than the schoolyard bully principle played out in the big picture. Legislation surfaces which chokes out small businesses that once provided a means of recreation, so naturally, medication grows to fill the vaccum. The self-appointed people in power with the money on their side realize this and conjure up more legislation fueled by propaganda and rigged experimental results to make such medication unlawful and punishable by mostly debt. As we all know, more money is ultimately spent on the war on drugs than made. So if dope use is not declining steadily, and the war on such is only creating a deficit, the only logical reason why it has not been repealed is because some sorry-assed imbezzelors are fattening their pockets off of the rape and slaughter of innocent heads like myself and the financial torture of overworked and underpaid taxpayers. It's an exercise in futility for everyone except the heads cause we'll never stop and the politicians because they'll never stop making money.