This is important. Get Educated.
I have compiled 20 facts about our failing War on Drugs. These facts are shocking. Something is very wrong is this country. Shit is broken and needs to be fixed.
We would rather jail our citizens than try and help them. We would rather keep our citizens poor with a minimum wage which is less than half of the living wage.
Our capitalistic, greedy, racist, mega-conglomerate run nation is divided more now than ever and it is up to our generation to change things as we grow. The government operates on keeping it's citizens afraid.
The War on Drugs is a reliable stand by for any politician who needs to boost support or rally the Christians (or southerners -- usually one and the same) behind him. It is all bullshit.
Corruption runs through every level.
The minorities are profiled, harassed, jailed, and then taught new criminal skills while locked up. The Big Tobacco companies and the Big Alcohol companies target the inner city youth with advertising campaigns featuring Malibu Rum and Newport cigarettes. They put a damn liquor store on every corner and even sell individual cigs. Feed the addiction.
These two DRUGS kill nearly 4 times more citizens each years than every other banned substance on the DEA's schedule structure and all homicides, suicides, car crashes, and microbial agents.
But the tobacco and alcohol Lobbyists in Washington make damn sure that they can continue to supply the country with their prevalent addictions. They bribe which ever congress men or senators they can, and make damn sure that the "dangerous drug" Marijuana stays banned.
Marijuana has NEVER killed a person in all of recorded time in the USA. But since it is competition to Philip Morris and Budweiser they make damn sure that our UNJUST Prohibition laws stay in effect. Keeping drugs illegal is actually making them more alluring to our nations youth. The proof is in the facts of countries like the Netherlands (see below)
Well, Im rambling and I need to crash. But please... I feel very strongly about this topic of anti-prohibition. It has nothing to do with wanting to do drugs or to have access to them. Numerous studies have shown that it IS NOT hard to find drugs. It has everything to do with taking the profitability out of the underground market of drug sales; ending the violence caused by rival dealers territory, ending the high incarceration rate for simple possession of a substance 10,000 times less harmful than a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka, and restoring all of out rightful civil liberties which are stomped on by greedy, corrupt law enforcement and all branches of government. And this is not to mention the fact that is the government controlled the production and distribution of substances they could guarantee purity and people would not as easily die of "hotshot"'s of Heroin like Bradley Knowell of Sublime. Additionally, the government could tax and monitor the amount of each substance on a case by case basis. This would bring in more revenue, to help schools and even to help people with treatment.
Why is it that an alcoholic is seen as a person with a disease who needs assistance but a recreational drug user is seen as an addict who should be thrown in jail, to be beaten and raped by other inmates? Isn't alcohol just another substance people use to escape reality? Alcohol increases rates of murder, domestic abuse, sexual assault, car crashes, and acute poisoning. While a person with some marijuana, designer drug, or even something "harder" is usually calm, or in a positive state of mind all night till he or she makes it safely home.
Now I know there are exceptions to everything but I am just stating a general truth and trying to point out some key contradictions to all this bullshit that we call our nations "Drug Policy." Where "white collar" rules, and the kid with the silver spoon in his mouth (that he just freebased with) is likely to get no jail time if caught because of his daddies position (and fat wallet) in society. While another kid, on the other side of town, is getting sentenced 3 years for a smaller amount of crack because he happens to black and was pulled over for a bullshit traffic stop and was unconstitutionally searched by the police. It happens everyday. We need to make changes. We need to take baby steps in the right direction, and it all starts with educating yourself on the issue.
Now I am not pretending I know all the answers, but I sure as fuck know all the damn problems. and im tired of it. We WILL hit a breaking point.
1. According to the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, federal
spending on the drug war in 2001 totaled $18.095 Billion, rising to
$18.822 Billion in 2002 and $19.179 Billion for 2003.
2. Dr. Dennis Rosenbaum, a professor at the University of Illinois at
Chicago, completed a six-year study of 1,798 students and found that
“DARE had no long-term effects on a wide range of drug use measures”;
DARE does not “prevent drug use at the stage in adolescent development
when drugs become available and are widely used, namely during the
high school years”; and that DARE may actually be counter productive.
According to the study, “there is some evidence of a boomerang effect
among suburban kids. That is, suburban students who were DARE
graduates scored higher than suburban students in the Control group on all
four major drug use measures.”
3. It costs approximately $8.6 billion a year to keep drug law violators
behind bars.
4. The international illicit drug business generates asmuch as $400 billion in
trade annually according to the UnitedNations InternationalDrug Control
Program. That amounts to 8 all international trade and is comparable
to the annual turnover in textiles, according to the study.
5. According to the federal Household Survey, there are more than 48
million Americans who use alcohol an average of one or more days each
week of the year. This is more than the combined total number of
Americans who have ever tried cocaine, crack, and/or heroin (29.7
million), and two and a half times the number of Americans who have
used marijuana once in the last year (18.7 million).
6. According to the United Nations, profits in illegal drugs are so inflated,
that three-quarters of all drug shipments would have to be intercepted
to seriously reduce the profitability of the business. Current efforts
only intercept 13%f heroin shipments and 28% of cocaine
shipments. (*At most; the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime
Prevention notes that estimates of production and total supply are
probably understated by reporting governments.)
7. For more than 4 in 10 convicted murderers being held either in jail or in
State prison, alcohol use is reported to have been a factor in the crime.
Nearly half of those convicted of assault and sentenced to probation
had been drinking when the offense occurred.
8. “Our criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner
that is massively and pervasively biased. The injustices of the criminal
justice system threaten to render irrelevant fifty years of hard-fought
civil rights progress.”
9. “The racially disproportionate nature of the war on drugs is not just
devastating to black Americans. It contradicts faith in the principles of
justice and equal protection of the laws that should be the bedrock of
any constitutional democracy; it exposes and deepens the racial fault
lines that continue to weaken the country and belies its promise as a
land of equal opportunity; and it undermines faith among all races in
the fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system. Urgent action is
needed, at both the state and federal level, to address this crisis for the
American nation.”
10. According to the United Nations, illegal drugs create enormous profits-
in 2001, a kilogram of heroin in Pakistan sold for an average of $610.
In the US in 2001, heroin cost an average of $25,000 per kilogram, and
at street-level, an average of $55 per gram.
11. A report by the General Accounting Office notes, “...several studies
and investigations of drug-related police corruption found on-duty
police officers engaged in serious criminal activities, such as (1)
conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures; (2) stealing money
and/or drugs from drug dealers; (3) selling stolen drugs; (4) protecting
drug operations; (5) providing false testimony; and (6) submitting false
crime reports.”
12. “Most drug offenders are white. Five times as many whites use drugs as
blacks. But blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to
prison. The solution to this racial inequity is not to incarcerate more
whites, but to reduce the use of prison for low-level drug offenders and to
increase the availability of substance abuse treatment.”
13. According to the federal Household Survey, “most current illicit drug
users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent
of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics
(10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998.” And yet,
blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drugviolations and over
42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans
comprise almost 57% of those in state prisons for drug felonies;
Hispanics account for 17.2%.
14. “The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world,
some 686 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by the
Cayman Islands (664), Russia (638), Belarus (554), Kazakhstan (522),
Turkmenistan (489), Belize (459), Bahamas (447), Suriname (437) and
Dominica (420).
“However, more than three-fifths of countries (62.5have rates below
150 per 100,000. (The United Kingdom’s rate of 139 per 100,000 of the
national population places it above the midpoint in the World List; it is
now the highest among countries of the European Union.)”
15. Although people may think that the Drug War targets drug smugglers
and ‘King Pins,’ in 2002, 45.3 percent of the 1,538,813 total arrests for
drug abuse violations were for marijuana - a total of 697,082. Of
those, 613,986 people were arrested for possession alone. This is a
slight decrease from 2000, when a total of 734,497 Americans were
arrested for marijuana offenses, of which 646,042 were for possession
alone. Marijuana Arrests and Total Drug Arrests in the US.
16. In New Orleans, 11 police officers were convicted of accepting nearly
$100,000 from undercover agents to protect a cocaine supply
warehouse containing 286 pounds of cocaine. The undercover portion
of the investigation was terminated when a witness was killed under
orders from a New Orleans police officer.
17. Of the 1,538,813 arrests for drug law violations in 2002, 80.3%(1,235,667) were for possession of a controlled substance. Only 19.7%(303,146) were for the sale or manufacture of a drug.
18. It is estimated that the United States spends $1 billion annually to drug
test about 20 million workers.(Which equals an average 30,000 per positive identification of a drug, which is ususally only Marijuana)
19. One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 years old is
under correctional supervision or control.
20. One reason drug testing is not used by some employers is the cost. One
electronics manufacturer estimated that the cost of finding each
positive result was $20,000. After testing 10,000 employees he only
found 49 positive results. A congressional committee estimated that
the cost of each positive in government testing was $77,000 because
the positive rate was only 0.5.
We would rather jail our citizens than try and help them. We would rather keep our citizens poor with a minimum wage which is less than half of the living wage.
Our capitalistic, greedy, racist, mega-conglomerate run nation is divided more now than ever and it is up to our generation to change things as we grow. The government operates on keeping it's citizens afraid.
The War on Drugs is a reliable stand by for any politician who needs to boost support or rally the Christians (or southerners -- usually one and the same) behind him. It is all bullshit.
Corruption runs through every level.
The minorities are profiled, harassed, jailed, and then taught new criminal skills while locked up. The Big Tobacco companies and the Big Alcohol companies target the inner city youth with advertising campaigns featuring Malibu Rum and Newport cigarettes. They put a damn liquor store on every corner and even sell individual cigs. Feed the addiction.
These two DRUGS kill nearly 4 times more citizens each years than every other banned substance on the DEA's schedule structure and all homicides, suicides, car crashes, and microbial agents.
But the tobacco and alcohol Lobbyists in Washington make damn sure that they can continue to supply the country with their prevalent addictions. They bribe which ever congress men or senators they can, and make damn sure that the "dangerous drug" Marijuana stays banned.
Marijuana has NEVER killed a person in all of recorded time in the USA. But since it is competition to Philip Morris and Budweiser they make damn sure that our UNJUST Prohibition laws stay in effect. Keeping drugs illegal is actually making them more alluring to our nations youth. The proof is in the facts of countries like the Netherlands (see below)
Well, Im rambling and I need to crash. But please... I feel very strongly about this topic of anti-prohibition. It has nothing to do with wanting to do drugs or to have access to them. Numerous studies have shown that it IS NOT hard to find drugs. It has everything to do with taking the profitability out of the underground market of drug sales; ending the violence caused by rival dealers territory, ending the high incarceration rate for simple possession of a substance 10,000 times less harmful than a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka, and restoring all of out rightful civil liberties which are stomped on by greedy, corrupt law enforcement and all branches of government. And this is not to mention the fact that is the government controlled the production and distribution of substances they could guarantee purity and people would not as easily die of "hotshot"'s of Heroin like Bradley Knowell of Sublime. Additionally, the government could tax and monitor the amount of each substance on a case by case basis. This would bring in more revenue, to help schools and even to help people with treatment.
Why is it that an alcoholic is seen as a person with a disease who needs assistance but a recreational drug user is seen as an addict who should be thrown in jail, to be beaten and raped by other inmates? Isn't alcohol just another substance people use to escape reality? Alcohol increases rates of murder, domestic abuse, sexual assault, car crashes, and acute poisoning. While a person with some marijuana, designer drug, or even something "harder" is usually calm, or in a positive state of mind all night till he or she makes it safely home.
Now I know there are exceptions to everything but I am just stating a general truth and trying to point out some key contradictions to all this bullshit that we call our nations "Drug Policy." Where "white collar" rules, and the kid with the silver spoon in his mouth (that he just freebased with) is likely to get no jail time if caught because of his daddies position (and fat wallet) in society. While another kid, on the other side of town, is getting sentenced 3 years for a smaller amount of crack because he happens to black and was pulled over for a bullshit traffic stop and was unconstitutionally searched by the police. It happens everyday. We need to make changes. We need to take baby steps in the right direction, and it all starts with educating yourself on the issue.
Now I am not pretending I know all the answers, but I sure as fuck know all the damn problems. and im tired of it. We WILL hit a breaking point.
1. According to the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, federal
spending on the drug war in 2001 totaled $18.095 Billion, rising to
$18.822 Billion in 2002 and $19.179 Billion for 2003.
2. Dr. Dennis Rosenbaum, a professor at the University of Illinois at
Chicago, completed a six-year study of 1,798 students and found that
“DARE had no long-term effects on a wide range of drug use measures”;
DARE does not “prevent drug use at the stage in adolescent development
when drugs become available and are widely used, namely during the
high school years”; and that DARE may actually be counter productive.
According to the study, “there is some evidence of a boomerang effect
among suburban kids. That is, suburban students who were DARE
graduates scored higher than suburban students in the Control group on all
four major drug use measures.”
3. It costs approximately $8.6 billion a year to keep drug law violators
behind bars.
4. The international illicit drug business generates asmuch as $400 billion in
trade annually according to the UnitedNations InternationalDrug Control
Program. That amounts to 8 all international trade and is comparable
to the annual turnover in textiles, according to the study.
5. According to the federal Household Survey, there are more than 48
million Americans who use alcohol an average of one or more days each
week of the year. This is more than the combined total number of
Americans who have ever tried cocaine, crack, and/or heroin (29.7
million), and two and a half times the number of Americans who have
used marijuana once in the last year (18.7 million).
6. According to the United Nations, profits in illegal drugs are so inflated,
that three-quarters of all drug shipments would have to be intercepted
to seriously reduce the profitability of the business. Current efforts
only intercept 13%f heroin shipments and 28% of cocaine
shipments. (*At most; the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime
Prevention notes that estimates of production and total supply are
probably understated by reporting governments.)
7. For more than 4 in 10 convicted murderers being held either in jail or in
State prison, alcohol use is reported to have been a factor in the crime.
Nearly half of those convicted of assault and sentenced to probation
had been drinking when the offense occurred.
8. “Our criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner
that is massively and pervasively biased. The injustices of the criminal
justice system threaten to render irrelevant fifty years of hard-fought
civil rights progress.”
9. “The racially disproportionate nature of the war on drugs is not just
devastating to black Americans. It contradicts faith in the principles of
justice and equal protection of the laws that should be the bedrock of
any constitutional democracy; it exposes and deepens the racial fault
lines that continue to weaken the country and belies its promise as a
land of equal opportunity; and it undermines faith among all races in
the fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system. Urgent action is
needed, at both the state and federal level, to address this crisis for the
American nation.”
10. According to the United Nations, illegal drugs create enormous profits-
in 2001, a kilogram of heroin in Pakistan sold for an average of $610.
In the US in 2001, heroin cost an average of $25,000 per kilogram, and
at street-level, an average of $55 per gram.
11. A report by the General Accounting Office notes, “...several studies
and investigations of drug-related police corruption found on-duty
police officers engaged in serious criminal activities, such as (1)
conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures; (2) stealing money
and/or drugs from drug dealers; (3) selling stolen drugs; (4) protecting
drug operations; (5) providing false testimony; and (6) submitting false
crime reports.”
12. “Most drug offenders are white. Five times as many whites use drugs as
blacks. But blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to
prison. The solution to this racial inequity is not to incarcerate more
whites, but to reduce the use of prison for low-level drug offenders and to
increase the availability of substance abuse treatment.”
13. According to the federal Household Survey, “most current illicit drug
users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent
of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics
(10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998.” And yet,
blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drugviolations and over
42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans
comprise almost 57% of those in state prisons for drug felonies;
Hispanics account for 17.2%.
14. “The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world,
some 686 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by the
Cayman Islands (664), Russia (638), Belarus (554), Kazakhstan (522),
Turkmenistan (489), Belize (459), Bahamas (447), Suriname (437) and
Dominica (420).
“However, more than three-fifths of countries (62.5have rates below
150 per 100,000. (The United Kingdom’s rate of 139 per 100,000 of the
national population places it above the midpoint in the World List; it is
now the highest among countries of the European Union.)”
15. Although people may think that the Drug War targets drug smugglers
and ‘King Pins,’ in 2002, 45.3 percent of the 1,538,813 total arrests for
drug abuse violations were for marijuana - a total of 697,082. Of
those, 613,986 people were arrested for possession alone. This is a
slight decrease from 2000, when a total of 734,497 Americans were
arrested for marijuana offenses, of which 646,042 were for possession
alone. Marijuana Arrests and Total Drug Arrests in the US.
16. In New Orleans, 11 police officers were convicted of accepting nearly
$100,000 from undercover agents to protect a cocaine supply
warehouse containing 286 pounds of cocaine. The undercover portion
of the investigation was terminated when a witness was killed under
orders from a New Orleans police officer.
17. Of the 1,538,813 arrests for drug law violations in 2002, 80.3%(1,235,667) were for possession of a controlled substance. Only 19.7%(303,146) were for the sale or manufacture of a drug.
18. It is estimated that the United States spends $1 billion annually to drug
test about 20 million workers.(Which equals an average 30,000 per positive identification of a drug, which is ususally only Marijuana)
19. One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 years old is
under correctional supervision or control.
20. One reason drug testing is not used by some employers is the cost. One
electronics manufacturer estimated that the cost of finding each
positive result was $20,000. After testing 10,000 employees he only
found 49 positive results. A congressional committee estimated that
the cost of each positive in government testing was $77,000 because
the positive rate was only 0.5.