Featured LePage Might Bring In National Guard To Deal With Drugs

"Steal a little," wrote Bob Dylan, "they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you a king." These days, he might recraft the line to read: deal a little dope, they throw you in jail; launder the narco billions, they'll make you apologise to the US Senate.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/21/drug-cartels-banks-hsbc-money-laundering

The number of people murdered in the drug war inside the United States between 2006 and 2010 exceeds the US-troop death toll in the Iraq War since it was launched in 2003, according to a Narco News analysis of FBI crime statistics.

The US drug-war homicide tally also is nearly three times greater than the number of US soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the first shots were fired in that war in 2001, the Narco News analysis shows.

And that US drug-war murder total — nearly 5,700 people cut down on US soil over the 5-year period examined by Narco News — very likely undercounts significantly the extent of the bloodshed.

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The hardened attitude exhibited by Vice President Biden with respect to the notion of ever considering drug legalization is a bit mind-boggling in light of the CRS report. How can he, or anyone in the pro drug-war camp, know whether adopting an alternative to prohibition would result in a better or worse fate for the country, if we as a nation don’t even measure the effects, in terms of crime and death, of the current, hugely expensive and bellicose approach?

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2012/03/drug-war-related-homicides-us-average-least-1100-year

Last week, the Mexican government released new data showing that between 2007 and 2014 — a period that accounts for some of the bloodiest years of the nation’s war against the drug cartels — more than 164,000 people were victims of homicide. Nearly 20,000 died last year alone, a substantial number, but still a decrease from the 27,000 killed at the peak of fighting in 2011.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/drug-lord/the-staggering-death-toll-of-mexicos-drug-war/

 

Still no response from the Rev or RD2 . . .

The War On Drugs At A Glance

8 percent of U.S. high school students have used illegal drugs by graduation. (13)

Teens say obtaining illegal marijuana is easier than buying legal, controlled and age-regulated beer. (14)

National drug control spending on harsh enforcement strategies grew by 69.7 percent over the past nine years, while spending on treatment and prevention only grew by 13.9 percent. While President Obama often talks about drug abuse as a health – and not just a crime – issue, his administration reports that federal resources devoted to supply-reduction efforts (arrests, punishment and eradication) are now nearly double those for demand-reduction programs (such as treatment and prevention). (15)

Conservative estimates say that legalizing and regulating drugs could boost the U.S. economy by $88 billion a year in law enforcement savings and new tax revenue. (16)

Three out of four American voters say the “war on drugs” is a failure. (17)

In a survey by the National Association of Chiefs of Police, 82 percent of police chiefs and sheriffs said that the “war on drugs” has not been successful in reducing drug use. (18)

According to a Gallup poll, 46 percent of Americans now favor legalizing marijuana, the largest amount of support in the firm’s over 40 years of asking the question. (19)

Other polls show that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now support legalizing and taxing marijuana. (20)

In 2010, over 4.6 million Californians (46.5% of the midterm electorate) voted for a statewide marijuana legalization ballot initiative. (21)

African Americans, 13 percent of the U.S. population, (22) proportionately account for 13 percent of the nation’s drug users, (23) but are 34 percent of those arrested for drug offenses (24) and 45 percent of those held in state prisons for drug offenses. (25)

On average, it costs $25,251 to incarcerate a federal prisoner for one year. (26)

There are at least 346,605 people serving sentences in state and federal prisons for drug possession or sales in the U.S. (including more than half the entire federal inmate population). (27)

http://www.leap.cc/for-the-media/the-war-on-drugs-at-a-glance/

 

LEAP's Peter Christ at the St Albans Rotary

Captain Peter Christ (ret.), co-founder of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) brings his powerful yet entertaining critique of the War on Drugs to the St. Albans, VT Rotary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDCf-Et2_Mc

 

What if a mother of two children gets blind drunk, falls down the stairs and dies from a broken neck leaving her two children motherless?

Shouldn't we outlaw alcohol? Or maybe even having stairs in your house should be outlawed.

What if a mother of two kids smokes two packs of cigarettes a day gets cancer and dies leaving behind two kids without a mother?

Shouldn't we outlaw cigarettes?

What if an obese mother of two children dies from a heart attack because of her weight leaving two motherless children behind?

Do we ban obesity or bad eating habits?

If we're going to enact laws meant to protect us from ourselves and our own bad decisions where does it end?