I fail to understand how anyone can stand up and defend the rights of the drug cartels to sell their wares to anyone, anywhere without so much as quality controls or age restrictions, but that is exactly what drug war promoters do.
They fight to maintain the illegality of these substances, so they can be sold to kids by criminals who just do not care. Legalization, or more accurately, regulation gave Americans control of liquor after alcohol prohibition failed and regulation will give Americans control of drugs when our politicians realize that they are acting as lobbyists for the drug cartels by demanding drugs remain illegal and under the control of criminals.
There are three kinds of people who want drugs to remain illegal, those who make and sell them, those who try to catch them, and politicians who make empty promises as they ride the gravy train. All criminals in their own right, bedfellows, to say the least. The symbiotic relationship between criminals, law enforcement and politicians is a grotesque distortion of the principals of law and order. Each relying on the other for vast sources of revenue, or the political patronage it affords them. Admittedly, most police officers and politicians are mere victims of a handful of proselytizing moralists engaged in a “great national crusade” to rehabilitate, remoralize, reprogram and failing that, incarcerate anyone not sharing their moral views of drug use.
Only when police officers and politicians leave office can they speak without fear of an almost evangelical retribution against them. Legalization does not require a surrender of moral beliefs that drug use is bad or wrong, nor does it impart societal approval of the use of drugs. It does require an admission that prohibition has failed to halt or even substantially reduce drug use and it requires an effective regulatory model designed to reduce to a minimum, the harms associated with drug use.
Jim White 2053 Grange St. Oregon OH 43618-1041
