Whenever I hear someone say "I've never done drugs, never will" I find it commendable and humorous at the same time, especially if we're chatting over that cup of coffee full of caffeine, or they're enjoying a drink of wine with dinner.
A drug is a drug. Alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, all are drugs.
In my personal life I remain abstinent from alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and most other addictive substances. I'm one of those people who fit the description, "one's too many, a thousand's never enough."
Been there, done that, "operation moderation" was never successful.
I've made my decision on how I'll vote on Prop 19 in November.
Until today I believed that was a fully informed decision, I was proven wrong.
This morning I stumbled upon Alternet's pop quiz, "How Much Do You Really Know About Drugs and the Drug War?"
The privilege of voting comes along with the responsibility of an informed vote, so while this quiz is entertaining it provides useful information.
California may be the only state voting on the legalization of a drug other than alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, but what happens here in November will hopefully be a first step in our country acknowledging that criminalizing one particular drug is not, and never will be, effective in a "war" on drugs.
I strongly urge you totake the quiz. It covers some well known and not so well known facts:
• Blacks use and sell drugs at the same rate as whites but go to jail at 13 times the rates of whites. Drug use doesn't discriminate, but our drug policies do!
• Syringe exchange programs, safe injection sites and prescribed heroin are all effective at reducing HIV and overdoses,and are policies supported by many other countries, but U.S. elected officials don't have the courage to even open the debate on these life saving strategies!
• Legalize marijuana and you will make it harder for young folks to get weed (according to government data, teens say it is easier to get weed than alcohol - and dealers don't card), you will take profits from drug cartels in Mexico, you will raise over a billion dollars by taxing it, and you will reduce the disturbing racial disparities in marijuana enforcement (see #8). Come on CALI!
My vote was going to be a resounding "yes" on Prop 19, and it still will be, but now it will be an even more informed vote.
I would like to thank the following Conservatives forweighing in on this over the years:
P.J. O'Rourke:
"Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. ... Prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."
William Buckeley:
Conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. once argued in a National Review column that conservatives should resist their tendency to embrace tradition, and instead embrace marijuana policy reform in the name of self-determination.
"Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one," he once wrote to self-proclaimed moralist and then-drug czar William Bennett in a 1990 letter, "must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence."
George Schultz:
Reagan administration Secretary of State George Shultz, like Friedman, has long argued that prohibition does nothing more than foster an environment for a violent, illegal drug market to thrive.
If you took the quiz you know why I've included this, if you haven't I just gave you a big clue to one of the answers.
Legalization of marijuana is an issue that Liberals such as Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Howard Zinn, had in common with Conservatives William F. Buckley, Jr., Milton Friedman, and George Schultz
source: LEAP
High time Liberals and Conservatives agreed on something.
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