We don't need war on drugs; we need a war on guns.
You know what happened to Richard Nixon's war on drugs, and Regans and Bushes' continuation of wasting federal dollars on penitentiaries and the so-called war?
In the new documentary-film Breaking Taboo, both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton point out the wastage of tax-payers' money on such theological projects. “President Reagan and his wife adopted the drug program as the No. 1 issue for her to proclaim. She had a phrase: Just say, ‘No,' ” Carter says in the film.
Do you see why it is much cooler to be a Left-Wing President? Can you imagine a sitting Right-Wing President articulating such views?
“It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it’s legal,” President Obama told Barbara Walters in an ABC interview.
A couple of days before that, Jimmy Carter told CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, “I’m in favor of it. I think it’s OK. [...]Actually, Carter has supported the decriminalization for a long time, "“When I was president, in 1979 I made my definitive speech about drugs and I called for the decriminalization of marijuana," "to keep people from being put in prison" just for lighting a recreational blunt.
The old man wisely noted criminalization of drugs (cannabis, peyotism, etc.) does not help, "All drugs were decriminalized in Portugal a few years ago and the use of drugs has gone down dramatically and nobody has been put in prison.”
And, yes it is far less harmful to support herbal life than to "cling to guns or religion." It is better to see people in slumbering alter states than see them gun-slinging, bleeding, and in acts of barbaric mass killing.
Here is a quick list of armed violence: Papal Crusades; Trail of Tears, 97.5% extermination of Native population on the basis of Manifest Destiny, Natural Rights, and Divine Rights; assassination of Lincoln, the two Kennedys and MLK and, in our time, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Columbine High School massacre, the Beltway sniper attacks, the Virginia Tech massacre, Tucson's Gabby Giffords Shooting, the Colorado Theater Shooting, and the Wisconsin Sikh Temple Shooting, and today Sandy Hook Elementary massacre.
Don't the Right-Wing often claim to be the sole defender of liberty and states' rights? Where are they today, busy defeating Disability Treaty, legislating against science, climate change, LGBT, immigrants, and other minorities, and busy institutionalizing discrimination and inequality of all sorts, in the Congress? Did not the Right Wing forget their pro-life life stance when they did not renew H.R. 3355, a 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, written by Joe Biden and signed by President Clinton, and the law ceased in 2004 due to its sunset provision?
Liberty aside, think of this whole thing as majority-rules democracy, since majority of Americans support legalization (51-44% in the Quinnipiac survey, and the new Gallup poll shows a whopping two-thirds are in favor of deferring the federal policing of herbs to state laws).
Back in 1959, when Gallup surveyed Americans first time on banning handguns, 60% opposed banning. Sadly after mid 70s, the opposition to gun control has strangely dwindled, reaching as low as 29% in 2011 October 6-9 poll by the same outfit. How insane is it to see 53% Americans in support of manufacturing, selling, and possessing assault rifles? Are these polls true? Have Americans really become more violent over the last 2-3 decades? If it is true, then the rest of the world have to be alarmed of the United States, instead of looking up to the "beacon of hope." However, I'd like to believe differently: It's got to do with poll manipulation through NRA-favored questionnaire or it could be a result of misinformation disseminated by the gun establishment and lobbyists' money or combination of both.
The question from objective pollsters should be:
Are you still that filthy human who lives off the bloodbath of innocent children and parents of Sandy Hook?
Are you one of those heartless, immoral, irrational creatures that ontologize life only in terms of guns and who would feel alive only when you have a gun in your hand and pull trigger indiscriminately at innocent lives?
Would you ever give up your guns to save these lives? What would it take for you to make that humane decision? What if the victims were your own children and family members?
Are you not a naive accomplice of gun violence by way of defending your rights to bear arms, and are you not a party in the commercial interpretation of Second Amendment so manufacturers can make more guns and more money?
Does it not show your blood-thirstiness, cowardliness, and mental bankruptcy when you argue for more guns as the master solution to all gun violence?
Equally disturbing, how did this happen in a country where close to 90% are religious people (at least that's what they say)? Do you follow or condone a religion of gun violence, the eye-for-eye commandment of your sacred Scripture?
Sources:
1. http://www.gallup.com/...
2. http://www.quinnipiac.edu/...
3. http://www.salon.com/...
4. http://thehill.com/...
5. http://www.breakingthetaboo.info/