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Norman Lambert: Drug laws hurt more than help
March 14, 2014
What does the death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman tell us about life in our United States of America in 2014? Everyone seems to concentrate upon the loss of a gifted actor to the ravages of drug addiction. Lost in all of this I sense there is a back story.
It appears that our rapacious appetite for illegal drugs here in the United States has almost single-handedly wrecked the rural economies of Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala.
Growing, processing and shipping drugs to the U.S., bribing local officials, and killing anyone who stands in their way is how business is done by the drug cartels.
So we send money and arms to our neighbors to the south to stop the flow of drugs, and they become as addicted to that as we are to the drugs that still come streaming through to us, regardless of how we all try to stop them.
All of this is being done to help a giant nation fight a "War on Drugs" that was ill-conceived in the beginning, and followed the same blend of childish, wishful thinking as Prohibition did back in the 1920s.
So, when will we grow up and make drugs such as heroin and marijuana legal? Alcohol is readily available even though we know that there are millions of addicts (alcoholics) and that over imbibing and drunken driving kill people all over the nation everyday.
Let's face it, there are thousands of drug addicts out there right now. Many are using dirty needles (passing on a variety of horrible diseases). Is legalizing drugs going to suddenly make us a nation of addicts? I doubt it. National statistics actually tell us that per capita alcohol consumption has been dropping over the last 100 years.
Hoffman was a very well-to-do young man, who through the years was able to purchase the illegal drugs he desired on the streets of New York whenever he needed them. This is somewhat akin to the crime of prostitution.
Who is more culpable, the john or the prostitute? Did the drug dealers search out Mr. Hoffman and addict him to heroin or did Mr. Hoffman addict himself to heroin and then solicit dealers to satisfy his addiction to heroin?
A larger question for the public to address is one of skin color. Mr. Hoffman was white, as was a young television actor who recently died of an overdose, as was an English female singer who also died of an overdose. Three white skinned people, well known, and addicted. All three more than likely began using drugs as a form of recreation, a way to unwind, to loosen up after the tensions of a stress-filled professional life.
Why is it that when young black and brown men living in the ghetto or barrio use drugs to escape the tensions of living in their surroundings, we find them to be evil doers and send them to jail? I rather suspect that the stress that they live under every day is more than Hoffman ever experienced, but I'm not sure of that.
The point is, our prisons are full of black and brown men serving time on nonviolent drug charges. So full that we rank higher than any other industrialized nation for the percentage of our citizens in prison.
Young white males who are picked up by the police for marijuana and minor drug charges are generally not given jail time. They have the resources to retain lawyers. They have parents to stand up for them. They usually have jobs or are in school and thus have strong roots in the community and warrant being shown leniency. The young brown or black man from the heart of a poverty stricken area probably has no job because there are none to be had, probably has only a single parent and doesn't present a very good risk for the judge to send him back into the neighborhood.
At least for starters, we could get over the nonsense about marijuana. It's legal in this state, not that one, it's not legal for the feds, but it's legal in this county, not that one. Really, isn't that a little bit inane?
Actually, the "War on Drugs" — started by President Richard M. Nixon in 1971 — is becoming more than difficult to justify. Maybe it's time to have a national discussion about where we're going with it and consider the billions of dollars that we have wasted on it to date.
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/03/14/3823003/drug-laws-hurt-more-than-help.html#storylink=cpy
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I will just keep posting the truth till things change
March 14, 2014
What does the death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman tell us about life in our United States of America in 2014? Everyone seems to concentrate upon the loss of a gifted actor to the ravages of drug addiction. Lost in all of this I sense there is a back story.
It appears that our rapacious appetite for illegal drugs here in the United States has almost single-handedly wrecked the rural economies of Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala.
Growing, processing and shipping drugs to the U.S., bribing local officials, and killing anyone who stands in their way is how business is done by the drug cartels.
So we send money and arms to our neighbors to the south to stop the flow of drugs, and they become as addicted to that as we are to the drugs that still come streaming through to us, regardless of how we all try to stop them.
All of this is being done to help a giant nation fight a "War on Drugs" that was ill-conceived in the beginning, and followed the same blend of childish, wishful thinking as Prohibition did back in the 1920s.
So, when will we grow up and make drugs such as heroin and marijuana legal? Alcohol is readily available even though we know that there are millions of addicts (alcoholics) and that over imbibing and drunken driving kill people all over the nation everyday.
Let's face it, there are thousands of drug addicts out there right now. Many are using dirty needles (passing on a variety of horrible diseases). Is legalizing drugs going to suddenly make us a nation of addicts? I doubt it. National statistics actually tell us that per capita alcohol consumption has been dropping over the last 100 years.
Hoffman was a very well-to-do young man, who through the years was able to purchase the illegal drugs he desired on the streets of New York whenever he needed them. This is somewhat akin to the crime of prostitution.
Who is more culpable, the john or the prostitute? Did the drug dealers search out Mr. Hoffman and addict him to heroin or did Mr. Hoffman addict himself to heroin and then solicit dealers to satisfy his addiction to heroin?
A larger question for the public to address is one of skin color. Mr. Hoffman was white, as was a young television actor who recently died of an overdose, as was an English female singer who also died of an overdose. Three white skinned people, well known, and addicted. All three more than likely began using drugs as a form of recreation, a way to unwind, to loosen up after the tensions of a stress-filled professional life.
Why is it that when young black and brown men living in the ghetto or barrio use drugs to escape the tensions of living in their surroundings, we find them to be evil doers and send them to jail? I rather suspect that the stress that they live under every day is more than Hoffman ever experienced, but I'm not sure of that.
The point is, our prisons are full of black and brown men serving time on nonviolent drug charges. So full that we rank higher than any other industrialized nation for the percentage of our citizens in prison.
Young white males who are picked up by the police for marijuana and minor drug charges are generally not given jail time. They have the resources to retain lawyers. They have parents to stand up for them. They usually have jobs or are in school and thus have strong roots in the community and warrant being shown leniency. The young brown or black man from the heart of a poverty stricken area probably has no job because there are none to be had, probably has only a single parent and doesn't present a very good risk for the judge to send him back into the neighborhood.
At least for starters, we could get over the nonsense about marijuana. It's legal in this state, not that one, it's not legal for the feds, but it's legal in this county, not that one. Really, isn't that a little bit inane?
Actually, the "War on Drugs" — started by President Richard M. Nixon in 1971 — is becoming more than difficult to justify. Maybe it's time to have a national discussion about where we're going with it and consider the billions of dollars that we have wasted on it to date.
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/03/14/3823003/drug-laws-hurt-more-than-help.html#storylink=cpy
...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I will just keep posting the truth till things change
