Is it any wonder why children, by the time they are teenagers, do not trust what parents and society has taught them over the years? This includes matters on religion, relationships, sex and of course drugs. We teach by lying. We teach by contradiction. And we teach by ignoring the reality of the situations we face largely due to the denial our societal mental state is currently engaged in. America is on a war on drugs (war on terrorism, war on immigration, blah, blah, blah) fought on many different battlefronts over the course of many years with the same dismal failures over and over. The "war" is mis-guided and mis-managed. It has gotten so bad that recently former federal attorney and republican conservative congressman, Bob Barr, has taken over the fight for the National Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) as its lobbyist representing the organization to change laws effecting the sale and distribution of marijuana. Why has he done this? Maybe because the current policy is flawed ( nice word for stupid).
Of course I believe we should legalize marijuana for many reason I will highlight the resaon later on this blog. These observations and conclusions I arrived at after many years of seeing a far reaching government use drug laws to manipulate our behaviour. I am no expert merely a human observer caught in the process.
Over the last 80 years the government and the established morality organizations have fought the onslaught of drugs by imposing various tactics into our society. In the early years fear was used as the primary weapon of choice to combat the use of drugs. Movies, such as "Reefeer Maddness" (1930s) were used to scare the beejesus out of users smoking. Their kids would be abnormal, their brains would be fried and you would lose your mind! As we fast forward to today we realize it is the food supply that is doing this to us today being provided by the same people supposedly protecting us. I am not a conspiracy theorist but....
When fear did not abate the import and use of drugs the tactic switched to brute force enforcement and confiscation of personal property protected by the Constitution. Jails to this day are being filled with pot smokers and allowing hardened criminals to go free due to overcrowding. Drug bail can be much higher than those for murder. Where are our priorities? We continue to use these tactics when they should be fighting terrorism and resources are constrained. This again has done little to combat drugs and use continues to rise.
The next move was the ethical right. Somehow in our society drug use became a moral and ethical issue. Somehow against the will of God, herself! All the pulpits across America could now preach about the immorality of drugs. I am sure it can be argued God would prefer a believer live and worship with pure mind and body. But come on, does anyone do this? We slaughter our bodies with foods made wholly from chemicals, we slaughter our environment with gases and waste, and our humanity through war and power mongering. In America you can lose your children if you have a joint in the house but a raging drunk will be put in bed to sleep it off. You are allowed at a church picnic with a fine bottle of wine with no questions asked but substitute a joint in its place and you are hauled off to jail and now considered somehow more evil than with the bottle of wine, a far more dangerous drug. People that drink do not believe they are doing drugs. Yet alcohol is a very dangerous drug with known outcomes. It is the same as parents that send their children to public school do not believe they are using a welfare program from the government.
So we have fear, aggression, and morality as tools against drugs and yet none of them are working. Why? Why do we spend billions with Mexico and Columbia to fight the war on drugs when we hardly make a dent? why do we send thousands of our youth to prison? Why do we budget resources for drug fighting when they are limited and precious and instead should be used for fighting terrorism? I believe that our officers in local and border enforcement are great individuals, true heroes doing a difficult and dangerous job. It is our politicians that have failed us in this so called war. Why isn't it working? Why is demand being measured in percentages rather then actual numbers? Why are our children mistrustful of us? More to come later.....
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