To clear up confusion after lies re: Chavez and the "war on drugs":

[duhneece]

12. I confess, mine, too

I went to the past two International Drug Policy Reform Conferences and hope to attend this October. They have scholarships-apply!
www.reformconference.org/

I live 100 miles north of ground-zero of the War on Drugs, Juarez Mexico and grew up in El Paso Tx, right across the border.
For my job as Administrative Coordinator of the Behavioral Health Local Collaborative, I just arranged for a LEAP speaker & got our program video recorded and a good article in the newspaper. And, the past 4 years, we've had an ANTI-Drug-war booth at our local county fair with lots of LEAP t-shirts and Drug Policy Alliance and other resources.
The newspaper article:
Newton says drug war failing
Alamogordo Daily News
By Duane Barbati, Staff Writer
Posted: 01/15/2013 09:45:03 PM MST


Retired Customs and Border Protection pilot Richard Newton spoke last week about the "War on Drugs" at the Behavioral Health Local Collaborative at the Counseling Center.
Newton is a speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime and addiction by ending drug prohibition, according to LEAP's website http://leap.cc.
According to their website, LEAP's goals are to educate the public, media and policy makers about the failure of current drug policy by presenting a true picture of the history, causes and effects of drug use and the elevated crime rates more properly related to drug prohibition than to drug pharmacology. It also aims to restore the public's respect for police, which has been greatly diminished by law enforcement's involvement in imposing drug prohibition.
LEAP advocates for the repeal of prohibition and its replacement with a tight system of legalized regulation, which will effectively cripple the violent cartels and street dealers who control the illegal market, the website states.
Newton said he first started looking at the drug policies in the United States after he was involved in a drug bust in the 1980s of about 1,000 kilos of cocaine in Puerto Rico.
"It had an estimated street value of around $80 million," he said. "It didn't effect the price of coke by a penny, ever. We can't keep drugs out of prisons much less this whole country. I came to realize there are better ways to spend the money than prohibition. I got into LEAP about the time I retired."
Newton said he believes people don't realize how long the U.S. has been involved in the "War on Drugs."
"Nixon started the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1971," he said. "Before he started the DEA, there was a government commission. They actually recommended marijuana be legalized, saying the money being spent on law enforcement could go better into counseling. The quote from the commission basically stated that marijuana usage doesn't harm society."
Newton said Nixon totally ignored the recommendation of the committee and started DEA.
"We've been in the drug war for over 41 years," he said. "We've spent over $1 trillion. In 1971, when Nixon started this, drug addiction was 1.3 percent of the population. The United States passed its first drug control law in 1904 with 1.3 percent of the population addicted. Last year, drug addiction was 1.3 percent of the general population. In 1970, a public survey estimated 4 million had admitted to using illegal drugs."
Newton said in 1970 the U.S. population was about 210 million people.
"Now its about 340 million with 46 percent of the population," he said. "The drug war has made it glamorous. State and federal governments spend about $60 to $70 billion. That includes enforcement, stuff on the border and a little bit of treatment but not very much. If we taxed marijuana at the same rates as cigarettes and tobacco, we would generate about $40 billion in tax revenue. It's about $110 billion a year."
Newton said the U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the prison population of the world.
"Half of the population in federal prison are there because of just smoking marijuana," he said. "We don't know that marijuana specifically is harmless, but what we do know is that prohibition does not work, which is our present legal basic policy. It didn't work in the 1920s with alcohol."
Newton said alcohol prohibition in the 1920s basically gave the country gangs, disrespect for authority and organized crime.
"Drug prohibition in the last 40 years has given us basically the same thing," he said.
http://www.alamogordonews.com/alamogordo-news/ci_22382249/newton-says-drug-war-failing

I pray we are approaching that tipping point where the nightmare will be over.