Obama, Drugs and Everyone Else

[Karmadillo]

http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop.html?columnsName=fha

Obama, Drugs and Everyone Else
Froma Harrop

And so Barack Obama tells high school kids in New Hampshire that he "made some bad decisions" at their age. He "experimented" with pot and cocaine. This is old news — but even if it were new news, it would be ho-hum in today's politics.

After all, drug use has proven no bar to high office — at least for those who evaded arrest. Vice President Al Gore, ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have all admitted to smoking pot. President Bush refuses to deny that he snorted cocaine. And no one believes that Bill Clinton "didn't inhale" on that joint.

I would second the ho-hum, except for this: More than half a million Americans now rot in jail for nonviolent drug offenses, some not as bad as Obama's.

Out of humility and humanity, you'd think that the Illinois senator would use this teaching moment to say: "What we politicians call our 'youthful discretions' should not become life-destroying crimes for everyone else. Let's stop arresting drug users."

I don't wish to pile onto Obama, because most presidential candidates support this crashing hypocrisy called the "War on Drugs." The honorable exceptions are two Democrats, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, and Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

"You can get over an addiction, but you can never get over a conviction," Jack A. Cole, who spent 14 years as an undercover narcotics officer for the New Jersey State Police, told me. Cole now heads a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), ex-cops who oppose current drug policy.

more...

[Warpy]

1. In schools in the late 60s and early 70s

people who didn't at least try grass were considered too weird for words. It didn't matter if somebody tried it, said no thanks, and preferred beer. It's just something that was pervasive. I knew straight arrows who avoided all psychoactive substances including caffeine. They were friends, I liked them, but yeah, they were weird.

The main lie the drug war is based on is that anyone who tries pot will go on to hard drugs, and that anyone who goes on to a hard drug will become an addict.

The truth is that most kids stopped with alcohol and pot. The truth is that most of the kids who experimented with the harder stuff did not go on to become addicts, most experimented only once or twice and called it a day.

I knew people in the 60s who tried something hard and never wanted to do anything else with their lives the first time they tried it. I knew many, many more who tried it and just didn't get the point, "That's IT? That's why you're alienating everybody around you and throwing your life in the toilet? WHY?" I've had a long experience in health care watching people on the strongest opiates after extensive surgeries. After the first couple of days, they start to try to avoid the drugs as much as they can. It seems most of us just aren't that impressed with the buzz and would rather have a relatively clear head, even if it means putting up with pain. Only a handful have wanted their drugs on the three hour mark as long as they were in the hospital and could get them, a handful out of thousands.

The drug war is an expensive farce founded on lies and doomed to failure. We need to declare a loss and end it. It's destroyed too many lives.

[Berry Cool]

3. It's a shame that there's such a social stigma against people who don't at least try drugs.

If people who don't try drugs at least once are considered "too weird for words," what a shame. There really are some people who don't care to try something and it doesn't make them weird. It just makes them uninterested. Why should that make them weird?

And believe it or not, some of those people actually agree that is indeed a difference between experimentation and addiction. They think the excesses of the drug war are ridiculous, too.

[Annces]

4. Good post n/t

[Reno.Muse]

2. I agree. Drug courts are only designed to keep an army of cops, attorneys, judges

and probations officers employed and if the user fails, prison staff.