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Thursday, September 02, 2010
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Smart On Drugs Versus Tough On Drugs

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An update from a talk with Dr Steve about “how the drug war kills people rather than the drugs.”

The Dutch government and its people have proven for more than 30 years that it is more cost effective, humane, and practical to be "smart on drugs" rather than "tough on drugs."  Here’s why: 

The so-called American War on Drugs has been a catastrophic failure in every arena. 

1.      In 70 years the American War on Drugs has killed 700,000 American citizens, more than all its other wars combined and far more people than drugs kill.

2.      And with 5,000 Mexicans killed in 2008 alone, America now exports murder. 

The U.S. has five per cent of the world’s population but now uses 60 per cent of the world’s drugs. 

America has the highest incarceration rate in the world with more prisoners than China or India. 

1.      U.S. prisons kill one-third of prisoners by age 45 and two-thirds are rearrested within three years, meaning at best they rehabilitate only one-third.

2.      They are thus a total deadly failure as ex-felons can rarely get work other than dealing drugs, so America’s drug policy actually increases the drug epidemic. 

The propaganda: “We wage this war to protect our children.” The devastating and deadly facts are: 

1.      We have deprived millions of children and teenagers of their incarcerated parent(s).

2.      Kids placed in foster care have four times the death rate of those left with their parents.

3.      This drug war has created an obscene teenage murder rate that’s nineteen times higher than in the Netherlands where drugs are legally available.

4.      America has turned a million of its teens into drug dealers and has four times the death rate of prisoners on Texas’ death row.

5.      Only 50 percent of high school students graduate in America’s ten biggest cities and only 40 per cent graduate in NYC, Baltimore and Detroit. In the Netherlands where drugs are regulated, controlled and taxed, 92 per cent graduate; that’s No Child Left Behind! 

This War on Drugs is also Racism Worse Than Slavery ever was. 

1.      Whites commit the crime (87% of the drug users), while blacks do the time (74% go to prison).

2.      This war  has done much more harm to black families than slavery ever did.

3.      America’s African-American incarceration rates are atrocious and prisons actually rehabilitate/kill about the same number.

4.      America’s major cities have drug-war created ghettos, while there is not one ghetto in the Netherlands. 

This war destroys the environment and increases global warming. 

1.      It has contributed to the deforestation of South American rain forests equivalent to the acreage of four  U.S. states, while dangerously adding hundreds of tons of toxic chemicals to the environment.

2.      It has increased global warming directly by this horrendous deforestation, and indirectly, as America is e the only industrialized nation in the world prevented from using the very ecologically-friendly hemp for paper, wood and hemp fuel, which could dramatically reduce its dependence on foreign oil. 

Narco-terrorism: America’s drug war funds terrorists! 

1.      It’s totally immoral for America to wage a war on terrorists and kill innocent Iraqi women and children, while at the same time funding terrorists with drug cartel profits. 

The greatest corruption in the history of the U.S. 

1.      It has caused more corruption of citizens, policemen, judges, etc. than anything else in America’s history and has also resulted in the trampling of the U.S. Constitution.

2.      This corruption has now become international. 

The Netherlands absolutely has the answer. 

1.      America has six times the Netherlands incarceration rate and still has four times their murder rate.

2.      By making all drugs legally accessible with treatment available for anyone that wants it, the Netherlands has America’s one-fifth its hard drug use and half its marijuana use, which really makes no difference as no one dies from marijuana.

3.      They provide extensive treatment, the only thing that has ever proven to reduce drug use and demand. 

Economically 

1.      America squanders $70 billion on this war annually and this would pay for half a health plan.

2.      America also loses the tax revenue from drugs and marijuana is the biggest cash crop in both the U.S. and Canada.

The Nobel Prize 

Based upon Dr. Steve’s recommendation, NORML is pursuing the nomination of the Netherlands for a Nobel Prize for their success and information is available at www.Netherlands4Nobel.

“Dr. Steve” is Stephen H. Frye, M.D., retired professor, University of Nevada School of Medicine.

Cell phone: 775/772-8868, PST

E-mail: Steve.a.reno@Juno.com 

Author of We Really Lost This War! Twenty-five Reasons to Legalize Drugs 

Web site: www.25Reasons.org contains the book’s Table of Contents and sample pages. 

Stephen H. Frye, M.D. is an esteemed colleague who was born in Boston and educated at Boston Latin School and Boston University, and earned his M.D. degree at the George Washington University School of Medicine. After his internship in 1968-1969 at the San Francisco General Hospital, he was drafted as a physician and volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) during the Vietnam era. 

After his Honorable Discharge from military service, Dr. Steve completed his psychiatric training at the Langley Porter Neuro-Psychiatric Institute of the University of California, San Francisco. He served as the Director of Mental Health for Sonoma County, Calif., for four years, then founded a private practice multi-specialty mental health group and directed it for 18 years. 

Dr. Steve concluded his distinguished career by teaching at the University of Nevada School of Medicine before retiring. Dr. Frye then hosted a radio talk show in Reno called “Politics and Health,” where he first became interested in drug legalization. 

After more than three years of full-time study and research, he has become an expert on drug issues. He’s the divorced father of two adult sons, and is also a pianist, sailor, skier, a Northern Nevada resident, and world traveler, having visited 45 countries, 44 states, and 8 Canadian provinces. 

Allen St. Pierre
Executive Director
NORML/NORML Foundation
Washington, DC



About the Writer

Morgana is a writer for BrooWaha. For more information, visit the writer's website.
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7 comments on Smart On Drugs Versus Tough On Drugs

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By john robertson on January 25, 2009 at 04:37 am

I have felt this way about drugs and sex work for a very long time now.

I have traveled through the Netherlands and was very impressed by the civility, cleanliness, and equality that these educated and happy people enjoy.

Will America ever evolve?

John

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By Joan Westin on January 25, 2009 at 07:48 pm

Just legalize all drugs and regulate and tax them like all alcohol.  Lord knows, we need the revenue we would make off legalizing the drugs.

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By points west on January 26, 2009 at 04:30 pm

I believe ALL drugs should be legalized: 1st - removes them from the streets; 2nd - gets them out of the hands of the slimballs; 3rd - taxes from the legal sale of all drugs could be turned around (as w/booze) to rehabilitate; 4th - the WAR ON DRUGS hasn't worked and WON'T so approach it from a logical point of view.  Let's try (real hard) as a "leading" country on this planet to stop creating "victimless crimes" (as they're not crimes).

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By Morgana on February 05, 2010 at 07:10 pm

Thank you for the comments. I shudder at the callowness in this misnamed Drug War. A war on drugs?! No, it’s a terrible and unfair and unjust war on users and addicts. As with I’m A Fool to Want You, Billie Holiday then, callowness unfortunately remains so today. It is easier and cheaper to assemble superficial meaningless in the big picture headlines to hound users and addicts rather than doing the right thing. The right thing is to publicly embarrass and force media, law enforcement, medicine and politicians into addressing the real issues about users and addiction and the drugs involved. The real issues with users and addiction are the causes of use and addiction and the unregulated and untaxed sources of supply to users and an addict.

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By Carol Young on March 25, 2010 at 05:59 pm

It’all about Dope, Inc. where Drug Money Laundering Finances Terrorism. In 1994, Reuters News Agency quoted Interpol's chief drugs officer, Iqbal Hussain Rizvi, as saying that "Drugs have taken over as the chief means of financing terrorism." In 1987 U.S. News & World Report wrote a cover story entitled Drugs, Terror and Politics.. This is the first article I can recall with a reference to "narco-terrorists." Narco-Terrorists can be defined as terrorist organizations which derived much of there funding, for bombs, weapons and manpower, from the sale and distribution of illicit drugs such as cocaine, heroin, marijuana etc. The following excerpt, from Drugs, Terror and Politics, should give you a flavor for the perceived extent of narco-terrorism in 1987:

"Tapping the Croesus-like profits available from the international drug trade, "narco-terrorism" is fraying the social and political fabric of dozens of nations around the world. It is helping to underwrite bloody insurgencies on four continents. And even more insidious, the combination of drugs and terror has become an unofficial new weapon of national policy of several Soviet-bloc nations bent on destabilizing the West. . .

As narco-terrorism erodes the social and political foundations of democracies and other American allies worldwide, combatting the emerging phenomenon presents new and perplexing difficulties for law enforcement. Part of the problem is that the United States has been slow to recognize the threat, and develop strategies to deal with it."

The involvement of Oliver North, and the CIA is a great case in point. In this instance Oliver North, and the CIA used the proceeds from cocaine, in the mid-1980's, to pay for the arming of the Contras in Nicaragua. This was after the Bolin Amendment had specifically forbid direct sale of arms to the Contras. I always found it interesting that Lieutenant Secord was involved in this amoral and illegal escapade as well a much earlier amoral and illegal incident during the Viet Nam War. Back in Viet Nam, Secord headed up a CIA operation that was euphemistically called the "Heroin Express." The basic function of the Heroin Express was to bring opium into South Viet Nam where it was processed and sold as heroine, to American G.I.'s.

But the most egregious error of this article on narco-terrorism, was that is failed to point out that there was a very simple and elegant solution to narco-terrorism. It goes under the label Drug Legalization.

Cocaine, heroine and marijuana are exceedingly cheap to produce. For example a gram of 100% pure Cocaine only costs between $2 and $4 dollars to manufacture. It is the black market economy, which is a direct result of drug prohibition, that makes a $2 gram of cocaine worth as much as $200 -- once it is cut and sold on the streets as 4 grams of "coke" or a little pile of crack cocaine "rock." In economic terms it's as simple as this:

No Drug Prohibition, no absurd profit. No absurd profit and all the narco-terrorists, gangs and small time dealers will find themselves working a day job like the rest of us.

That is if there any drug opponents left. They’re rapidly going extinct.

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By Marga on April 22, 2010 at 03:29 pm

Marijuana legalization coming to the West. The result is a new source of revenue for California and Nevada and significant decreased spending by authorities to wrongly prosecute and incarcerate drug users, which is a medical issue not a legal issue. Stupidly and with a huge waste of taxpayer money, law enforcement officials in Nevada alone wrongly arrested more than 7,000 people on marijuana charges in 2007, according to statistics from the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. At an average cost to taxpayers of $11,500 per arrest in 2007, cutting that number saves hundreds of thousands, taking an edge off future state budget deficits that have threatened funding education and other services.

More people in the United States are in favor of the legalization of recreational marijuana than ever, according to a Gallup poll conducted in October. While nationally that number, 48 percent, is still less than a majority, the West is a different story.

The same poll, when broken down by region, shows support for legalization in the western United States at 63 percent, a 23 percent jump over the last time the study was conducted in 2005.

In addition, a Pew Research study released more recently shows 83 percent of Americans in favor of the legalization of marijuana.

Due to shifting attitudes toward the drug and a continuing budget crisis, the size of which is unprecedented in California and Nevada’s histories, the climate is right for all drug legalization.

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By Joan Westin on August 17, 2010 at 08:07 pm

So the story goes -- "So two potheads have been charged with possession :-( and both plead "no contest." The judge decides to be lenient on them and not give them any time if they spend the next 24 hours reforming evil drug users. (Must have been a first offense.) They return to the courthouse the next day and the judge asks them how many people they've gotten off drugs. The first guy says, "Twenty-four!" "Amazing," says Hizzoner, since that's about 12,000 times better than the statistics. "How'd you do it?" "Simple," says the head. "I just show them: 'O' - This is your brain; 'o' - this is your brain on drugs."

"Impressive," says the judge. Turning to the second head, he says, "And how did you fare?" "Yer honor, I saved 233 souls from the bonds of the evil weed." "And how did you manage that?" "Kinda the same as the other guy, 'cept I told people: 'o' - this is your asshole; 'O' - THIS is your asshole in prison."

Lucky if it's just that. The only way you can die from marijuana is to get arrested where you will probably get killed in jail by the violent ones. I still to this day do not understand why we mix violent and non-violent people together, and why people became commodities to be exploited by the for profit prison industry which has zero incentive to reform and total incentive to incarcerate."

Being later raped or killed in prison by a rapist or murderer is insane when the only reason one is wrongly in prison in the first place is for using marijuana or is a drug addict. Why are violent criminals like murderers and rapists co-mingled together in the American for-profit prison system with the non-violent people like marijuana users? We are so much better than that aren't we? Aren't we?! Why don't we separate the murders and rapists from the non-violent ones who are in with the violent ones who should not even be in prison in the first bloody place.

Why is the legal system even in the medical business anyway? Drugs, and drug addiction are the realm of medicine, not the legal system. Wrongly adding to an already overburdened and far too often corrupt, lazy or incompetent legal system with medical issues and social issues is also insane.

And there is certainly nothing conservative about that! Criminalizing medical and social issues vastly increases government and its beaurocracy. The fact is that more and more normal behavior is being criminalized. Of course it is!!!!!! Once the American prison system went to for-profit corporations, there is no reason to ever release an inmate, and every reason $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

$$$$$$ to forever keep an inmate locked up.

That's you, your son, your daughter, your mother, your father, increasingly locked away for normal medical and normal social behavior solely in order to make a profit off you.

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