The "war" on drugs has been abismal, and created horrendous conditions in Central America.
Liberalization of drugs is a funny way to put it. It's realism. We are spending ridiculous amounts of money on the war on drugs, that we could instead be spending on education and rehab. We incarcerate far too many people at far too high a cost to society due to drugs.
Incarceration is both a tax on society in the sense that it destroys families, and the cost on taxpayers to fund prisons, as well as the ridiculous for profit prisons that have no reason to rehabilitate the people in them. We in the US have a serious problem that we keep ignoring, it's not a liberal vs conservative issue, this is a societal problem that needs to be addressed. Drug abuse is rampant and our ignorance of how to deal with it is even crazier. We have basically allowed those with money to get legal corporate drugs, while we've made natural drugs illegal and has far more negative consequences legally for poorer communities.
The legalization of marijuana is one step to start correcting these issues, but it's not far enough in properly appropriating money in better ways to make our people and society stronger.
> We are spending ridiculous amounts of money on the war on drugs
As a society yes, but there are clearly some actors of the "war on drugs" that benefit from it, such as the police with asset forfeiture laws. Since they have a huge influence on politicians it's very unlikely the rhetoric ever changes. On top of that local police have also gone against state laws legalizing some specific drugs so the resistance goes far beyond just law-making.
> As a society yes, but there are clearly some actors of the "war on drugs" that benefit from it, such as the police with asset forfeiture laws.
Some people hate the police (or fear them) because of that time they got arrested for not hurting anyone.
The "War on Plants" is the mistake that transforms the police forces from Public Servants into political operatives.
One night I chatted with our team's night driver, just before turning the cab over to him. He commented about smelling some "really good" marijuana on one of his recent South-Phoenix passengers. I said, "But [Xxxx], you used to fight in the War on Plants..." I knew he'd gotten an early retirement from a police force a few states away.
He responded, "yeah, but they told me it was a gateway drug, and I believed them. Now it seems that plant actually has medical benefits."
Police are just as much the victims of the drug war as everyone else.
Oh yeah, for sure, police are total victims cause they also sit in jail for decades for smoking a plant, and they also get their cash seized without recourse.
Except that's complete shit, none of that happens to cops. Ignorance isn't an excuse, and just following orders isn't an excuse either. Cops support an illegitimate system with violence and are rewarded for it. Fuck cops.
You know the drug busts, and shootouts, and car chases from the drug war. Yea, cops are there too. They have to be the enforcers for the crap laws that get passed too. It's the same thing for soldiers, they fight wars other people declare.
If you pay taxes you support this system financially. Don't live in the US? Does your country trade with the US? Someone somewhere is almost somehow contributing to some problem. You also neglect the good cops do, doing the job means you do all of the job. From being first responders to drug enforcement.
> [Cops] have to be the enforcers for the crap laws that get passed too
This is something I've heard from friends in law enforcement, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I've seen countless moving violations take place in front of police--most often speeding and failure to signal--without the violator getting pulled over. And usually while the cop is driving down the left lane of the highway while not passing, which is itself illegal in my state. I've heard plenty of stories of other situations where the threat of arrest for violating some law is real, meaning that the officer had every right under the law to make the arrest already, but is used to get someone to chill out and de-escalate the situation instead of being followed through. Discretion, the ability to selectively enforce the law, is a huge part of their everyday job.
So I don't buy it when people say "they have to enforce the law" because they do not do so universally. I don't buy it when police say "I don't agree with it but I have to enforce it" since basically everyone agrees that you ought to signal lame changes but that is only rarely enforced.
Clearly there's more to it than that--there are greater incentives for police to continue making arrests for marijuana and there are greater penalties for them if they decide to stop making those arrests on moral grounds. But until this false statemeant about "having to enforce the law" is dropped, we can't talk intelligently about what really factors into the decision (personal and institutional) to continue drug enforcement.
This is part of a response I've heard from law enforcement (family and friends' family), usually as soon as someone else concedes, just so that the conversation doesn't sound like a complete indictment, that "most officers are good". The officer then corrects with, "99% of people are good", and that the same is true of police. Boy, does that sound good! Everyone is good, and the police, being a very small subset of the normal population are actually "better" than the population at large. The conversation just went from "cops need more accountability and oversight (and to stop killing people)" to...
Phase Two. Now that cops are the potential victims of unfair persecution and popular media slander campaigns (they're all good except the really bad ones who get caught, but they weren't "real" cops anyway, remember?), here come the examples of other accountability measures civilians think are helping them but are actually harming them.
Those damned lapel cams. Officer discretion keeps nice kids out of jail and keeps the really bad people locked up. But with lapel cams, any defense attorney can go back through police footage from the same officer and see where they selectively enforced laws in similar situations, making prosecution of "dangerous thugs" harder than it needs to be. You wanting to know that police aren't being violent and aggressive puts you and your children in DANGER.
And it's not prosecutorial overreach or disproportionate sentencing or selective enforcement that are the problems here- it's the defense attorneys. Lapel cams remove cop control over who stays in (or out) of jail, and that's a problem.
It's a really friendly and passionate argument, but it's rotten at its core. Police aren't judges, they don't know the law like attorneys, and they shouldn't be arbiters over the communities they serve. Does having sick laws designed to punish selected targets unduly built because selective enforcement is a fact make this a rats nest of an issue? Absolutely, and it makes attempts to address it a much more difficult and dangerous task for the public. What was BLM? If you watch TV, it was a movement of wanton destruction in response to the death of some criminals. What was it supposed to be? A campaign for recognition and reform of unfair sentencing, selective enforcement, and prosecutorial overreach through national awareness and grassroots activism. Don't worry if you didn't know; their local marches and sit-ins weren't exciting enough to be covered.
A major benefit to drug legalization will be the removal of a filter to police hiring that required that candidates be credulously moralistic, stupid, or hypocritical, since a large part of their job entails greviously hurting people who are doing no harm rather than protecting or aiding endangered people. Good, thoughtful people can't become police now, knowing what police spend most of their time doing. After drug legalization, the entire police force will improve quickly.
It's sad how few people worried about this back when it was most extreme. Now people are already in prison, already dead, or already have criminal records for life, and the incarceration rate is falling. It seems like too little too late to start being concerned now.
Didn't people notice Bill Clinton's toughness on crime [1] when voting for Obama, from the same party?
Liberalization of drugs is a funny way to put it. It's realism. We are spending ridiculous amounts of money on the war on drugs, that we could instead be spending on education and rehab. We incarcerate far too many people at far too high a cost to society due to drugs.
Incarceration is both a tax on society in the sense that it destroys families, and the cost on taxpayers to fund prisons, as well as the ridiculous for profit prisons that have no reason to rehabilitate the people in them. We in the US have a serious problem that we keep ignoring, it's not a liberal vs conservative issue, this is a societal problem that needs to be addressed. Drug abuse is rampant and our ignorance of how to deal with it is even crazier. We have basically allowed those with money to get legal corporate drugs, while we've made natural drugs illegal and has far more negative consequences legally for poorer communities.
The legalization of marijuana is one step to start correcting these issues, but it's not far enough in properly appropriating money in better ways to make our people and society stronger.