Have you heard all the arguments for legalizing drugs? They say that if we legalized meth, cocaine, flakka, bath salts, pot, heroin and everything else that good things would happen! We would put the drug cartels out of business and crime would plummet! We could quit arresting drug dealers and drug users and free up 50% of our prisons, 50% of our court system would also be freed up!
Next, the Government could tax the products and use the revenues to set up SAY NO TO DRUGS campaigns and also set up drug addiction facilities. The tax money from drugs would be coming out of their ears!!
Sounds perfect!!
"But Dennis, that could NEVER happen....because drugs are bad!"
Now let's read what the ex-Secretary General of the United Nations is saying.
In my experience, good public policy is best shaped by the dispassionate analysis of what in practice has worked, or not. Policy based on common assumptions and popular sentiments can become a recipe for mistaken prescriptions and misguided interventions.
Nowhere is this divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident than in the formulation of global drug policies, where too often emotions and ideology rather than evidence have prevailed.
Take the case of the medical use of cannabis. By looking carefully at the evidence from the United States, we now know that legalizing the use of cannabis for medical purposes has not, as opponents argued, led to an increase in its use by teenagers. By contrast, there has been a near tripling of American deaths from heroin overdoses between 2010 and 2013, even though the law and its severe punishments remain unchanged.
This year, between April 19 and 21, the United Nations General Assembly will hold a special session on drugs and the world will have a chance to change course. As we approach that event, we need to ask ourselves if we are on the right policy path. More specifically, how do we deal with what the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has called the "unintended consequences" of the policies of the last 50 years, which have helped, among other things, to create a vast, international criminal market in drugs that fuels violence, corruption and instability? Just think of the 16,000 murders in Mexico in 2013, many of which are directly linked to drug trafficking.
Globally, the "war on drugs" has not succeeded. Some estimate that enforcing global prohibition costs at least $100 billion (€90.7 billion) a year, but as many as 300 million people now use drugs worldwide, contributing to a global illicit market with a turnover of $330 billion a year, one of the largest commodity markets in the world.
Prohibition has had little impact on the supply of or demand for drugs. When law enforcement succeeds in one area, drug production simply moves to another region or country, drug trafficking moves to another route and drug users switch to a different drug. Nor has prohibition significantly reduced use. Studies have consistently failed to establish the existence of a link between the harshness of a country's drug laws and its levels of drug use. The widespread criminalization and punishment of people who use drugs, the over-crowded prisons, mean that the war on drugs is, to a significant degree, a war on drug users -- a war on people.
Africa is sadly an example of these problems. The West Africa Commission on Drugs, which my foundation convened, reported last year that the region has now become not only a major transit point between producers in Latin America and consumers in Europe, but an area where consumption is increasing. Drug money, and the criminality associated with it, is fostering corruption and violence. The stability of countries and the region as a whole is under threat.
I believe that drugs have destroyed many lives, but wrong government policies have destroyed many more. We all want to protect our families from the potential harm of drugs. But if our children do develop a drug problem, surely we will want them cared for as patients in need of treatment and not branded as criminals.
Read entire article here; http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/kofi-annan-on-why-drug-bans-are-ineffective-a-1078402.html
The Bible says that in the Last Days the men on earth will be using drugs as part of their "magic arts"....maybe hallucinogenic drugs to get them in touch with the spirit/god of their choice?
Here's a fact....when a person is stoned on pot, meth, flakka or any other drug that takes them out of their mind....the Evil One is roaming around looking for whom he may devour.
Satan and his minions use the opportunity to invade into a persons mind.
Illicit drugs used to be used by very few people in this country. For that reason laws were written and enforced. But today we find that a large portion of society doesn't see it that way anymore. They want to use mind altering drugs any way and any time they want.....so WHO ARE YOU to say what they can and cannot do?
To me, this is just one more step down the road to chaos. The Bible said these days are coming....so it simply shouldn't surprise us.
"Every man did as he saw fit." Joshua 21:25