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I�d like to speak about an injustice that robs ordinary Americans of their individual liberty, turns nonviolent citizens into criminals, wastes billions in hard earned tax dollars, promotes organized crime, and is largely racist in its intent. I�m talking about the �War on Drugs�.
All I ask is that, regardless of what opinion you may already have about this subject, that you please keep an open mind and weigh each opinion I may offer using your own minds ability to reason.
Our government's current policy on drug legislation resembles alcohol prohibition in its inability to control human nature. Of course we all remember that making alcohol illegal was so successful we needed a constitutional amendment to make it legal again. Much like today�s anti drug laws, prohibition turned millions of Americans into criminals. In fact the 18th amendment largely only accomplished three things.
One, to increase the power of government over us in our daily lives. Two, to create wasteful government bureaucracies to enforce that power. And three, to strengthen organized crime. The current war on drugs is no different, it wastes billions of dollars with little or no effect upon its intended goal of reducing drug use. By making individual freedom and individual responsibility against the law, government ties the hands of law enforcement officials who could otherwise be devoting their time to working on real crimes with real victims like rape and murder.
Here�s a little known fact. Hemp was actually encouraged to be grown by our government prior to the end of prohibition. But with alcohol no longer being illegal the government had to have something to justify all the unnecessary bureaucracies and law enforcement agencies they had created to fight alcohol consumption. So what did they do? You guessed it they outlawed hemp and labeled it dangerous and terrible with false propaganda. Government has no control over law abiding citizens so they attempt make everything illegal.
Legalizing drugs would reduce crime in several other ways, in inner cities, by taking gangs out at knees, and by eliminating forever the drug dealer as a powerful figure and role model in the community. By making drugs legal, their costs would drop significantly making it unnecessary for drug addicts to have to rob, steal or sell their bodies to obtain them.
Surely the answers to our nations drug problems do not lie within our governments current rational of building prison after prison in another failed attempt to control human nature but rather within the hearts and minds of individual Americans. Too often advocates for drug laws make the same mistakes as all defenders of all failed government programs by claiming �It will work, we just need more money and more time�. They forget we are punished by our sins, not for our sins.
I�d like to end with a quote from Mark Twain, �Now what I contend is that body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state�.
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