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Straight Talk

This is why I check her site three times a day. Talk Left just put up a great post on a new series on the Drug War at the Denver Post. They are also soliciting letters on the subject.

If Robert Hardaway's editorial is any example, this will be a series worth following. Hardaway, a professor at the University of Denver College of Law, in a well researched piece, traces the contradictions and failures of prohibition from 1914 to the present day. His opening statistics are eye-opening.

Every year, more than 400,000 Americans die as the result of tobacco use. Alcohol abuse results in the deaths of another 110,640 Americans, including 16,653 alcohol-related traffic deaths. Alcohol is a major factor in more than half of all homicides and rapes, 62 percent of assaults, and 30 percent of suicides. Illegal drug use causes another 3,562 deaths.

And his logic on the flaws of spending billions on prohibition to prevent these few thousand deaths is irrefutable.

But what would happen if drugs were decriminalized? Prior to 1914, drugs were legal in the United States but constituted a very minor problem in society. Hundreds of over-the-counter products (such as Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup and many popular soft drinks, including Coca-Cola) contained drugs which have since been criminalized. But, as researcher Ethan Nadelman has noted, "Free access did not lead to widespread use. No drug houses blighted neighborhoods, no drug gangs had street-corner shootouts, and 'drug-related' crime did not exist."

Doctors even prescribed opium as a treatment for a disease considered substantially more harmful than drug addiction: alcoholism. That scenario changed drastically after criminalization.

...If the untold deaths and crushing taxation required to conduct the drug war were not sufficient reasons to rethink drug criminalization, the fact that it supports and fosters organized crime should at least give pause.

...The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 left organized crime in danger of extinction. The continued prohibition of drugs saved its hide, and it has thrived ever since.

Talk Left also posted an interesting piece yesterday on some pot in Florida that was recycled out of the police evidence room back onto the streets.

Last month, Sheriff Ben Johnson announced that 370 pounds of marijuana and 1.89 pounds of cocaine worth $456,000 was missing from the office's evidence room.

Timothy W. Wallace, 47, the former evidence manager, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to traffic in cocaine and marijuana. He was released on $300,000 bail and could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

Davidson said Saturday another 600 pounds of marijuana are missing.

The marijuana was housed in the same place as the other missing drugs and likely disappeared the same way, Davidson said. He would not say whether there were suspects.

Do you think he really needs to?