Faith-Based Reform

With all the faith-based zero tolerance groups, I'm surprised to discover that many religious organizations have been taking a position against our government's policy on the drug war. This resolution adopted in 1993 by the 104th Annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis could be one of the first.

WHEREAS, the overall situation regarding the use of drugs in our society and the crime and misery that accompanies it has continued to deteriorate for several decades, and

WHEREAS, our society has continued to attempt, at enormous financial cost, to resolve drug abuse problems through the criminal justice system, with the accompanying increases of prisons and numbers of inmates, and

WHEREAS, the huge untaxed revenues generated by the illicit drug trade are undermining legitimate governments world-wide, and .....

This could have been written by any reform group today. Unfortunately, even as they do now, our government has been ignoring this reasonable resolution for over a decade:

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that our society must recognize drug use and abuse as the medical and social problems that they are and that they must be treated with medical and social solutions, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that an objective commission be immediately empowered by Congress to recommend revision of the drug laws of the United States in order to reduce the harm our current policies are causing.

It's long past time for our politicians to start listening to this kind of faith-based common sense.

[Thanks to Paul von Hartmann for the link.]