Quote of the day

The "war on drugs" is not meant to be won; it is meant to be waged.

From an excellent editorial in the Norwich Bulletin on a speech Superior Court Judge Howard Scheinblum gave to a civic group about the failure of the war on some drugs. He's one courageous jurist.

...the judge said, drugs are not the problem, not the cause of thievery, robbery, and violence; drug prohibition is.

If now-illegal drugs were available to addicts by prescription, many addicts would waste their lives away, but at least they wouldn't be robbing and killing others for money for drugs, and drug dealers would not be killing others over drug sales territory. Most violent crime would disappear.

He's not afraid to take on the root cause of this failed policy either.

...the judge said any departure from futile drug policy would be blocked by "vested interests." For if drug prohibition crime ended, the judge said, Connecticut wouldn't need as many police, courts, prisons, drug programs and so forth.

The author sums it up well.

As with many other policies in Connecticut that are never evaluated for results, the "war on drugs" is not meant to be won; it is meant to be waged. Even its racially disproportionate casualties are not enough to prompt politicians to engage in candor like Judge Scheinblum's. Indeed, Connecticut's politicians are happy to put half the state's young men of color in prison if the other half can be hired to guard them.

But don't feel too safe just because you're a middle class Caucasian. When they run out of them, they will be coming after us.