From: [w--li--h] at [ix.netcom.com](William House) Newsgroups: alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs,alt.drugs.pot,rec.drugs.cannabis,misc.activism.cannabis Subject: FACTS: Who will protect children from legalized drugs? Date: 16 Aug 1996 08:15:53 GMT Della Noche <[d--oc--e] at [mail.wco.com]> wrote: >And how would you stop the dealers of today selling to minors for a >profit if drugs were legalised? Prohibition has shifted the profit motive from legitamate business, to the underground - and those children you speak about. In essense, we subsidize the Underground *with* Prohibition, and that includes all those school-children/dealers! THE DRUG WAR'S FAILURE TO REDUCE DRUG USE Crime reduction was sold as one of the drug war's important side benefits. But what about its main mission, to reduce drug use? Despite the increase in the number of drug arrests and convictions, drug consumption overall has not demonstrably fallen. While the drug war may have played a significant role in reducing the demand for and supply of marijuana, access to cocaine has increased. From 1984 to 1990, the proportion of high school students who reported that cocaine was "fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain rose by about 20 percent. This failure is due in large part, Benson and Rasmussen explain, to drug entrepreneurs' adoption of new production techniques, new products, and new marketing strategies in response to greater law enforcement. Their "innovations" include lengthening the drug distribution chain and using younger drug pushers and runners (to reduce the risk of arrest and punishment), increasing domestic drug production (to avoid the risk of seizure at the border), smuggling into the country less marijuana and more cocaine (which is harder to detect), development of "crack" cocaine (a low-cost substitute for higher priced powdered cocaine and for marijuana, which the drug war made harder to obtain), and development of drugs with greater potency (because they are less bulky and because punishment is based on a drug's weight, not its potency). ----------------- The same thing happened in Alcohol Prohibition. The Children were the Victims of Arrogant Government Prohibition. EDITOR'S PAGE: SAVE THE CHILDREN -------------------------------- The argument typically made in favor of prohibition is that drugs have to be illegal in order to protect those members of society who are the most vulnerable to abuse and addiction, especially children. This argument ignores the obvious fact that the War on Drugs has failed to protect children -- indeed, children can obtain illegal drugs in the schools themselves -- and the students selling them carry guns. This passage from The Noble Experiment, by Yale Economics Professor Irving Fisher, published ca. 1930, demonstrates that the "save the children" argument for prohibition is not only overly simplistic, but may indeed be a mirror image of reality: TESTIMONY OF SALVATION ARMY OFFICERS (P. 42) Colonel William L. Barker, head of Northern Division, Salvation Army, and organizer of the Salvation Army Unit in France during the World War, testifies that Prohibition is demoralizing boys and girls. In the St. Cloud, Minn., Daily Times, February 9, 1925, Colonel Barker said: "Prohibition has diverted the energies of the Salvation Army from the drunkard in the gutter to the boys and girls in their teens. The work of the Army has completely changed in the past five years since the drug era came into being, and Prohibition has so materially affected society that we have girls in our rescue homes who are 14 and 15 years old, while 10 years ago the youngest was in the early twenties." ARRESTS OF MINORS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. (P. 39) While in other cities there is a paucity of authoritative statistics on the subject of drunkenness among the young, apparently the largest increase has taken place among those from 15 to 25 years. Juvenile court records are of little value because they deal with the very young who have not yet come into much spending money and who have not developed enough initiative to forage for liquor. The Police Department of Washington, D.C., however, has classified its arrests for drunkenness by ages, and its figures are illuminating. Saloons were officially closed in Washington as a war measure near the end of 1917. Arrest of minors (under 21) for drunkenness average 46.7 a year for the eight saloon years, 1910-1917. The number was 36 in 1917. In 1918 and 1919, there was a considerable rise, followed in 1920, the first year of constitutional Prohibition, by a drop, presumably due to a temporary scarcity of alcoholic beverages. In 1921, however, there was a big rise which wiped out the 1920 drop. The increase since then has been almost constant, with the result that by 1926 the number of minors arrested for drunkenness had reached 340. Arrests of persons of all ages for drunkenness rose in 1926 not nearly so high above the pre-Prohibition level, thus demonstrating that, relatively as well as absolutely, arrests for drunkenness among minors in Washington increased enormously. >I doubt many of them are going to open Hempist's shops where they need >a license and pay tax when they can just carry on dealing on the black >market. Why do you doubt that the market would be legitamized with legal outlets? One former smuggler we know of made a Senator, and his son made President - the Kennedy's. If you think of yourself as a decent, rational person, and you support the war on drugs, then you are misinformed... either about the war or about your decency and rationality. Ray Aldridge: The WARSTOP pages, April, 1995. Definition of Irrational: Void of reason; absurd; mentally unstable. Math: denoting a non-rational number not capable of being expressed by an integral number or a quotient of an integer; referring to an algebraic function in which the variable, or variables, emerge irreducibly under a radical sign. Definition of Irrationalism: Irrational belief, thought, or behavior. Philos. a system which rejects reason in favor of instinct, intuition, and faith; rejection of reason as a ruling force over the world. De-Nile is not just a river in Egypt: ------------------------------------ Subject: America's drug war is an addiction Yes, even America's drug war is an addiction. Drug war zealots accept drugs as an all-powerful authority: a dark one to be resisted, Satan instead of God, but authority nonetheless. Compulsive behavior is seen throughout the war effort. For example, the call for more and more anti-drug laws, creating new criminal offenses when officials cannot even keep up with old ones, shows an addict's inability to achieve satiation; anti-drug crusaders never feel they have enough anti-drug laws. Thus we see the power of intermittent conditioning, with drug war zealots acting no differently from rats that keep pressing a bar even though only one press in thousands brings a reward of cocaine. The fight against drug use is compulsive, eating up financial and human resources that could be used productively in other endeavors. If zealots do not get enough sensation of accomplishment through the present level of law enforcement, they call for it to be administered with more power and more frequence--clear evidence that the tolerance phenomenon has taken hold. Morbid craving is seen in the willingness to ignore more important community needs in order to fulfill the desire to fight drugs. Self-destructiveness is seen in efforts that promote the very abuses (such as disease, crime, and corruption) that drug war zealots claim to fight, while curtailing civil liberties that Americans claim to cherish. Crusaders declare their goal is a drug-free America, a goal guaranteed to perpetuate their addictive game because no country has ever become free of drugs or addicts. I have found THE CURE: ---------------------- Would you give up your favorite federal program if it meant you never had to pay income tax again? HARRY BROWNE FOR PRESIDENT 1-800-682-1776 http://www.harrybrowne96.org Get Harry Browne into the presidential debates and decide for yourself! Sign the online petition: http://twr.clever.net/STBO/ In the 1996 election, you really only have two choices: You can vote for what you've always had, or you can vote for what you've always wanted.