Re: “Grow op kids need help,” Editorial, July 30.

I must take issue with your editorial regarding the removal of children from homes where there is illegal marijuana being grown.

You spoke of the authorities and the parents, but you forgot the children themselves. What impact do you think it has on a child when the police storm a home, arrest the parents and then tell the children they are being taken away to a strange place by strangers for an unknown length of time? Where are those children going to be placed? Who will be caring for them? When can they see their parents again? Can you assure them the parents still love them? How do you assure those children they have done nothing wrong and are not being punished, as you hand them over to strangers?

To remove a child from his or her known world is one of the most frightening things one can ever do to a child. It has a far deeper traumatic impact than does parental neglect or punishment and once it happens, that emotional trauma can never be erased. These are a few of the factors your editorial neglected to consider.

Grace Isaak

Calgary

— MAP Posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

Pubdate: Tue, 02 Aug 2011
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2011 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/letters.html
Website: http://www.calgaryherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n495/a06.html

Re: “Legal drugs and gangs,” July 1.

The editorial on the failed “war on drugs” is music to the ears of the criminal justice professionals who make up Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. We know, from personal experience, that prohibition enriches criminal gangs and fosters criminal activity while doing nothing to reduce drug use and the attendant violence in our cities.

Forty years of the so-called “war on drugs” in North America has actually increased the supply and potency of illegal drugs. Countries which have removed criminal penalties for drug use, such as the Netherlands and Portugal, have achieved declines in use and addiction.

Prohibition is a threat to public safety. Making drugs illegal has created a profitable black market, and participants in the underground economy can settle their disputes only by violence. Uninvolved bystanders and police officers often pay the price.

So many police officers and prosecutors are bogged down in drug enforcement that serious crimes go unsolved. In 1963, before the “war on drugs,” all but 15 per cent of murder cases in the U.S. were solved. Today, 40 per cent of murders never lead to a conviction, even though law enforcement now has vastly better forensic tools and technology.

Let’s legalize drugs and bring the trade above ground where we can regulate and control it.

John Anderson
Chair, Criminology Department
Vancouver Island University

— MAP Posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

Pubdate: Tue, 26 Jul 2011
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2011 Times Colonist
Website: http://www.timescolonist.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481

Citing federal interference, the legislature has exempted Texas from federal energy standards regarding light bulbs. Texas State Rep. George Lavender hopes incandescent light bulb manufacturers will move to Texas and create jobs and tax revenue.

In contrast, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Sen. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, says he will not give U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011” a hearing. This is a pure states’ rights bill. It makes no new law. According to Harvard economist Jeffery Miron, Texas spends $644,477,000 every year enforcing federal marijuana prohibition and loses potential tax revenue of $171,430,000.

Where are conservative principles when we need them?

Suzanne Wills

Pubdate: Fri, 15 Jul 2011
Source: Kerrville Daily Times (TX)
Copyright: 2011 The Daily Times
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.dailytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3035

Obfuscation is the name of the game for Joseph Califano and William Bennett.

The Netherlands has about half the marijuana use we do and, with no marketing link to cocaine, about one-eighth our cocaine use, according to a World Health Organization survey. Marijuana use is up 30% here in the past 20 years, and we have over a million teenage drug sellers in our schools. Legal drugs would be more available? Impossible! A federal government-sponsored report says that “marijuana has been almost universally available to American 12th graders over the past 31 years.”

The pending bill in Congress would simply allow states to decide about marijuana. We used to call this approach the laboratory of democracy, but this pair prefers Chicken Little rhetoric to facts.

According to the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey published July 2002: “Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.”

Jerry Epstein

Houston

Pubdate: Fri, 08 Jul 2011
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2011 Jerry Epstein
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Note: Second of 4 letters in response to http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n431/a02.html

To the Editor:

Sylvia Longmire misses the mark in focusing on how legalizing marijuana won’t put drug cartels completely out of business (“Legalization Won’t Kill the Cartels,” Op-Ed, June 19).

Sure, some cartel members will continue selling other illicit wares once marijuana is legalized, but since they currently earn about 60 percent of their profits from illegal marijuana sales, ending the prohibition of that cash crop will seriously undercut their ability to finance continued operations.

And removing such a significant chunk of the cartels’ funding will make it significantly easier for law enforcement to isolate and destroy them. As a former border patrol officer once charged with enforcing prohibition, I never dared dream of such success. Each arrest only created a lucrative job opening for someone else to step in and fill the insatiable demand for illegal drugs.

We can either keep going through an endless cycle of cartel bosses brought to justice, or if we really want to reduce the violence, we can legalize marijuana — and other currently illegal drugs — thereby evaporating the profit motive that causes the carnage.

TERRY NELSON

Granbury, Tex., June 20, 2011

Pubdate: Mon, 27 Jun 2011
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2011 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Terry Newson, Board Member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

The June 15 story about another big drug investigation to bust a major pipeline to the Capital Region avoided questions of law enforcement that would address the tough reality that drug prohibition doesn’t work.

All of these drug investigations are concentrated in the inner cities while the wealthier suburban areas of upstate New York are ignored by law enforcement. How long will it be before the next big drug investigation is launched in the next inner city?

Statistically, there is as much drug use in the suburbs, but these investigations are selectively enforced and the media never ask law enforcement why. They merely report the number of arrests or the amount of cash and drugs confiscated without reporting the cost of these lengthy investigations to the taxpayer.

Even in the areas where these investigations are focused, the impact is minimal as drug arrests continue to fill our prisons and courts. Too many of our elected leaders have forgotten the lessons of alcohol prohibition.

The facts show that this heavy hand of the law is centered on the people with the least amount of money, influence or power. If our scarce law enforcement resources were applied evenly in the cities and suburbs in the war on drugs, alternatives such as regulating, taxing and legalizing them would have a great deal more traction in the public discussion.

WILLIAM AIKEN

Member, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Schenectady

— MAP Posted-by: Richard R Smith Jr.

Pubdate: Thu, 23 Jun 2011
Source: Times Union (Albany, NY)
Copyright: 2011 Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation
Contact: http://www.timesunion.com/forms/emaileditor.asp
Website: http://www.timesunion.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/452
Author: William Aiken. Member, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Pubdate: Fri, 17 Jun 2011
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2011 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Author: Buford C. Terrell
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n390/a10.html

Regarding “Hard stuff; Get real about dealing with illegal drugs” (Page B11, Tuesday), the emperor has no clothes. Thank you for your editorial praising the report of the Global Commission on Drugs. That commission, whose membership included some of the most conservative Republicans from recent administrations, showed what almost everyone knows but is afraid to mention: The 40-year-old War on Drugs is a costly and destructive failure.

It’s time to strip this tired old fraud bare and look for better ways to deal with the problems of drug misuse.

In particular, those looking to reduce government spending should look at the trillion dollars wasted so far. How much could be saved by closing down the DEA and the Office of Drug Control Policy and removing the 50-plus percent of those in federal prison who are there for nonviolent drug offenses?

The Global Commission has pointed out the emperor’s nudity. Now it is up to us to construct a proper, noncriminal wardrobe for our drug policy.

Buford C. Terrell, Stafford

Pubdate: Sat, 11 Jun 2011
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Copyright: 2011 PG Publishing Co., Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/pm4R4dI4
Website: http://www.post-gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/341
Author: Amesh A. Adalja, M.D.
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n360/a01.html

BODILY RIGHTS

I applaud the conclusions of the Global Commission on Drug Policy — detailed in Tony Norman’s June 3 column (“Ease Up in Drug War? Smart But Unlikely”) — that announce what has become patently obvious for decades: The war on drugs is a misguided effort that foments violence and abets organized crime.

However, I fear the commission’s conclusions will fall on willfully deaf ears. Until Americans embrace the idea that people have an inalienable right to do what they wish with their bodies — even if their actions are harmful — no amount of rational persuasion or empiric evidence will succeed.

AMESH A. ADALJA, M.D.

Butler

GRIEVING PARENTS: LEGALIZE ALL DRUGS

Re: Heroin That Goes Far Beyond Junk, Joe O’Connor, May 13.

As grieving parents of a son who died at age 19 in 1993 after
ingesting some street heroin, may we offer our comments? When America
prohibited alcohol, thousands were poisoned by adulterated market
booze. When alcohol was legalized again, those incidents were
drastically reduced.

Today, our children are dying because of adulterated black market
drugs. The carnage will end only when we come to our senses and allow
users once again to purchase clean, cheap, quality-tested drugs at
the corner store just as tobacco users now do.

Let’s finish the job we started when we ended alcohol prohibition,
follow the principles enshrined in the Charter and legalize all drugs.

Eleanor and Alan Randell, Victoria.

Pubdate: Tue, 17 May 2011

Source: National Post (Canada)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v11/n304/a02.html