Yep, the Jimmy Carter, y'know, our President from '77 to '81 (not to mention Nobel Peace Prize winner), wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times, and I want to tell you about it. Why? Well... wait - do you mean "Why do I want to tell you about it?", or "Why did he write it?" I assume that he wrote it because he enjoys writing and wants to share his thoughts. Why do I want to tell you about it? Same reasons. Great minds think alike...?
The title is "Call Off the Global Drug War". If that puts you off, then please calm down, take a deep breath, and consider the possibility, however remote, that you just might be wrong and/or misinformed. Open thine mind and read on, my fellow citizen.
Consider this - the War on Drugs has been going on for, what, 40 years now? I'm not even going to guess how many trillions of dollars it has cost, but rest assured that it's a-plenty. Now, how would you feel about America fighting a traditional, boots-n-bullets kind of war for 40 years (and counting - we're still waging war, my friend...), chewing up huge swaths of the national budget (and state budgets, city budgets, hell - household budgets!), and not making any progress? It's more than "not winning" - statistics (and common sense) tell us that we're actually losing! If this were a "real" war, politicians would be fired and protesters would fill the streets. But it's not a "real" war, it just costs money like one and kills people like one, so that makes it OK. WTF?!?
President Carter makes some good points, for sure. This is a thoughtful, substantive, even-keeled piece of op-ed goodness, not the hyper-opinionated "first shot" of a belligerent flame war. Give it a read! Just to give you a little taste of this piece and its tone, here is the opening paragraph:
IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.There are a few other lines I'd like to copy here, some really tasty, choice statements from a former US Prez, but I'm not sure offhand what the limits are on copyright's fair use clause, and I don't want any beef with the NY Times lawyers. Call me a wuss. :-{P)
This whole "War on Drugs" mess is an important topic to me, as I have had several people very close to me, people that I really loved, as well as people that I just liked to hang out with, become casualties of the Drug War. Some of them are/were in prison or had long sentences in other kinds of jail. Several of them wrecked their lives (and the lives of those around them). A couple of them now occupy coffins. ALL of them were loving, caring, useful people and citizens that contributed to society before they got "on the wrong track". ALL of them had their problems magnified and expedited by the high cost, high risk, high violence, and high crime of obtaining drugs. ALL of them would have been real assets to our society if they were detoxed and rehabilitated, instead of thrown in jail and fined heavily. NONE of them have a criminal record for anything else, because they are not/were not criminals. NONE of them were helped at all in any way by the War on Drugs.
None of us are, either.
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