Rolling Stone Article
Rolling Stone Magazine recently published a major expose on the drug war and its follies. To summarize:
*Over half of all drug arrests are marijuana arrests, up from only a quarter 10 years ago.
*Federal raids on state-allowed medical marijuana facillities are fueling arrests.
*The Feds waste billions of dollars on arresting non-violent marijuana posessors (not even dealers).
*The drug war is a monsterous failure, becuase “Drug prices are at an all-time low, drug purity is at an all-time high, and polls show that drugs are more available than ever.”
*Anti-marijuana propaganda is a laughable failure.
*The Feds claim increased marijuana arrests have a ‘detterent’ effect and scare young teens from using the drug, but in actuallity, pot use has remained steady or has climbed.
*States are backing away from tough, federally-ordered mandatory sentancing.
*The War on Drugs has been scaled back recently due to the War on Terror, and the former has proved a suitable training ground for the latter.
Quote of the article: “The president could sell the War on Drugs in peacetime,” says Timothy Lynch, director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the conservative Cato Institute. “But they don’t want to embarrass themselves now that we’re in the midst of an honest-to-God shooting war. To continue that kind of rhetoric in the middle of a real war, when American soldiers are getting blown up in Iraq, makes it look trivial. There’s just no comparison.”