The War on Drugs is a War on You
06. Apr, 2009 
18 Comments
The drug war is based on a repugnant assertion: that you do not have ownership over your own body; that you don’t have the right to decide what you’ll do with your body, with your property and with your life. The position of the drug warriors is that you should be in jail if you decide to do something with your body that they don’t approve of.
This is an abomination of everything that America is supposed to stand for. As long as this country continues the drug war, you are not free. At the root, then, those that force the drug war on you are enemies to your freedom.
If you are concerned at all about liberty, the economy, the Constitution and the power of the Federal Government – you cannot ignore the US government’s longest and most costly “war” – the War on Drugs.
But no matter how long it lasts, how much is costs, how many lives are disrupted, and how much it fails – the war rages on.
Why? Well, because Federal “authorities” don’t care what your local laws are, they don’t care what your personal choices are, and they don’t care what reason you have for your choices.
All they care about is their own power. Period.
In this ongoing drug war, you are always treated as a suspect and your neighborhood is much less safe. You are searched at airports and your bank accounts are spied on. While drug users who are no physical threat to anyone but themselves are put in jail, the prisons become more and more overcrowded, resulting in the early release of violent criminals on a regular basis.
If you love your freedom and you want your city to be safer, this psychotic war on drugs must be ended – now.
Understandably, many Americans are afraid that ending the drug war will result in countless drug addicts, including children. In reality, though, that’s just what we have now!
On top of it, we generally don’t even consider the people who are addicted to federally-approved drugs to be drug addicts. According to a 2004 CDC report, almost one-half of Americans use at least one prescription drug. It should be obvious, then, that the drug war has done nothing to reduce Americans’ use of drugs – it’s simply to control which drugs people use, and who can make a profit from them.
So what’s really going to be different – can our nation’s addiction to drug use get any worse? It’s doubtful that legalizing all drugs could make things any worse, but even if it does, then so be it.
People will always do plenty of things that are bad for them, and there’s no reason to put them in prison for it. Think about all the things that you do which are bad for your own health and well being – should the government outlaw those too?
People eat too much fast food and they forget to floss every day. They watch too much TV and they don’t count their calories. They stay up too late and they spend too much. And, guess what else? People swallow, snort, shoot and smoke drugs that are both legal and illegal – and it’s not going to stop. A free society just wouldn’t force you, under the threat of punishment, to be “good” to yourself all the time. That was the job of your parents – unless, of course, you want the feds to be your new “daddy.”
In all seriousness, though, if we are ever going to have a nation that respects the Bill of Rights, of which the Ninth and Tenth Amendments may be the most important, the DEA and the entire drug war must be eliminated.
If not, what’s going to be next? Orwellian telescreens in our homes and a state-mandated morning exercise routine? That would most assuredly keep the cost down on the coming national healthcare system.
Won’t that be nice?
Every day that the war on drugs continues is another day of injustice; another day of spending countless billions to lock people up that don’t behave the way the bureaucrats want them to behave.
It’s time to bring this multi-billion dollar attack on your liberty to an end.
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And in a city torn apart by racial strife, gang wars, and a burgeoning drug problem, Smokey believes that cost could be too high.
And the violence will continue as long as the government’s unconstitutional drug war continues to create a lucrative black market.
The prohibition comparison is dead on. Prohibition created the gangs of the time. The drug war is doing the same on a much greater scale today.
Toss out the DEA and the gangs will vanish almost overnight. Druggies would probably either die off faster or get help faster. Most likely a mixture of both.
Social constraints can be agreed to by the majority of members. This is also a right. There are such things as morality and right & wrong…Our founding fathers made it clear that honor and moral clarity are necessary for the preservation of Constitutional government. It is the Socialist doctrine of situational ethics which you are discussing here, and nothing more. It is time to stop demanding personal rights on moral issues confronting a society. Your right is to leave the society and join one you agree with taking your pot with you.
Actually, when you talk about “community” making decisions, and the “majority” deciding what’s moral and what’s not, you’re far closer to marx’s communism than what’s being discussed here, which is individual rights.
How one can invoke the founders of this country while at the same time saying “love it or get out” is bordering on absurd. Didn’t the founders do the exact opposite? They stayed, and, they told their overlords to get out.
It’s not a war on (some) drugs, it’s a war on the minorities who used *naturally growing* substances instead of drinking the white man’s alcohol to replace slave labor with prison labor. Read tinyurl.com/1mn and tinyurl.com/potconviction
Oh poogymom, it doesn’t take a majority. In fact, more people are in favor of legalization of marijuana for smoking than support the Republican party. I bet more than 50% would support you being helped along to heaven by a bullet, as well, since you’re obviously meant to be living in Iran, and you probably didn’t cover your head today.
I am all for the legalizing marijuana, but this arguement is flawed in the fact that there are negative externalities that come out of one persons use. Smoking weed and doing any negligible harm to your own body is different then from smoking and perhaps injuring someone else through your actions after smoking.I’m not saying that it makes you homicidal, but if you are doing anything potentially dangerous, like driving, then weed is just as dangerous as alcohol. If weed is illegal, liquor should be as well. If one can do that damage with drinking, why not with weed?
@Justin, I agree with your point on the consequences of your actions on others versus yourself while intoxicated. But the analogy given isn’t technically accurate. I saw a special recently that showed that while alcohol impairs judgment and concentration, this is not technically also true of cannabis. If a stoner can manage to get past the paranoia of leaving the house and driving at all to begin with, there’s the simple fact of that paranoia persisting and thus causing a increase in alertness and forcing oneself to drive within the speed limits and be cautious of other drivers.
Now doing something stupid like getting stoned and performing brain surgery might be a better analogy, but then who knows…. lol, ok I wouldn’t want a stoned brain surgeon operating on me to think about it.
First off, I am a stoner. Nonetheless, it has not affected me in any negative way whatsoever. It has not corrupted my values, driven me psychotic, or harmed my health physically. It is ironic that marijuana is illegal while more than 600,000 people die a year from “legal drugs,” mainly from tobacco. To add insult to injury, $100,000,000,000 was spent last year on the “War on Drugs.” 80% of people arrested on drug-related charges were those in possession of marijuana.
The “War on Drugs” is as much of a waste of money as Homeland Security; it’s just another way of the government controlling its people. Since it’s a “War” on drugs, shouldn’t it be doing something if $100B is spent each year which could be used to build 1,000’s of hospitals or just help get us the fuck out of debt. It’s just like the “War on Terror”. They aren’t stopping drug trafficking; they’re letting people make a living off of selling an illegal substance. They aren’t stopping terrorist activities; they’re just increasing international hostilities.
Thanks for writing this article, dude, even though I pretty much already knew all this. I ask anyone who reads this sentence: How many people have died as a result of marijuana use (by its effects only)?
@Robb, I totally agree. I was a “so-called” bad kid. I drove while drunk and while high separately. I have never gone faster than 5 under the speed limit when high. This actually is also true of being drunk. I was so pissy ass scared I was gonna get caught when I drove drunk that I never went more than 5 under the speed limit.
I would not recommend driving drunk or high, but personally I find it much easier to dislodge myself from or “swallow” a high than it is to force myself to ignore the effects of alcohol.
I found alcohol to be far more impairing than pot. This is one reason why I only drink now. If I want to escape; alcohol is easier, cheaper, and more effective. Pot just made me get all philosophical and start writing down ways to improve myself. Fuckin’ a’ if I’m gonna get fucked up I don’t want to spend the whole night thinking about how I can make my life better
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@ justin et al. i do not disagree w/ the idea that operating heavy equip. or doing brain surgery while high is dangerous, [i want my pilot, brain surgeon, etc. sober or maybe just having had a single cup of coffee]. however the fright mongering puritans waging the propaganda war that has kept recreational drug use a crime for so long constantly point out examples of the horrible things people have done while high as reasons to prohibit drugs to everyone. this is of course a meaningless argument on their part. w/o an accurate idea of how many rec. drug users there are there’s no way to determine what percentage of them do horrible things while high. the gov’t will say all or almost all of them, stoners will say virtually none and neither side will have any proof. that won’t stop the fear mongers from publicizing their belief as fact and they have much better ad funding than we do. so my position is not to even acknowledge the incidence of drug influenced crime, to refuse to differentiate between the guy who robbed the liquor store while on dope and the guy who did the same thing sober. let them be equal under the law. give no leniency to the guy who’s defense is ‘man, i was so high!’. demand personal responsibility for the things people do [regardless of drug use] and the idea of ‘druggies are all thieves & murders’ will begin to fall by the wayside. if lawyers quit telling their clients that they can get reduced sentences if they plead drug addiction then the number of cases of ‘he did it because he was high’ we hear about in the news will diminish as well. we need to make the people in our society who know nothing of drug culture see that we as drug users can be good citizens and good neighbors. if they never see those of us who are normal everyday folks [that happen to also do drugs] they will continue to believe what the gov’t tells them because the only people they know are on dope are the people they see doing the perp-walk.
One of the founding principles of The United States of America was that humans have a God given right to pursue happiness. Using drugs (responsibly and not hurting others) will probably not make a person happy. But it is not is not up to you to decide what will make another person happy – not up to you, or me, or the Government, or the majority, or society, or to anybody else. And if you are partially responsible for denying a person’s God given human rights, then you should die and go to hell and burn for ever and ever, you bastard. I am being hyperbolic.
@ poggymom:
you mean i don’t have the right to initiate change in my gov’t through the democratic process or the judicial system? damn! how did i pass those civics classes? obviously i have a very distorted view of how a democratic society works. perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain to me how a participatory gov’t ‘of the people, by the people…’ etc devolved into ‘accept the way things are or move to a foreign land and try to do better’. i submit that you are wrong. i have the right to address issues of legislation to my senators and representatives as well as the right to seek redress of constitutional issues through the court system. or does that sound too ’socialist’ to you?
“We all need to recognize that our liberties to think and freely express ourselves are in jeopardy. When it comes to a free society, we either stand together or hang separately.”
Summary: In the movie Spartacus, Greek freedom fighters were confronted by the Roman commander, who demanded that their leader, Spartacus, identify himself for punishment. As Spartacus began to rise to his feet, many other men, unwilling to see him stand alone against their oppressors, leapt to their feet and proudly declared: “I am Spartacus!”
The federal Department of Homeland Security’s recent report on “rightwing extremism” attacks every American by unjustly targeting and tainting some Americans. This article aims to make that report as meaningless as your local phone directory.
http://waronyou.com/topics/i-am-spartacus-standing-up-to-homeland-insecurity/
Extremely well-stated and well-written article. Honestly, this is one of the best persuasive arguments for legalization I’ve read in quite some time, and the repeated “they’re taking away your freedom” vein that runs throughout may even resonate with some Republicans.
I find the notion that a woman can abort her fetus for any reason she likes because “it is her body” to be much less convincing than your argument. It is the same personal rights issue. I don’t feel that getting high is nearly as serious or reprehensible as abortion. I am disabled with Parkinson’s, Fibromyalgia and Neuropathy. The drugs I have to take daily just to function cause skin cancers, heart problems, renal failure, liver damage, dementia, sleep disturbances, hallucinations and many other SERIOUS side effects. Why anyone would deny the use of marijuana for legitimate medical purposes? Could it be because California is flaunting and making a joke of the medical marijuana issue? That said, legalization will cause some bumps in the road, and clear up some others.
The whole question of States rights vice Fed enforcement of laws is really mute. The question is whether or not the people will see the injustice and somehow rise up and put an end to it.
Abuse of drugs regardless of what type, is a Cancer on this country. Granted the responsibilty to abuse drugs is on the abuser. The whole country can see what drugs have done to the fabric of society. I doubt seriously there is one person that has not suffered somehow from the effects of drugs by family or friends.
So lets say we legalize, Pot, Meth, Herioin (spelling?) etc. What happens next? What do you do with the family or friends that (like alcohol) ruin there lives with drugs? Perhaps the funds used to “war” on this issue would be better spent on education and treatment.
There is no easy answer period. Years ago I abused drugs, smoked dope, Blah Blah Blah. Personally, it held me back from enjoyin life. Thats my personal choice. Not to use drugs.
Personal Choice is a freedom, but that also comes with it responsibilty, and accountabilty. How many will stand up and be responsible and accountable, when they abuse drugs…………and kill someone? I doubt there will be very many. Freedom and Life can be very difficult………..But I chose freedom and will deal with Life.
Legalization of any so-called Illegal drug will bring responsilbilitys.