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Former US President Jimmy Carter: Call off Global Drug War

God damn!!!! What a week for us!


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.
The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.
These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”
These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.
This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.
The commission’s facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment “with models of legal regulation of drugs ... that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.” For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.
But they probably won’t turn to the United States for advice. Drug policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole — more than 3 percent of all American adults!
Some of this increase has been caused by mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes you’re out” laws. But about three-quarters of new admissions to state prisons are for nonviolent crimes. And the single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.
Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families (disproportionately minorities), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in 1980, 10 percent of his state’s budget went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and only 7.5 percent to higher education.
Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help to bring about a reform of America’s drug policies. At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right.
A few years ago I worked side by side for four months with a group of prison inmates, who were learning the building trade, to renovate some public buildings in my hometown of Plains, Ga. They were intelligent and dedicated young men, each preparing for a productive life after the completion of his sentence. More than half of them were in prison for drug-related crimes, and would have been better off in college or trade school.
To help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug policies more humane and more effective, the American government should support and enact the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on Drug



Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/opinion/17carter.html?_r=2&emc=eta1
 

RetroGrow

Active member
Veteran
Of course, this is all common sense to us, things we have known forever.
But try to get our hypocrite president to admit it.
A known drug user, yet still stands behind the laws that lock us up.
What a coward.
 
The drug war is very profitable to the people who make the laws. The corporations who finance their campaigns and all their lawyer buddies who'd be out of work. Not to mention how would the CIA fund their secret wars without the drug money. All the reasons sited for the drug war failing are exactly what the drug war was intended to do. So in reality it's not failing at all, it's just that they lied to everyone regarding the reasoning.
 

grapeman

Active member
Veteran
Carter?

Our worst president of all time and a full time clown since he left the white house.

On the other hand, I do agree in legalizing all drugs.
 

DiscoBiscuit

weed fiend
Veteran
Wasn't opec putting the energy clamps on us pretty bad then? I think we called it embargo. W's damage came in the form of deficits, national debt and unemployment. Biggest thing that messed Carter up was a rabbit, a sweater and a solar panel.
 

Hammerhead

Disabled Farmer
ICMag Donor
Veteran
yes Carter popo. Thats when you could buy a home for 50k but your interest rates where 20%
 

DiscoBiscuit

weed fiend
Veteran
I wouldn't give Paul Volker all the blame but he didn't do that much different than Nixon's Volker. Wasn't stagflation new territory and we banked on the wrong strategy? Not sure how Carter personally influenced double digit inflation.
 
Volkers policies at the fed did exactly what they were intended to do. Begin the de-industrialization of America. Carter was just doing as he was told. The fact there is a fed is much of the problem, especially one who can centralize economic policy and set interest rates willy nilly. End it already, why can't we resurrect Andrew Jackson? But anyway back to the topic at hand. I think prohibition is the least of our problems, it's merely a symptom of the bigger problem, namely the fascist elements lodged into our power structure. Fix that and prohibition will end as it is the will of the people.
 

DiscoBiscuit

weed fiend
Veteran
End it already, why can't we resurrect Andrew Jackson?

What difference would that make? The same folks (you didn't mention) would simply tell him what to do.

But anyway back to the topic at hand. I think prohibition is the least of our problems, it's merely a symptom of the bigger problem, namely the fascist elements lodged into our power structure. Fix that and prohibition will end as it is the will of the people.

Ah, Andrew Jackson the fascist. That's what we'd have, right?
 

gaiusmarius

me
Veteran
Andrew Jackson will for ever be a hero to all enemies of the federal reserve. he fought the international bankers to a standstill and killed off their attempt to force a central bank on the people. yes he was ruthless in pursuit of his goals in war. but i bet he never killed as many as Obama has, or GW or any number of presidents. it's one thing to make war on people, it's a whole other thing to make war on your own peoples unborn generations and make them into financial slaves.

while Jackson was mostly leading his men and suffering with them, today's so called presidents send others off to suffer, die, kill and maim and be maimed. but they are guilty of crimes against humanity and war criminals on a level incomparable with any evil deeds of Andrew Jackson. just think about the DU munitions being used all over the middle east. do i need to say more?
 

DiscoBiscuit

weed fiend
Veteran
Wasn't Andrew packing ball and powder? I don't think manifest destiny would fly today. Ol' Andrew would be in the Hague alongside Karadzic.

You sure Andrew fought as the president? Might wanna double check that one.
 

gaiusmarius

me
Veteran
fought the bank as president anyway. even if my time line was faulty, the point remains he made a terrible enemy. in fact wasn't his winning the battle of New Orleans his spring board to the presidency. if jackson would be at the Hague, what about obama and bush?
 

DiscoBiscuit

weed fiend
Veteran
Good points. I believe Ellsberg offered that every president including and since Vietnam has violated (presidential) constitutional war powers. According to Ellsberg, Patriot Act has since made Nixon's crimes legal if happened today. The article didn't mention other presidential crimes but did example Libya as Obama's constitutional violation. Violated the Patriot Act itself? The article didn't specify.

Maybe it's Obama that'll be alongside Karadzic?:)
 
The drug war is very profitable to the people who make the laws. The corporations who finance their campaigns and all their lawyer buddies who'd be out of work. Not to mention how would the CIA fund their secret wars without the drug money. All the reasons sited for the drug war failing are exactly what the drug war was intended to do. So in reality it's not failing at all, it's just that they lied to everyone regarding the reasoning.

You took the words out of my mouth! The country is still full of sheeple that are fed with the same-ol BS doctrine; however, more and more are waking up & realizing what's really going on. So all one can really do is see what happens when the vast majority of the public has said enough is enough. And that is when blood will be shed in the likes we have never seen before. I truly believe we may see a second revolution in our lifetime.
 

DiscoBiscuit

weed fiend
Veteran
IMO, we'd have to see far more getting screwed by the status quot to see bloody revolution in the streets. Many of those that would allow mmj or even mj reform aren't ready to fight and IMO, never would.

At any given time, 4 million peeps in the system isn't enough to spark change. Among others, alcohol reform saw large women's movements keeping debate on the forefront of American politics. Everybody remember that the next time you drink and toast women's suffrage.:)
 
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