When our grandparents began their experiment of Prohibition in 1920 with the enactment of the 18th Amendment, their underlying intentions were noble. They sought to end the travesty that can accompany the misuse and abuse of alcohol.

In the end, however, Alcohol Prohibition was a bad public policy, and there were many unintended consequences, including an increase in public violence because gangsters competing for territory and control of bootleg booze distribution fought open gun battles on our streets. Police and public officials fell into corruption, swayed by the wealth offered by criminals who controlled the manufacturing and distribution of alcohol.

An increased production of more potent alcohol caused an upswing in deaths and injury. Consumption by young people became a problem. Finally enough people recognized the failures of Prohibition, and in 1933 the 18th Amendment was repealed with the enactment of the 21st Amendment. When Prohibition's repeal went into effect, organized crime's control of alcohol was lost because they could not compete with the lower prices of controlled sales.

At Prohibition's end, industrial magnate John D. Rockefeller, Jr. wrote, ... drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before.

Could those words be spoken today about the drug war? Could we end the monopoly that the gangs and cartels have on the black market in illegal drugs? Could we slay the drug dealers' golden egg-laying goose by the re-legalization of all drugs?

In real life terms Drug Prohibition has wrought upon our population all the same harms that alcohol Prohibition created. Each year we gift the cartels some 500 billion dollars in untaxed cash money. Money that allows them to adapt to each new strategy of law enforcement in the War On Drugs.

Because of the drug war's failures we must take a different path. No matter how far down Prohibition's road we have traveled it is not too late to turn back. We need to take control of these substances away from criminals and focus our attention on ending the harms that drug abuse create. We need to spend our time and money dealing with the problems that Drug Prohibition has created.

Re-legalization of drugs does not mean we are saying yes to or encouraging people to use drugs. By re-legalizing drugs, we will free up law enforcement to focus on real crime. We can leave addiction and its treatment to those professionals who have the appropriate medical skills. We can leave education about the harms of drugs to professional educators. The campaign against tobacco use has been demonstrably successful by using truthful education outreach. And those successes have come without the firing of a single weapon, without SWAT teams breaking down doors, without our elected representatives making grandstanding, get-tough speeches.

There is an alternative to the drug war IF we truly wish to succeed in reducing the ravaging effects drugs are having on our communities and our children. The alternative is to just say NO to Prohibition.

Tim Datig
LEAP etc

Why not treat this drug habit as a health problem and not criminal behavior. Im sure a re-hab would be cheaper than 5 years in prison. In jail she will be able to buy as many drugs as she can afford, which is exactly the proof that the drug war has failed. How do we expect to keep drugs out of the country when we can't even keep them out of supposed secure facilities.

Meanwhile we are funding terrorism and making criminal dealers rich while we spend $69 billion a year fighting the war on drugs. I do not condone the use of legal or illegal drugs.

Albert Einstien said the definition of insanity was " To keep doing something the same way over and over again and expecting different results"

Thant's exactly what the government is doing with the drug war.

Even during my tenure as a police Officer in NYC in the 70's arresting prostitutes for "Loitering for the purposes of prostitution" and direct prostitution arrests, I wondered why we were treating this any different from selling cars.

A quote by Albert Einstein regarding alcohol prohibition:

"There is a great amount of interest in this year's presidential elections,
 as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot
 better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two
 groundbreaking candidates - a woman and an African-American - while the
 conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party's nod to a
 quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

 Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest
 groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of
 illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

 There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will
 decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from 
all
 economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all
 geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, 
deep
 South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

 His common traits are that he isn't looking for anything from anyone - 
just
 the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In 
many
 cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He 
pays
 more than his share of taxes and works hard.

 The victim hood syndrome buzzwords - "disenfranchised," "marginalized" and
 "voiceless" - don't resonate with him. "Press 'one' for English" is a
 curse-word to him. He's used to picking up the tab, whether it's the 
company
 Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a
 beautiful wedding.

 He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a
 "living document" open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who
 have never worked an honest day in their lives.

 The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he's willing to pick up a gun to
 defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to
 defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing 
someone
 who needs killing really doesn't't bother him.

 The Angry White Man is not a metro sexual, a homosexual or a victim. 
  Nobody
 like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina - he got his people together and got
 the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to
 help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a
 volunteer firefighter.

 His last name and religion don't matter. His background might be Italian,
 English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have
 Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a
 white American.

 He's a man's man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football,
 hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a
 strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He
 coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn't't ask for a penny.
 He's the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of
 friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a
 factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal 
and
 get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never
 know what it took to flip that light switch.

 Women either love him or hate him, but they know he's a man, not a 
dishrag.
 If they're looking for someone to walk all over, they've got the wrong 
guy.
 He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says "Yes, sir" and "No, 
ma
 'am."

 He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a
 Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than
 rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

 He's not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of 
certain
 backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their
 race. He's willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play
 by the rules and learn English.

 Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site 
becomes
 flooded with illegal workers who don't pay taxes and his wages drop like a
 stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and 
he
 has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he
 simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations
 for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers.
 When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly
 bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are 
in
 education and law enforcement.

 He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice
 reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of 
her
 on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why 
anyone
 would want her as their leader. It's not that she is a woman. It's that 
she
 is who she is. It's the liberal victim groups she panders to, the "poor 
me"
 attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to 
an
 honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who 
refuse
 to do anything for themselves.

 There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men 
are
 members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote 
against
 Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

 He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, 
and
 he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum."


 Amen!

I received this by mail

 Visit www.leap.cc  Law Enforcement Against Prohibition for tons of information on legalizing all drugs.

 We are spending 69 billion dollars a year on the drug war including prisons of which 85% of inmates are in for drug related crimes. We have meor people in jail in this country than any other in the world.

 Check out and join LEAP Law Enforcement Against Prohibition www.leap.cc  no dues, no meetings. The site has tons of imformation.