I get why our Prez & CO. passed the stimulus plan, but I’m still pessimistic about how affective it will be. Being the frugal type, I’m an advocate for cutting budgets rather than spending more money we don’t have. Unfortunately the big kids in Washington aren’t asking my opinion. If they were asking me, I would suggest a reform on our department of corrections to be the number one priority. A few places to start could be doing away with the death penalty, legalizing all drugs and discontinuing the disproportionate arrests/prison sentences for people of color.
Wait, what was that I just said? Legalize all drugs? Why would a goody two-shoes advocate for the legalization of drugs?
Reason number one: racism. The legalization of some drugs vs. the outlawing of other drugs has a lot to do with racism. Smoking opium was fine and dandy when white women were the ones addicted to it, but as soon as the Chinese started flooding our country (about 100 years ago) and the white folks started to exclude them, opium got banned. Next came cocaine. White folks in the South would give this drug to their black employees because it made them work harder. This inevitably led to addiction which fed into the fear white folks had of black folks. Thus, cocaine got banned. Finally, marijuana. There wasn’t any stigma on this drug until the Great Depression when Mexicans in America would smoke it. The white folks claimed that this made them violently crazy. Marijuana got banned. Tobacco and Alcohol are legal today because they’ve always been the drugs of choice for white folks and they are big money makers since both can be produced within our borders.
Not only is our history with drugs tainted by racism, it is still going on today. The 100-to-1 crack-to-powder ratio is an unfortunate example. The sentencing for possessing 5 grams of crack is the same as possessing 500 grams of cocaine. This means the poor and often people of color who use crack get punished more frequently than the rich folks who can afford cocaine. Unfair? I’d say so.
Reason number two: money. The war on drugs is oober expensive and I don’t like that my tax dollars are going towards it when they could be going towards positive things like education and health care. Check out this article for more on that, or read this real great excerpt about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP):
LEAP—whose members are current and former police officers and police chiefs, federal agents, undercover operatives and prison wardens—is the first U.S. law enforcement organization to advocate for the full legalization of all drugs. It recently co-commissioned a study by Harvard University economics professor Jeffrey Miron, who studied the cost-benefit of legalizing and taxing drugs in the same manner as alcohol and tobacco. According to Miron’s analysis, released in December, tax revenues nationwide would amount to approximately $32.7 billion a year. Miron also found that, if drugs were legalized, the United States would save more than $44 billion annually in costs related to the enforcement of drug laws.
Reason number three: death. The drug war costs a lot of lives which I think most would agree is a very negative aspect of this situation. According to the same article I mentioned above, there were 5,600 drug related murders last year in Mexico alone. Ouch.
Ending racism, saving money and preventing death. Yes please.
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