• Criminalization drives people from mild drugs to strong drugs: Marijuana is more bulky then cocaine
• Crack would never have existed without prohibition.
• put people  in jail for victimless crimes
• overeating causes more deaths then drugs do: why not criminalize overeating, dangerous skying?
• jails get filled with harmless people.
• thousands die of real crimes by drug users needing money or drug running gang crimes

Human-Stupidity Analysis

Decades of failed drug war have strengthened criminal drug cartels. They control an enormous percentage of the world’s riches and capital and have corrupted governments, presidents, judges. Even if all drug laws were to be repealed, it is very difficult to undo the damage. What other "business" the well equipped armed criminals would engage in to continue earning easy big money? Extortion? Kidnapping?

Of course, use or liberated should be monitored through intelligent government policy, similar to what was done to smoking. We still have alcoholism and sedentary overeating as very serious public health problems to tackle with.

“Harry J Anslinger was head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics which enforced the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S.A. from 1919 to 1933. When prohibition was repealed, Anslinger, in order to keep and justify his existence and job, created the Orwellian lies about a new killer drug – marihuana. [...] In 1937 Anslinger had a hearing conducted before Congress which resulted in the Marihuana Tax Act and henceforth the whole legal injustice took off.” THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE ILLEGAL DRUG LAWS AND WHY THE DRACONIAN PENALTIES ?

All irrational witch hunts seem to originate in the USA.

All irrational witch hunts seem to originate in the USA(child porn witch hunt, teenage sex witch hunt, anti prostitution witch hunt, and illegal drug witch hunt).  And the USA imposes the witch hunt upon the rest of the world.

Why is this so? Who has the answers?

Drug Liberalization in Portugal and Holland: a success

Portugal just reports clear successes with legalization of drugs. Holland legalization of drugs and most of teenage sex is a resounding success.

“Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs in 2001. The outcome, after nearly a decade, according to a study published in the November issue of the British Journal of Criminology: less teen drug use, fewer HIV infections, fewer AIDS cases and more drugs seized by law enforcement. Adult drug use rates did slightly increase — but this increase was not greater than that seen in nearby countries that did not change their drug policies. The use of drugs by injection declined.”
Read more: Portugal’s Drug Experience: New Study Confirms Decriminalization Was a Success

“The Dutch are known for their liberal attitudes toward sex and drugs: while not officially legal, marijuana use and sale in “coffee shops” is tolerated in The Netherlands, as is prostitution, most notoriously in the street windows of Amsterdam’s red light district. Pragmatism, the Dutch have long believed, is better than punitive prohibition — and they’ve got lots of data on their side.While 12% of the American population has smoked marijuana in the last month, for example, the same is true of only 5% of citizens of The Netherlands.”
Read more: What the U.S. Can Learn from the Dutch About Teen Sex

Benefit and uses of Marijuana

“Marihuana was first recorded by the Chinese in 2737 B.C. and in the State of Virginia in 1631 it became compulsory by law that farmers grow a certain percentage of marihuana because of its diverse and deep industrial use.

It is the toughest natural fibre in existence (hemp rope etc.) and produces three times as much fibre per acre than cotton, four times more pulp than woodchip to produce quality archival paper. Because of its toughness marihuana was a great threat to the new chemical artificial nylon fibre industry and the latter joined in the conspiracy of Orwellian lies about pot.

Along with its medicinal use (glaucoma, arthritis, chemo-therapy cancer) pot is being denied its use for society because of Harry J Anslinger being the single major cause of the Orwellian lies and laws about marihuana. With such an  historical basis the Law is neither majestic nor dignified.”  THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE ILLEGAL DRUG LAWS AND WHY THE DRACONIAN PENALTIES ?

Alcohol and tobacco, much more dangerous then Marijuana.

And why not regulate marijuana like alcohol? Every major study has shown marijuana is non-addictive and less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. See: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/studies.htm — In fact, deaths from alcohol are around 400,000 per year with tobacco more than that. Add the carnage alcohol causes in traffic accidents and alcohol fueled violence and the numbers are staggering.
Now, deaths from marijuana – ZERO. That’s right. No recorded deaths from marijuana in its entire history. There are also no recorded cases of cancer caused from marijuana and consuming it in other ways – food, drink or vaporization – eliminates the minor harm caused by smoke.
To treat marijuana consumption more strictly than alcohol is one of the greatest travesties of justice that exists. In fact, it is a monstrously destructive fraud that brands over 700,000 U.S. citizens with a criminal record EACH YEAR!
Why do we still have this barbaric persecution? Because police and politicians like Tanday build their careers and empires on it. Because industries like alcohol and pharmaceuticals don’t want the competition. Because other interests like the drug treatment/testing industry and the prison industries depend on it for their life’s blood. And because government uses marijuana prohibition as a means of controlling minorities and the poor.
There NEVER was a good reason for marijuana prohibition. See http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

Source: medicalnewstoday.com/opinions/5681/

THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE ILLEGAL DRUG LAWS AND WHY THE DRACONIAN PENALTIES ?

By Dean R. Dowling

Drug A is pharmacologically and psychologically far more harmful than drugs B or C in the following 6 respects:

(l) Death rates
(ll) Addiction rates
(lll) Withdrawal
(lV) Overdose
(V) Destruction of brain/body cells
(VI) Behaviour

Politicians then give the Queen’s Honours to the producers of drug A and simultaneously give 25 years jail with appalling unjust disproportionate confiscation of property to the producers of drugs B or C. [...]

Now identify, drug A = alcohol, drug B = marihuana, Drug C = heroin, if pure.
Source: users.on.net/~rmc/drugs.htm

Drug prohibition is very significant

Just as the prohibition of alchol created alcohol trafficing mafia, the drug prohibition is responsible for

• huge income by drug trafficers, who move and own significant amounts of the world’s economic resources
• drug wars that tear apart entire countries like Colombia and Mexico
• Imprisonment of a significant part of the population, partly for violent trafficing crimes, but mainly for mere consumption, planting, or non-violent resale.

Drug Library: everything about drug prohibition, drug war, etc here

• The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States
• The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry into the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition by Professor Richard J. Bonnie & Professor Charles H. Whitebread, II Zip File of the entire report - about 217K.
• The Schaffer Drug Library: very interesting
• druglibrary.org: you can spend weeks reading everything you always wanted to know about drugs

Another summary

And why not regulate marijuana like alcohol? Every major study has shown marijuana is non-addictive and less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. See: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/studies.htm — In fact, deaths from alcohol are around 400,000 per year with tobacco more than that. Add the carnage alcohol causes in traffic accidents and alcohol fueled violence and the numbers are staggering.
Now, deaths from marijuana – ZERO. That’s right. No recorded deaths from marijuana in its entire history. There are also no recorded cases of cancer caused from marijuana and consuming it in other ways – food, drink or vaporization – eliminates the minor harm caused by smoke.
To treat marijuana consumption more strictly than alcohol is one of the greatest travesties of justice that exists. In fact, it is a monstrously destructive fraud that brands over 700,000 U.S. citizens with a criminal record EACH YEAR!
Why do we still have this barbaric persecution? Because police and politicians like Tanday build their careers and empires on it. Because industries like alcohol and pharmaceuticals don’t want the competition. Because other interests like the drug treatment/testing industry and the prison industries depend on it for their life’s blood. And because government uses marijuana prohibition as a means of controlling minorities and the poor.
There NEVER was a good reason for marijuana prohibition. See http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm

Source: medicalnewstoday.com/opinions/5681/

Legitimate Drug Injection Kit (Wikipedia)

Human Irrationality, dogmas, blindness at its best.“People do stupid things. That’s what spreads HIV.”

Needle exchange is an even clearer solution then condom use efforts. Because condoms are unpleasant. Clean needles are not even detracting from drug “pleasure”.

Our “morality” is outdated & immoral. We need updated morality.

Drug War, morality, religion, sexual morality etc prevent needle exchanges, thus cause HIV infection and deaths. Call it insanity. Call it suffering and death caused by false outdated stupid “morality”. Dogma, blindness, self-deception ….. We believe in our 2000year old holy books. They were very good for their times. But no biblical author knew about HIV virus transmission or drug addiction therapy. In later posts I will write about Peter Singer’s utilitarism as a help to guide our morals.

Now, the first person to figure that out and do something about it on a national scale was that well-known, bleeding heart liberal Margaret Thatcher. And she put in the world’s first national needle exchange program and other countries followed suit, Australia, The Netherlands and few others, and in all of those countries, you can see, not more than four percent ever became infected with HIV, of injectors.

In places that didn’t do this, New York City for example, Moscow, Jakarta, we’re talking, at its peak, one in two injectors infected with this fatal disease. Now, Margaret Thatcher didn’t do this because she has any great love for junkies. She did it because she ran a country that had a national health service. So, if she didn’t invest in effective prevention, she was going to have pick up the costs of treatment later on, and obviously those are much higher. So she was making a politically rational decision. Now, if I take out my public health nerd glasses here, and look at these data, it seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it. But in this country, where the government apparently does not feel compelled to provide health care for citizens, we’ve taken a very different approach. So what we’ve been doing in the United States is reviewing the data, endlessly reviewing the data. So these are reviews of hundreds of studies by all the big muckety-mucks of the scientific pantheon in the United States, and these are the studies that show needle programs are effective, quite a lot of them. ted.com/talks/view/id/818

Rational Publich Healty Policy demands

• allow needle exchange to make addiction less dangerous
• consider furnishing cleaner, cheaper, less harmful drugs

Of course, if we furnish needles, we should also furnish anti-addiction therapy, public information, etc. Some think one should not spend money to prevent addicts from getting AIDS: these addicts pass on AIDS to non-addicted innocent partners, who then could pass it on to you and me. And once an addict has AIDS, society helps to treat the medical AIDS cases with massive financial investments. Needles are cheaper!

We need morality and public action to reign in disease & death through drugs

We need to try to reduce drug damage by information policy, advertising, influencing public opinion, education, ………

As positive examples, we managed to reduce cigarette use and to enforce seat belt use. But, changing society’s habits and attitudes took decades.

Society vastly reduced tobacco abuse, increased seatbelt and helmet compliance

We are belatedly reducing most problems caused by cigarettes. But this is a decade long process, very slow.  We managed without handing out 10 year jail sentences for possession or production of cigarettes (as we do in case of drugs, pedophilia, child pornography). We made laws to move people towards less harmful filter cigarettes. We managed by public awareness campaigns. Not drakonian punishments.

We are also slowly instigating “morality” regarding seat belt use, helmet use, driving habits, etc.

We don’t deal too well with junk food, obesity, alcohol. So we need to learn how to create moral behavior in society to avoid damage to individuals and society. There must be better ways then total restriction

Society failed to solve obesity, junk food, sedentarism, alcoholism, drugs

Society needs to promote healthy and sane habits. But, if we don’t use blind drakonian repression of drugs (and needles), other measures need to be found to maintain healthy individuals and a healthy society. It is not moral to stand by idly while millions suffer from diseases and premature death, due to overeating and alcohol. It is not moral to allow youth and adults to be brainwashed by junk food and subliminal alcohol advertising.

Society and morality failed miserably to deal with drugs like alcohol, “drugs” like junk food and sedentarism. These caus inumerous deaths.

Old religious morality is a serious impediment

A 2000 year old Book (the bible, but also other religious texts) was never concerned with abortion, birth control, keeping dying people alive artificially, with overpopulation, etc.   We need now morality.

Prague – The Czech government today approved the list of hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms, including hemp, coca, mescaline cactus and magic mushrooms, and decided that people would be allowed to grow up to five pieces of such plants and keep 40 magic mushrooms at home, a CTK source said.
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/czech-govt-defines-rules-of-hallucinogenic-plants-growing/411010
http://www.radio.cz/en/article/74121
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,673127,00.html [german]

The liberal law went into effect in January 2010.

The government’s approval of a table specifying what amounts of drugs are permissible is a vital part of the country’s new penal code that was last year approved by both houses of parliament and in January of this year was signed into law by President Vaclav Klaus. Without the just-approved table of amounts that will be used by Czech police, the January decriminalization of the drug would be difficult to judge by courts and investigators.

The plant still remains illegal, however, though from the new year possession of five or less plants is merely a misdemeanour, and fines for possession will be on par with penalties for parking violations.

The Czech decision is in sync with the country’s liberal, Dutch-like social attitudes and laissez-faire approach to civil liberties.

There is also an interesting lifestyle footnote: Czechs are Europe’s biggest drinkers of hops-infused beer and are also the continent’s leaders in smoking pot.

Czech decriminalization of small amounts of cannabis possession does not, however provide greater clarity to the country’s policy on medical marijuana, an issue which is gaining momentum both in Europe, in North America and elsewhere around the globe.
http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/2009/12/08/czech-govt-allows-5-cannabis-plants-for-personal-use-from-2010/

Human-stupidity comments

• Great that people don’t go to jail for the victimless crime of possessing drugs for their own use. This is a great start. Using certain drugs may be stupid (e.g. too much alcohol), but that should not be a criminal case.
• “Unfortunately [the law]‘s not bringing anything new on the prevention side, and this is most worrying.” http://www.radio.cz/en/article/123873 Intense government campaigns should make using drugs less “hip” and reduce usage and abuse. Unfortunately alcohol usage is a huge problem world wide, and of course other drugs may become a bigger health problem too.
• Where should these drugs come from? the delivery guy still is criminalized and thus drug crime still a problem. Except if every user now starts growing his own supply. Everyone engaging in agriculture might be very good but creates other problems (what to do with surplus harvest, or when stocks run out, or before the pot is harvested). What if I don’t like growing plants at home, or mom does not allow it? And where should I get my ecstasy and heroin supply from, legally?

Compare Dutch Drug Laws
By allowing possession and retail sales of cannabis, but not cultivation or wholesale, the government creates numerous problems of crime and public safety, he alleges, and therefore he would like to switch to either legalising and regulating production, or to the full repression

The illegal cocaine alkaloid – one of 10 found in coca and representing only 0.8% of the plant’s chemical make-up – is chemically removed before use, as mandated by international anti-narcotics agencies.

“There is no scientific basis for this ban on Red Bull Cola because the levels of cocaine found are so small,” Fritz Soergel, the head of the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in Nuremberg, Bavaria, told Time magazine.

“And it’s not even cocaine itself. According to the tests we carried out, it’s a non-active degradation product with no effect on the body. If you start examining lots of other drinks and food so carefully, you’d find a lot of surprising things.”

cited from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8067970.stm

They should prohibit Colas for other health hazards. Another human stupidity is false nutrition, obesity, eating cancerigenous substances, … But nobody prohibits junk foods because of that.

Studies ordered by the British government show that Ecstasy is less dangerous then alcohol and cigarettes. Still the penalties for ecstasy will continue as stringent as for heroin.

Extasy study rescinded

A 1992 study published in Science Magazine, showing extreme damage caused by ecstasy consumption had to be rescinded because researches had injected the wrong drug (!)

more details in the german version of this post  %LANG:, : and %.