Drugs? Legalize them, so we can control them!

Really, the catastrophic failure in Iraq is small peanuts compared to the failure of our “War on Drugs”. The war on drugs has been going on so long, and has woven its way into things like our foreign policy to such an extent, that there is no longer any clear way to measure the monsterous monetary cost. It is fantastic though and we all know that. The worser part is that the financial cost is nowhere near the thing that makes this so wrong-headed and horrible.
Consider folks:

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, by far. China, Russia and India together have less people in prison than us.

The Economist call for an end to the madness: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13237193&source=hptextfeature

The CIA says that the two most unstable countries in the world right now are Afghanistan and Mexico. That is right, Mexico, over neighbor, over 7,000 people were murdered last year along the US-Mexico border. The drug cartels standing army is larger than the Mexican national army. It is truly amazing but American drug laws are literally tearing apart the governments of countries like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and many others. 90% of the guns confiscated in Mexico were purchased in the US.

It is far easier for a school kid in the US to buy drugs than booze.
Think about this; we are helping terrorists with our drug laws. The main money maker for the Taliban in Afghanistan is opium.

The budget of the State of Washington is 50% spent on corrections, and we’re broke.
How about this? More people in the US every year die from cigarettes and booze than all illegal street drugs and illegal use of prescription drugs combined.

You would have thought we had learned our lesson. When alcohol was illegal anyone who wanted it could buy it anyway, they just bought it from illegal sources, which made crime syndicates like Al Capone’s very rich and powerful. Capone bought off judges and the law and made them corrupt as well. It isn’t just the tax revenue that is lost, which is huge, it is the loss of control as well. If a drug dealer is doing something illegal anyway, if he is looking at huge jail time anyway, why not sell to kids? Do you think drug dealers are afraid of jail time? Do you think drug dealers are afraid of police? Drug dealers are afraid of one thing only, their friends.

Kids can’t buy booze because there is no money in it. If I am outside a liquor store and a kid wants booze what would I gain by buying it for him? Ten bucks? HA! It is not worth the risk is it?

The really, really sad part of all this is the police actually brag when they drive up the price of street drugs. When a heroin addict needs the shit to keep from going into withdrawal and the price goes up, do they just stop, do they think “hey maybe I will go into de-tox and better my life”? Of course not. They don’t have medical plans, they don’t have choices, they are too far gone for that. They must commit crime to feed the habit, if the price goes up they need to commit more crime. When the police raise the price of drugs they are literally increasing violent crime.

Here is an idea. Let’s get all these young men out of prison and put them to work, our country is in trouble we need to quit screwing around. Let’s make a bunch of tax money off of drugs, and build bridges with it. Let’s look at what Portugal is doing and admit our plan is not working. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/14/portugal/index.html

Let’s admit that just making something like drugs illegal does not make it harder to get. If you doubt this for one minute…try this. Go to downtown Seattle with $100 cash. Try and buy Percodan or Marijuana on the street, see which one you get quicker.

Let’s cut our losses on something that will never work. Let’s admit drugs are no worse than cigarettes or booze, let’s tax it and move on. We have too much work to do, we are in too bad of shape to worry about people getting high in this crazy world. We have the data, clearly what we are doing now doesn’t work and it is time for a change.

The door knocked

The door knocked, the dog barked, Christ! It sounded like someone broke the window in the door!

I assumed it was the dude to replace the kitchen counter dropping by to check something, (he is supposed to show up tomorrow). So I look out, it is two, cute, fresh scrubbed, little girls, one tall redhead wearing some plaid school girl uniform, and one short Asian with a round face, with ….name tags….uh oh…….

Turns out they were selling something alrighty… MORMONISM. The ultimate con as it turns out. Here I thought they were trying to screw me out of a magazine subscription (the last one by). But they were trying to jack my eternal soul instead!

They asked if I had ever heard of their little church. I remarked “as it just so turns out I know more about your religion than you do”. They asked how that was possible, I told them because I study, because I find it fascinating that their religion is so new and young, but at the same time so big in number. It is a classic study in modern man and his need for religion in general and his not really wanting to know what goes on behind the curtain, but just wanting to believe whatever he is told, and then follow, follow the flock wherever it leads.

I told them I was very surprised to see girls instead of husky corn fed boys as per usual. It turns out the Oriental girl was Mongolian! What!? Well I see what the gig is for her already..hey pretend to be a Mormon and get a free ticket to America! What a scam, I know some others at work that did the same thing, hey I can’t blame them, it worked didn’t it?

Anyway she told me to have faith, the seed when planted if the fruit is good means the seed must have been good, right? I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the last time I heard the “look at the beautiful flower and see god” routine it was back in the 70’s and a Moonie was pushing it. Strangely, it seemed right for a Moonie, for here it seemed pathetic. I asked if she believed the lost tribes of Israel had migrated to South America? She said “you mean like the book of Mormon”? I said ..ah ..yes. She said no she hadn’t bothered to research that much. I asked if she would research buying a new car? “Oh yes I would” she gushed! I asked Isn’t her immortal soul more important than a car?

Right then as if on cue a cat walked past. Pinky the rambunctious black lab darted through for the attack! They said goodbye and left as I chased Pinky into the neighbors yard as Pinky wanted to discuss with ms. Cat her immortal soul. The girls proceeded to my gay neighbors house…..ah the luck…..

A Modest Proposal: Create Limbaughland

My fellow citizens, now-a-days in general, disappoint me.

American people, (supposedly free and intelligent) voting for George Bush, especially his second term, disappoint me. I realized after the 9-11 fiasco that Americans are much more cowardly, and generally stupid, (and proud of it) as a people, than I ever imagined possible. What other country in the world would despise intellectualism? We have no health insurance and more people in prison than any other country in the world. Right now we are bankrupt, in a ridiculous war in Iraq, and people are worried about an assault weapons ban. It is all truly amazing. The set of priorities many of my fellow citizens have, astounds me.

So we have a fat, drug addict, doctor shopper, who hosts a radio show, literally running one of our major political parties. His hate spewing nonsense, it is religiously followed by millions. He loudly states he hopes our current president’s plan of recovery fails, just because his candidate didn’t get elected. This is all despite the fact the last Republican group’s ideas were clearly failures. So what is the thought behind wanting to continue an agenda that is a colossal failure at any and all costs? To crush our country beyond recognition? To ruin our way of life? Why would that be their goal? I don’t get it.

Now the e-mails are flying out, trying to dredge up memories of Jane Fonda and the Dixie Chicks, and anything else that the Neo-Con nutcases can trump up to be bad things, because let’s face it, even they can’t blame Obama for anything evil yet, except being black, and being educated and intelligent, and having a funny sounding name, all hanging offenses to the Puritans apparently. They can’t admit the Dixie Chicks were right on about being very embarrassed to have Bush as our president. They can’t admit Jane Fonda was very right about us having no business in Viet Nam. Clearly she shouldn’t have cheered the North Viet force on in battle, even though they were just protecting their country against foreign invaders. The point is we were wrong to be there. Remember the “domino theory”? Isn’t it funny no one talks about that anymore? Viet Nam had many opportunities to take over other weaker neighbors, like Cambodia, and didn’t. They just wanted to be left alone to decide their own affairs.
We are also wrong in being in Iraq, we have no business whatsoever being there and what we are doing is morally wrong, any way you look at it. It is also way too expensive unless or lives depend on the outcome, which they don’t.

It is too bad these so-called “red states” cannot secede from our union so they can support themselves with their style of economy. They could teach their idiotic brand of science to their scientists. They could constantly wage religious war over perceived threats to their “way of life”. They could let the rich not pay any taxes and they could keep on the credit card style of living they love. They could keep printing valueless money as long as other countries would take it, which wouldn’t be long. They could fail, and I mean really fail badly, all on their own instead of dragging the rest of us down with them.

So I have an idea, a modest proposal. Let the Neo-Cons have their separate country and let them run it as they will. The so called “blue states” will also have our own country. Places like Eastern Washington could glom on with Idaho and Utah and be red as hell itself. We would call the new blue country Liberalia and the red states country could be Hicksville or the New States of No Education or possibly Limbaughland.

In the new true blue country, we could spend our money on mass transit and infrastructure instead of war in Iraq. We could have national health insurance for all and fund social security fully. We could end the ridiculous “war on drugs” and tax them instead, realizing they kill no more people than booze or cigarettes, and trying to legislate morality has never worked in the history of man. We could make education of the best and brightest a priority. If churches acted as political action committees we could tax them as well. We could make truth and justice for all a motto. We could also subscribe to the saying “we have very few rich men, but even fewer poor”.

The red as hell states could continue the holy war in Iraq. They could blow their money on huge gas hog vehicles and bankrupt themselves trying to be macho and Rambo-like. They could get rid of science and teach creation. They could mix their twisted view of Christianity with the state and make prayer mandatory in schools. They could burn books and outlaw everything. They could execute people who have abortions. They could make a national mania of locking people up and throwing away the keys. They could take away all civil rights and make freedom of speech a thing of the past. Moral police would walk the streets looking for offensive behavior. People could be locked up and tortured for years literally with no charges ever filed, let alone a trial of any kind. George W. Bush could be king for life.

After a period of time, say 25 years or so, we could see which country is better off. In terms of: jobs, wealth, technological growth, education scores, life expectancy, you know all the things that actually matter.

I wonder which country would best win a contest like that?