Letter to the Editor:
War on drugs costs more than it's worth
Published March 9, 2010
The recent earthquake that devastated Haiti has killed over 200,000 people and injured many more and left thousands homeless. It is right for us to provide aide, and help anyway we can. While our thoughts and prayers are the victims of this natural disaster, we Americans should take a few moments to reflect on the close to 70,000 people who lost their lives in Juarez, Mexico last year. Victims of a man made disaster known as the "War on Drugs". While the earthquake that hit Haiti was not our fault, the blood of the people being gunned down in the streets of Juarez is on our hands. We have no right to have these people die for our sins. Honestly, does this sound like something Jesus would do? There are some that say these are bad people and deserve to die. While some of these people are members of drug cartels and gangs, many are members of the armed forces, police, and federal agents. Husbands, fathers, sons, wives, mothers, daughters, fighting and dying in a war with no end. Many other casualties of this war are men, women, and children caught in the middle, when our "War on Drugs" has pushed into their countries, corrupting their governments, and turning their cities, villages, and countryside into war zones. The act of violence known as the "Saint Valentines Day Massacre" convinced our grandparents that it was time to end prohibition. How many more violent acts will it take to awaken our conscience. If drugs are the disease, and the "War on Drugs" is the cure, the cure is worse than the disease. Nothing the "War on Drugs" has accomplished or could ever hope to accomplish is worth sacrificing the lives of all these people. The people I know that do drugs, would rather we would just let them have their drugs and leave them alone, than to get all these people killed trying to save them. We learn in the story of the prodigal son, that when our children grow up, we must allow them to make their own decisions on what to do with their lives. As in the story of the prodigal son, not all of children will choose the straight and narrow. But if we have taught them of the love God, they will eventually find their way. In the Bible, the Ten Commandments come from God. Jesus gives us things like faith, hope, love, forgiveness and redemption. When we pass laws that tell people everything, from what they can and cannot put in their bodies, to who they can and cannot marry, we are not acting like Jesus, we are acting like God.
The "War on Drugs" is one of the most expensive, least effective, most intrusive, and has done the most to diminish our rights and freedoms of any government program. It has done the most to undo what our forefathers had done when they founded this nation. Thanks to the "War on Drugs, the "Land of the Free", has five times as many people per capita in prison than almost any nation on earth. We continue to cut funding to programs that are greatly appreciated by people in need of our help. We are also cutting funding to education programs that could help prepare our children to build a better tomorrow. But we continue to spend billions and billions of dollars on the "War on Drugs", which is best a miserable failure.
For the sake of the people of Mexico, Columbia, Peru, our own inner cities, and our troops in Afghanistan, we desperately need to get over ridiculous fear of marijuana, stop trying to micro-manage the lives of others, and end these drugs policies that put billions and billions of dollars into the hands of ruthless drug cartels, gangs, and warlords, and rains down death and devastation on the less fortunate people of the world. We, the people of the United States of America, need to stand up and tell our government, it is time to end the insanity that is the "War on Drugs".