Hi. My name is Bob Eaton. To let you know a little about me, I don't use illegal drugs. My drug of choice is coffee and I'm vegan. I'm with a Connecticut group called Efficacy. Our main thrust right now is changing the way our country deals with the issue of illegal drugs. The word efficacy means "the ability to achieve a desired effect". We don't think drug prohibition is achieving a desirable effect.
I want to talk about what drug prohibition does. Most of the problems we see from illegal drugs are due to drug prohibition, not the drugs themselves.
Makes Criminals The first thing prohibition does is turn a lot of people into criminals. This puts an illegal drug user outside of normal society, making it harder for them to live in the same way non criminals do. For example, if someone is wanting help with an addiction problem, it is hard for that person to seek that help because they are automatically labeled as an outlaw. Expectant mothers who are addicted to an illegal drug will often avoid prenatal care, fearing that they will be put in jail instead of being helped. This has an adverse effect on the child as well as the mother.
Drug Overdose. We have all heard of drug overdoses and that sometimes people die from them. When you buy drugs on the black market you have no idea what you will get. The purity of the drug will be unknown. It could be diluted or highly concentrated. It might not even be the drug the user thought he was buying. It might be a different drug or a benign substance or a poison. It might also be contaminated with poison either by accident or on purpose. You don't get warning labels or guidelines for there use. Since drug prohibition operates on the assumption that some drugs are bad and people can't be allowed to use them, it limits good information on what the consequences really are from taking those drugs. This all ads up to an increased likelihood of drug overdoses.
Drug Potency When a substance is illegal it is a challenge to transport. There is a huge advantage to having it available in a concentrated form. The unfortunate result of that is drugs become more potent. Heroin takes the place of opium and crack takes the place of cocaine. The more concentrated drugs are, the more addictive they are.
Expensive Drugs Illegal drugs are expensive. The tougher drug prohibition makes it for illegal drug sellers to produce, transport and distribute drugs, the more expensive they become. For a user this, of course, means they need to come up with more money. An addicted user that doesn't earn enough money legally will look to illegal means to fund his addiction.
Easy Access for Minors Drug prohibition hasn't really stopped people from using drugs. Drug use relates more to current fads than drug prohibition. In fact, for minors, drug prohibition has made buying marijuana easier than buying beer.
Environment The US government is pushing Columbian drug producers farther into the rainforest causing more of the rainforest to be lost. Our government is continuing to spray herbicides with the intention of eradicating the Columbian cocaine crop. This spraying is having little effect on the production of drugs. What the spraying has done is to harm the very crops the US government wants them to grow.
Drug producers aren't concerned about environmental laws. In Columbia it is estimated that 200,000 tons of chemical wastes are dumped into the ground and streams each year, due to the unregulated manufacture of cocaine.
Easy Money for Militant Groups and Gangs Selling drugs is easy money for many militant groups around the world. Many wars are sustained because of the high profits of an illegal market with many willing buyers. How many guns could a gang buy if they didn't have the easy income from selling drugs. These same drug sellers would not stand a chance if they had to compete in the over the counter market.
Violence Turf wars are created between rival suppliers of illegal drugs. The promise of high profits means no matter how many suppliers go to jail or are killed, someone else will always be willing to take their place.
Corruption The big profits that come from drug prohibition end up corrupting those who enforce the laws. Corruption makes life more dangerous for our law enforcement officers who resist temptation, and is a big part of why we can't even keep illegal drugs out of our prisons.
Tax Dollars The harder the government tries to stop people from using drugs the more tax dollars it spends.
Racial Oppression The first American anti-drug law was passed in 1875 in San Francisco. It was an ordinance which outlawed the smoking of opium in opium dens. At the same time you could still use opium in the form of laudanum. The law was structured because Chinese men smoked opium while other forms of opium were used by white women.
Cocaine was outlawed because of fears of superhuman "Negro Cocaine Fiends" that supposedly went on violent sexual rampages raping white women. At the same time, police nationwide switched from .32 caliber pistols to .38 caliber pistols because it was believed that the superhuman "Negro Cocaine Fiends" could not be killed with the smaller gun.
Marijuana was outlawed in 1937 as a repressive measure against Mexican workers. It was thought marijuana had a violent effect on the "degenerate races."
HIV and HEP C Beyond all common sense drug prohibitionists fight against clean needle exchanges. This is a health measure that can save many lives lost to AIDS and hepatitis C, including lives of people who don't use illegal drugs.
Hemp One of the silliest drug prohibition ideas is the DEA's attempt to make eating products that contain hemp illegal. It certainly isn't a nutrition issue. Food products made from hemp are very nutritious and they contain so little THC it would be impossible to get high from them.
Right now, you can be disqualified from a government student loan for using marijuana, but not for murder, rape, or kidnapping.
Drug prohibition is the enforcement of a certain sense of morality not a well thought policy to reduce harm to society. Drug War hawks are so zealous they can't see the greater harm to society they are causing by waging an unwinnable war on drugs.
I hope some of you will think about drug prohibition and I encourage you to investigate it for yourself. Thank you.
For more information check out Efficacy www.efficacy-online.org.
