The Drug Czar’s blog, Pushing Back has this item:
Prop 215: Creating Confusion, Abuse, and Criminality since 1996
What happens when pro-drug groups con voters into passing marijuana legalization laws under the guise of medicine? What happens when these state laws conflict with Federal law? What happens when criminal groups and drug dealers start selling drugs under the cover of medical marijuana laws?
Ten years after the State of California passed Proposition 215, state and local officials are still struggling with these questions.
Ten years. Fair enough. There are still some problems with the implementation.
But look who’s talking.
It’s been over 90 years since the United States passed the Harrison Narcotics Act and we’re all still struggling with that mess. We’ve spawned giant criminal empires, destabilized small nations, imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Americans, created police forces that terrorize people in their homes, and sacrificed many of our civil liberties. Is the War on Drugs working yet?
Let’s give medical marijuana another 80 years before we call it a failure.
I’ll trump the DEA’s “Confusion and Abuse” and call them on “creating chaos and instability”.
The 2004 Congressional Research Service report to congress, “Illicit Drugs and the Terrorist Threat: Causal Links and Implications for Domestic Drug Control Policy” summarized: “The international traffic in illicit drugs contributes to terrorist risk through at least five mechanisms: supplying cash, creating chaos and instability, supporting corruption, providing “cover” and sustaining common infrastructures for illicit activity, and competing for law enforcement and intelligence attention. Of these, cash and chaos are likely to be the two most important.”
Yes. The congress knows that an outcome of the “illicit” drug market is that it is “creating chaos and instability”.
New York University Professor Barnett Rubin to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sept. 2006: “Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies.” Loretta Napoleoni, an expert on terrorist financing, was quoted as saying to the Council on Foreign Relations that; “the largest source of terrorists’ income is the illicit drug trade”. “Creating chaos and instability”, I think, trumps confusion and abuse.
All of these references can be found at:
“Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies.”