Neutralsam's View

Neutralsam's View

What's Wrong With the Drug War?

Everyone has a stake in ending the "war on drugs." Whether you’re a parent concerned about protecting children from drug-related harm, a social justice advocate worried about racially disproportionate incarceration rates, an environmentalist seeking to protect the Amazon rainforest or a fiscally conservative taxpayer you have a stake in ending the drug war. U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America “drug-free.” Yet heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. Nearly half a million people are behind bars on drug charges - more than all of Western Europe (with a bigger population) incarcerates for all offenses. The war on drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our constitutional rights.

Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called “drug-related” crime is a direct result of drug prohibition's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.

http://www.lindesmith.org/drugwar/

Neutralsam's View

Neutralsam's View

What's Wrong With the Drug War?

Everyone has a stake in ending the "war on drugs." Whether you’re a parent concerned about protecting children from drug-related harm, a social justice advocate worried about racially disproportionate incarceration rates, an environmentalist seeking to protect the Amazon rainforest or a fiscally conservative taxpayer you have a stake in ending the drug war. U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America “drug-free.” Yet heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. Nearly half a million people are behind bars on drug charges - more than all of Western Europe (with a bigger population) incarcerates for all offenses. The war on drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our constitutional rights.

Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called “drug-related” crime is a direct result of drug prohibition's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is bad, but the drug war is worse.

http://www.lindesmith.org/drugwar/

Corruption in Society

"The major police corruption scandals of the last several decades have had their roots in drug enforcement."

Norm Stamper Norm Stamper, Ph.D., was a police officer for 34 years. He served as chief of the Seattle Police Department from 1994 to 2000. In his 28 years with SDPD Norm rose quickly through the ranks and as a deputy chief served in each of the agency's bureaus. He also served as Executive Director of Mayor Pete Wilson's Crime Control Commission for three years. Norm received numerous awards and citations during his career in San Diego, including the Diogenes Award of the Public Relations Society of America for his leadership in the wake of the Rodney King incident and the subsequent Simi Valley trial verdicts.

As Seattle's police chief, Norm led a process of major organizational restructuring, creating new bureaus of Professional Responsibility, Community Policing, and Family and Youth Protection. Within months his agency had formed one of the country's best responses to domestic violence.

As a cop dedicated to protect and serve, Norm believes the war on drugs has done exactly the opposite for people. "Think of this war's real casualties:" Norm writes in his extraordinary new book, Breaking Rank, "tens of thousands of otherwise innocent Americans incarcerated, many for 20 years, some for life; families ripped apart; drug traffickers and blameless bystanders shot dead on city streets; narcotics officers assassinated here and abroad, with prosecutors, judges, and elected officials in Latin America gunned down for their courageous stands against the cartels; and all those dollars spent on federal, state, and local cops, courts, prosecutors, prisons, probation, parole, and pee-in-the-bottle programs. Even federal aid to bribe distant nations to stop feeding our habit." The war on drugs costs the United States more than 69 billion dollars each year.

Norm was a member of the National Advisory Counsel on the Violence against Women Act; Police Executive Research Forum; International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Major Cities Chiefs.

Norm earned his bachelor and master's degrees in criminal justice administration from San Diego State University and his Ph.D. in leadership and human behavior from United States International University. He is a graduate of the FBI's National Executive Institute. Over the past three decades he has conducted organizational effectiveness and leadership training and consulting for both public and private organizations throughout North America.

Norm Stamper is the author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing, Nation Books, 2005 (see www.normstamper.com) and Removing Managerial Barriers to Effective Police Leadership, Police Executive Research Forum, Washington, D.C., 1992.

http://www.leap.cc/

Government Theives

Does the government really think that the people will ever trust them again? will you?
We keep forgetting that they've done this before, pocklington $350? Who does watch the government and their spending. The very same people that helped to elect them they get first dibs on the jobs. Who looks into the lotto scam thats billions more going to the government of the day and friends.
Bring in the ploygraph hook all politictions up. Start with the old and then when the new ones come in take a reading at their start and every year they serve.
Asking a thief to tell the truth is not in their best interrest so they'll lie if they stole from us or blame it on some one else.
Have we become a society of immoral slobs that steal from our brothers and sisters then shit in our own front yards? How can we ask our politicians to do more then we ourselves are willing to do. We let them put the laws into effect that protect them and put the cost of defending them onto us.
We let them steal from others and did nothing.

Do Social Service workers steal?

How can we be sure that workers or any government empolyee doesn't rob us blind.
The police service believes in the polygraph to tell if someones guilty of a crime so why don't we use this on all workers and supervisors? Evelyn hynes was my worker and she never gave me the allowance that was owed me for medical trips. Other workers own homes that they rent out to people on assistance. oppertunities for corruption. this country was built on the bases of steal form them before they steat from you. Lying and deciet is the food for the growth of the industry. look at the people that made up the power in canada and you'll see for yourself what kind of people this country raises. The cheating of the first Nations of their land and lives to Generals selling goods ment for our troops at the front in the first world war. Who watches the cook to see if he uses all the meat in the stew? Not in canada they are left to their own to do the right thing and some do but sadly most don't.