BACK AND FORTH WITH THE WAR ON DRUGS (2)

Yesterday in ‘Cops Say Forty Years of War on Drugs is Enough,’ Borderland Beat reported on the efforts of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) to end the War on Drugs. LEAP is a rogue organization whose membership is a tiny fraction of America’s police administrators and other cops. Most LEAP members are retired ‘reformed’ cops.

I believe that 99.99 percent of cops do not agree with the members of LEAP.

LEAP pointed to ‘the horrendous prohibition-related violence in Mexico as yet another example of the damage the drug war has done.’ What a load of crap!

If drugs were legalized the killings in Mexico would not stop. The real problem in Mexico is the fact that the majority of Mexicans live in abject poverty while a tiny minority of the wealthy runs the country. There is only a small middle class. The cartels would find other illegal enterprises if drugs were legalized. The cartels are similar to the insurgencies in Columbia and Peru. The War on Drugs is not responsible for the killings in Mexico. It's the lousy socioeconomic situation in that country.

One ‘Anonymous’ made an excellent case against the legalization of drugs when he wrote:

I got news for you more people in the United States die every year from alcohol related accidents (DWI) then all the people who have been killed by Mexico's drug war last six years! It's a fact (CDC- approximately 11k people die every year from alcohol related car crashes). Let's say 50k people have died (murdered) in Mexico over the drug war since Calderon took office..you looking at 66k in the US for DWI crashes. Not to mention approximately 79k people die each year in the US as a result of alcohol abuse..whether it be disease or over consumption (poisoning). My point is alcohol is perfectly legal to consume..it's taxed and regulated by age..etc..but yet it's the third leading cause of "lifestyle death" in the US. The question remains, how many of those +300k people in the US, who died as a result of alcohol in the last six years, would still be alive if alcohol was illegal? I'm not suggesting we need to go back to the prohibition days..I'm saying making something legal to possess, sell, and consume doesn't save lives!

And cop-hating ‘Ardent’ wrote:

The whole logic of those who advocate criminalizing things like drug use and prostitution is punitive and hateful, not loving and/or concerned. That's what produces the return meanness in the drug abusing sectors of society. Just as an aside, I would love to know what percentage of rank and file cops are against the drug war? After all, they are the ones that have to capture and then throw our society's 'throwaways' into jail for a crime of using substances that themselves are a lot less harmful than jail time is to the cops' prisoners. Wouldn't that be interesting, an actual poll of cops and their actual pov on this matter?

Another ‘Anonymous’ wrote:

Making illegal drugs legal will only increase the number of deaths attributable to legal drugs.The war on drugs is preventing the explosion of drug use by those gullible enough to use drugs.Reluctance is currently being provided by the illegality of drugs.

I wrote:

Ardent, you are full of it. No one is forcing all those idiot dopers to use drugs. It's their fault when they get locked up, not the cops who are just doing their jobs. As a life member of three large law enforcement associations, I can tell you that 99 percent of the cops would vote in favor of the War on Drugs. Believe me, no cop would lose one second of sleep throwing some dip-shit like you in jail if he caught you with drugs.

Since you can’t argue with an idiot, I’ll let ‘Ardent’ get in the last word. Here is what he wrote:

YOU are just kidding yourself here, BarkGrowlBite. Nobody but yourself could actually believe this....'BarkGrowlBite said...99.99 percent of cops do not agree with the members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).' I don't know what the figure actually might be, but you are merely barking up the wrong tree here with YOUR pretend percentage of cops in love with the drug war, Barker…. ‘I was a police officer for 34 years, the last six as chief of police in Seattle,’ retired law enforcement veteran Norm Stamper told the press conference. ‘At one point in my career, I had an epiphany. I came to the appreciation that police officers could be doing better things with their time and that we were causing more harm than good with this drug war.’ Norm, is not the only cop that can put 2 plus 2 together and come up with the right conclusion.