General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The real question that the Ron Paul candidacy poses for Democrats [View all]JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)most of them caught up in the drug war for sales and possession offenses...
a disproportionate number of them minorities from a poor background...
or the resulting disenfranchisement of a large proportion of black men through felony convictions...
or the fact that prisons are also labor camps used to suppress all working people's wages...
or that millions of black and latino people are subjected to unreasonable search and seizure...
all of which has the drug war as one of the main pretexts...
matter even less to you.
Your statement is flat-out wrong. If it were merely making the absurd argument that it's all right to imprison people for possessing marijuana long as other peoples' rights (presumably yours?) are protected, that would be bad enough.
However the drug war has millions of victims, corrupts entire societies (especially police forces), forms the basis for enormous money laundering and offshore influence on politics, costs untold billions in state and federal funds, has devastated entire nations (Mexico and Colombia), funds narco-dictatorships and death squads, uses fear just like the "war on terror" to move politics to the right, and was condemned for all this last year by a commission of the UN consisting mostly of liberal and conservative former presidents of many of the most hard-hit countries! Oh yeah, the drug profits made possible by prohibition have also funded covert operations and paramilitaries around the world for decades, from the Kuomintang to the Contras to the Afghan mujahedeen (both when they were US allies and when they were enemies).
It is an epically disastrous and inhumane policy with effects that go beyond the already intolerable injustice of imprisoning people for their personal consumption choices (whether or not these are bad choices).
Sorry LynneSin, you shouldn't narrow this huge issue down to dismissable (if wrong) simplistic talking points.