2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Those Who Say They Won't Support the Eventual Nominee -- Consider This... [View all]merrily
(45,251 posts)First, regardless of when you consider the war on drugs to have begun, most people think it began with Nixon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
Dating it to 1988 weakens your argument. Since Reagan left office, we've had 12 years of Republican Presidents, both named Bush, and amost 16 years of Democratic Presidents--both New Democrats-- including one whose prison policies were a significant escalation of the war on drugs, to the profit of private prisons. The other, Obama, claims to have already ended the war on drugs. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/18/obama-says-he-ended-the-war-on-drugs-dont-believe-him/
However, I remember during his first term the DOJ raiding medicinal marijuana places in states where state law allowed them. I also remember his head of the DEA being very adamant about the classification of marijuana. This, though a majority of the population is for at least decriminalizing use.
No, and I don't know that a president alone can.
No President of any Party alone can change laws, even though DU seems to use this excuse only for Democratic Presidents. However, no President is as helpless as one might conclude from reading DU either. However, again, you weaken your own position: If the President can't do anything about the drug war alone, how strong a reason is it to vote for a Democratic President?
In any event, I would have a lot more respect for this argument if a President had tried his best to end or de-escalate the war on drugs and failed. However, since a lot of drug law enforcement comes from the Feds, specifically the Executive Branch, Presidents can do a lot about that. Even courts have weighed in on that. http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/10/20/victory-medical-marijuana-court-tells-doj-lay-legal-providers
As far as costs, Republicans are not even trying to justify them. To the contrary, they've been protesting them, and, AFAIK, they began protesting them sooner and more strongly than Democrats, even before this Presidential campaign began.
The original topic was voting LOTE. I said there were a long term argument that it was quite harmful and you cited people dying as we typed (with a Democrat in the Oval Office for the past 7+ years) as a reason to vote Democratic for President. I don't know that there is a point to continuing the discussion though. I am not trying to persuade you how to vote. As stated before, I simply noted the existence of an argument that LOTE does a lot of damage in the long run. By the same token, I don't think you should vote based on assumptions that may or may not have a basis in fact or history, but I will leave that to you.
Have a wonderful day. (That's often posted here sarcastically. I am posting it sincerely.)