17 Apr 2012: Good Drug War Discussion
Last Night on The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell had a surprisingly good segment on the Drug War, which included Neill Franklin, Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Usually, I hate these kinds of segments, and this one certainly wasn't perfect. As usual, there was too much discussion of cannabis and how safe it is. But overall, the segment was far better than we normally see or read.One thing that really struck me was that Franklin said that decriminalization was not the answer—that we had to go with full legalization. His reasoning is that law enforcement will just turn all of what are now possession changes into "intent to distribute" and nothing will have changed. This had never occurred to me. I guess because Franklin is a former cop, he knows how those twisted minds work.
What most people don't understand about the "War on Drugs" is that it is actually a "War on Drug Users." My favorite example of this is how much people fight against syringe exchange programs. Being against these programs is the same as being for drug users dying unnecessarily due to preventable diseases. All the time I was a user, I felt that half of the country wanted to see me dead. Of course, now it's more like 90%.
Vive le resistance!
mack wrote:
As for the segment that you're speaking of in this post, when I watched it I, too, was pleasantly surprised by some of the things said by both Lawrence O'Donnell and his guest. Lawrence even called for the legalization of ALL drugs, which is something rarely heard on the mainstream news media.
I was also struck by what Franklin had to say. I have always preferred outright legalization to decriminalization for the simple reason that if we're going to take the criminality out of drug use, then we might as well legalize and regulate drugs and reap the economic benefits of a new industry. I hadn't considered the problems that Franklin indicated would arise from decriminalization.