We all know the war on drugs is a farce. Is it not the time to change the insanity that has been unsuccessful for decades?
Libertarian Presidential Candidate case on drugs is correct
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s reason for supporting legalizing all drugs is sound and should be taken seriously. Johnson appeared on Fareed Zakaria GPS and told an inconvenient truth about them. Fareed Zakaria asked Johnson to explain his comment in an interview where he stated that the world would be a better place if they were all legal in the context of the current opioid epidemic.
“Well, it would be,” Gary Johnson said. “Ninety percent of the drug problem is prohibition related, not use related. Not to discount the problem with use and abuse, that should be the focus. So using this epidemic that right now is being told to us by the government, it’s estimated that four hundred and fifty thousand people die every year from their use of tobacco. It’s estimated a hundred thousand people die every year from alcohol use. It’s estimated that one hundred thousand people die every year from their use legal prescription drugs, painkillers, antidepressants. How many people die every year from cocaine or heroin overdose? Well, it’s eight thousand. It’s eight thousand deaths which are significantly lower. Now I am not advocating the legalization of any drug outside of marijuana. But I think that the world, I think that the United States would take a quantum leap when it comes to understanding drugs and drug abuse and I think when we come to that quantum leap, which we are here right now, marijuana is going to get legalized. I think we start by decriminalizing the use of other drugs.”
We should pass laws that are based on data and not emotion. Prescription drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, all legal, are much more detrimental to the lives of every citizen than drugs that are currently illegal. Worse, the destruction of the lives of those addicted to illegal drugs, as opposed to those addicted to tobacco and alcohol is an arbitrary destructor of the future of many Americans. One hopes that in the near term policy makers will see the light.