They should probably add prescription drugs to that list.  Heh, maybe in 40 years…

The US “War on Drugs” is a war on drugs that don’t enjoy corporate support.
It is a war on civil liberties. And a war against the poor.

Alcohol dulls the mind and turns one into a savage being that likes to inflict pain on other people.

Pot and XTC enlighten the person and allows them to see the harm and damage they have caused to other people.

For that reason alone, as long as this country is headed towards a dictatorship, drugs that open one’s mind to peace, love and understanding will never be legalized.

Greg Bacon
Ava, MO

“The failed conservative “War on Drugs” began in 1972, and has been failing ever since.”

Began as a distraction and continues as such, with a nice little sideline in propping up central American regimes and engaging in ‘selective’ distruction of crops dependent on the people doing the growing.

What more interesting is the increasing amounts of money being spent and the vast levels of corruption in the people fighting the war.  Expect some of the current military personnel in Afghanistan to eventually be convicted for trafficing or distribution.

Is this not what we stoners have been saying for years? Hello, world! Welcome to my reality…

I’m always amazed at how poorly Americans understand the value of domestic drug laws, as the prior posts prove.

Of course the laws don’t actually do what they’re purported to do - diminish drug use. For after 40 years of our vaunted drug war, cocaine, pot, heroin, etc. are as widely available, and as cheap, if not cheaper, than they were when the war was declared.

But it would be wrong to say the laws have been a failure; in fact, they’ve been wildly successful, properly understood. They’ve created high-paying, publicly-funded jobs for people of a conservative, law-and-order nature - real patriots, in other words.

Imagine the catastrophe if we adopted Europe’s tolerant attitude toward drugs: drug use would stay the same, but we’d have to fire 10s of thousands of prison guards, battalions of bail bondsmen, cops, lawyers, judges, FBI, DEA and CIA agents. And we’d have to stop spending on prison construction, whose lobbyists have reaped rich rewards rooting for building the housing of America’s vast prison population - the largest in the world on a per capita basis.  (What loyal American would want to surrender THAT distinction to a lesser country?)

Besides that, the USA would be forced to distance itself from the drug-dealing, death squads we’ve been collaborating with in South America in “Plan Columbia.”

So I ask you: What patriotic American in her right mind would ever wish to inflict such a calamitous cascade of unemployment on this, our beloved fatherland?

Gary

This country from day one made a profit on alchol, one person related to John Adams was Samual Adams who made good beer, the tobacco industry made money, there is not any profit in pot so far, and it can be grown easily, because it is called WEED, so anyone can grow it, tobacco has to be grown differently.

Also the drug industry that brings you all kinds of drugs that can be used on the street.

In the good ole days people knew nothing could be done for a cold but to wait it out, now people who work don’t look good with red noses and blowing their nose.  This society is really about image.

We get presidents on how good they look, well guess what this country was really lucky that we had Lincoln, I guess today he would not have a shot.

Margaret from Vancouver, Washington

Nothing will ever change, since most lawmakers and policy makers are hypocrites who are tolerant only of their own drug - alcohol.

Ho hum dept.  Since say 1966 we get exactly the same articles.  This one could have been written 4 decades back.  Meantime cocaine alone beings the international banking community more revenue than crude oil.  40 years ago or now we get same proper journalists from corporate media, hypnotized about pot or LSD, drugs which cause thought, illusionary or not but it is thought.  US gov. wants no thought, not illusionary, nor otherwise.  “Hard drugs” are addictive in as they are escapist drugs, cause not thought, repress thought, addictive (less addictive than chemicalized cigarettes yet)in as they build tolerance quickly, the disturbed user might steal for money etc.  The US prison system, of prisoners mostly non-violent, is the world’s largest, larger than China’s and Russia’s combined...a veritable industry.  Old intimidated hippies with children smoke their pot secretly till their kids find the stash and steal from it, on and on.  Ho hum. Argh.

According to some research, cannabis is minimally habit-forming, with few minor or no withdrawal symptoms, even among regular users. Even coffee has more significant withdrawal symptoms.

Many potential medical benefits of cannabis have been documented. The UK pharmaceutical company GW Pharmaceuticals is on the forefront of this research (http://www.gwpharm.com).

Many people feel there can be a psychologically therapeutic benefit of cannabis use for some people.

In addition, hemp, the non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana, has many agricultural uses to make fiber for paper, wood-type products, clothing, oils, biofuels and apparently many other applications.

Cannabis has a long history of being a beneficial plan for humankind around the world and in the US. For more on this, see:

“George Washington’s whiskey distillery rebuilt; first president also grew hemp at Mount Vernon”

Steve Hammons
American Chronicle
October 11, 2006

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle. asp?articleID=1473

According to some research, cannabis is minimally habit-forming, with few minor or no withdrawal symptoms, even among regular users. Even coffee has more significant withdrawal symptoms.

Many potential medical benefits of cannabis have been documented. The UK pharmaceutical company GW Pharmaceuticals is on the forefront of this research (http://www.gwpharm.com).

Many people feel there can be a psychologically therapeutic benefit of cannabis use for some people.

In addition, hemp, the non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana, has many agricultural uses to make fiber for paper, wood-type products, clothing, oils, biofuels and apparently many other applications.

Cannabis has a long history of being a beneficial plan for humankind around the world and in the US. For more on this, see:

“George Washington’s whiskey distillery rebuilt; first president also grew hemp at Mount Vernon”

Steve Hammons
American Chronicle
October 11, 2006

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle. asp?articleID=14731

This ranking of Drugs is faulty. It is correct that alcohol and ciggarettes are much more dangerous then any illicit substance but it gets it wrong in the case of opiates.  Opiates are non-toxic to all the bodies tissues. They are addictive and this is why they have the high danger rating by this faulty British ranking system.  Opioids like Heroin, codiene, are addictive but they are nontoxic. ( The only exception is meperidine(Demarol)which has a breakdown product that can cause liver damage if used everyday for many months.  In fact opioids have been shown to prolong life and protect the heart. Jama has at least five studies showing the latter in its archives.
All drugs are individual in the effects they have on the body and must be considered in this light.
The most damaging effects for the minority that uses drugs and can’t stop is from the fact that they are illegal.
Prohibition must be repealed.
The money around drugs is all because they are illegal; and this causes crime and corruption that the USA or any other country can no longer afford.
Consider that $5000 will get a ton of heroin from India and in the USA that $5000 becomes $58,000,000.  Would you take an investment that gave you 58 million for Five Thousand? 
This shows why the Drug war will never end and only encourages the dealing and production of these drugs.

It’s about time somebody showed that all the drinkers and smokers should be locked up.  Losing all the jobs in the booze & tobacco industry will be tough but, there will be lots more jobs in policing the streets and guarding the new inmates.  A win-win situation for sure.

Normally that saying is the other way around, normally illegal items cause more problems in the society. But I guess that when stuff are legal, folks abuse them because they are easily accessible.

Oh, please. The only reason that cigarettes and alcohol are legal and pot is not is because the first two got legitimized and part of the revenue ends up as tax money. If the states were to go ahead and issue a ‘pot stamp’, then suddenly all those scientific findings would flip around, I guarantee it. Further, anytime you put something in your mouth that isn’t food and water, or reasonable facsimile, the responsibility lies with you. ALso, I’d like to see how many of those Lancet people can pass a DRUG test. Hmm....

I already knew this. So should everyone. Most of the information provided on drugs is incorrect or exaggerated.

Well, DUH! I’m a nurse. I’ve treated thousands of people DYING from emphysema and lung cancer. The sneak fags in their rooms even when they’ve been warned that they’re endangering their fellow patients with respiratory diseases and flowing oxygen. Because I’m a male, I regularly get assigned to wrestle with the alcoholic patients off their trees from DTs. They hallucinate, fight the staff, rip out their tubing, piss and crap themselves, fall on the floor and get hurt—all due to withdrawal from the LEGAL drug of alcohol.

But in 15 years of nursing, I have not had a SINGLE patient flip out because they can’t get their pot. No one has died from marijuana cancer. I’ve had psychiatric patients who used X and LSD, but they were mentally ill in SPITE of it, not BECAUSE of it. It’s the legal poisons that are worse than the illegal ones.

The Marijuana Commission’s March 22, 1972 report, known as The Shafer Report, included recommendations to decriminalize the private possession and use of pot. 

The Nixon administration chose to bury the report because they had already declared themselves “anti-drug”.

The failed conservative “War on Drugs” began in 1972, and has been failing ever since.