Nixon Goes To Ohio

Writing in the NY Times, the world's most famous peanut farmer calls for an end to the global war on drugs.  I concur.  Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter provides roughly zero political cover for Democrats (such as Obama) who need to play tough guy on the War on Drugs for the same reasons they play tough guy on the War on Terror.  By way of example, Rudy Giuliani has a background that would allow him to move the needle on the drug war, if ever he would switch sides.

And since this is Jimmy Carter, I don't trust a word he is saying.  This passage reeks of phony statistics:

And the single greatest cause of prison population growth (in the US) has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

Since earlier Jimmy told us that in the 70's non-violent offenders were treated leniently, his starting baseline of 1980 must be very low.  Seeing the actual numbers of incarcerated non-violent offenders, rather than being told of a twelve-fold increase from a low baseline, would be more convincing.  That said, I am sure he is thematically correct.

Comments

[Ignatz]

--I would reason that out the exact opposite. When something is illegal, the laws against it are in themselves the "societal pressure." Removing the laws would in effect be removing said societal pressure and therefore usage would likely increase.--

Hi Chubby,
Well, laws are a form of institutionalized societal pressure but there are many other forms, some of them even more powerful than legality.
Moreover laws often replace and weaken legitimate private societal pressures and norms and leave in their wake an ineffective legal protocol that scarcely curbs deleterious behavior but simultaneously preempts and weakens legitimate private forms of control.
Limited government conservatives above all others should want to foster traditional, private, cultural norms and values first and only resort to the state's legal intervention when absolutely necessary.

[Rick Ballard]

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.”......Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. supported Ms. Krass’s view.. (via Ace)

The President don't need no steenkin' badges.

[glasater]

Tobacco has an alkaloid that may help fight "Alzheimer's disease and other anti-inflammatory illnesses".

[Indians didn't smoke it in the peace pipe for its placebo effect.]

Nicotine is a good drug, we just shouldn't smoke it. It is not good for people with ulcers, with cardiac arrhythmias or with fingers that fall off from arterial constriction. But nicotine fights hunger, thirst, and fatique temporarily, it calms nerves and helps digestion. Think how many people are alive today because truck drivers smoke.

Nicotine is highly addictive. Fifty percent of those who try it become destructively addicted, destruction defined as COPD and lung cancer.
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[ShyAsrai]

I don't care that cigs & alcohol are legal. There is no reason to throw up our hands and make stuff legal just because it's very hard to eliminate (as in, when you've tied both hands behind your back, blindfolding yourself, poked holes in your eardrums, and threatened your defenders/comrades with prosecution, that is.)

"Everybody does it" is not, never has been, and never should be, a reason for a society to abdicate its responsibility to itself.

I suppose we ought to lift any bans on child porno, human trafficking, theft, murder, rape, slavery of the African (hey, that took a whole freaking civil war to end)...

[cheap soccer jerseys]

marginally OT ... this summer's "Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin" tour LUN looks kind of interesting