DRUG WAR:
All of the lessons learned from Prohibition apply to the drug war.  You cannot legislate morality.  Rehabilitation, not incarceration, is the key to this issue.  In a free country a person should have the right to be stupid and self-destructive.  They can never allow their habit to demonstrably harm others, though.


QUOTES:
1) "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
- H.L. Mencken
2) "it is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly."
- Henry George
3) "Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."
- C.S. Lewis
4) "Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interferemce with their persons or property."
- Lysander Spooner


1)  Whenever you outlaw something you create a profitable black market.  You don't see pushers selling tobacco and alcohol in the schools because there isn't the profit margin.  People rarely steal to buy cigarettesand alcohol even though these substances are addictive, too.

2)  We are spending a lot of money on this unproductive moral war.  It tears apart families and fills our jails with nonviolent criminals leaving insufficient room and money to jail violent criminals. We can't even keep drugs out of our guarded prisons, what makes us think we can stop them on the street?

3)  It is also an unfair war.  Citizens with money, like G.W.Bush, can afford legal assistance more than a poor minority to defend themselves when accused of drug crimes..  Perhaps that's why there has been a 156% increase since 1981 in the arrest rate of blacks compared to a 49% for whites. The Progressive Review, January 1995.

4) The number of Americans killed annually by legal prescription drugs: 106,000 vs. 5,212 by illegal drugs.  The Washington Post, April 15, 1998.

5)  The percentage of police chiefs who think the drug war has been very successful at reducing the drug problem: 3%.  National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)