How to Win the War on Drugs

About that war on drugs.

Trump and Sessions want to double down on authoritarian, senseless and failed policies. They are wrong.

We know the war on drugs is a costly, brutal, unjust and deadly failure.

Drugs and drug abuse are public health issues. 

Treating drugs and their abuse as a medical, rather than law enforcement problem, is really the bottom line. Treatment is always a better solution over incarceration. It is ineffective, costlier, and more destructive to families to punish users as criminals.

The best way to win the "war on drugs" is to end the war on drug users.

Dangerous street drugs are a public health issue, so we need the DEA, but for countering illegal sales and manufacture of lethal and addictive drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines. We also need to enforce against importation of such street drugs.

Since cannabis and psychedelic substances are not as toxic as aspirin or alcohol, and they are incorporated into religious traditions, they should not be included in that class of dangerous drugs. Their possession and use must be decriminalized.

Drug gangs depend on their products being illegal to be in business. Street sales, not possession, should remain criminalized. If an addict had cheaper access to a legal prescription, with treatment as an option, that would take a lot of crime out of the equation. The costs of treatment and even legal maintenance doses is far cheaper than crime and incarceration.

Decriminalization of simple possession and employing treatment over arrest and incarceration are the sane, compassionate, and most effective solutions.

Spain and Portugal are now showing this to be reality, not theory.

Con-servative Moral Grounding

This much is clear. 

They don't want to admit it, but the Republican/conservative health care solution has always been, "Let them die".  That phrase drew cheers at a Republican presidential debate.

If the poor are too "morally weak" to buy health insurance, they don't deserve what is a right to millions in civilized countries. Yes, many cons see unemployment as a moral failure. 

To them wealth is not only a virtue, but also an entitlement to rule. Those who fail to submit to rule by wealth are targets of lies, hate and resentment. Serves them damn socialists right, I tell ya. 

In fact, to them, con-servatism itself is a virtue. It is their morality. 

So what is the moral grounding of the Right? Christianity? Please...unless we mean the teachings of White Nationalist Hedge Fund Jesus. 

Hint: Trump is president. 

This is what they want. 

Small government. (Meaning removing safety nets and public service programs and privatizing the commons, not so much military aggression, brutal law enforcement, and police state warrantless surveillance.) 

Taking food stamps from poor children, militarizing law enforcement in a "justice system" rigged against the poor and minorities, and stripping voter rights and poll access for minorities are their values. 

These truths are self-evident.

Also clear is con-servatism is rooted in, and guided by, elitist authoritarianism. Wealth is revered. Corporations and the wealthy are endowed as super persons entitled to more rights than average individuals.  Even in our House and Senate the minority of conservatives have greater representation than the majority.  

But who whines louder? "We want our country back! Waaahh!"

Cutting taxes for the rich has always been their top priority along with gutting pollution and Wall Street regulations. Not to mention denying the Black President his Constitutional duty to replace a Supreme Court justice. That is their idea of the "business of the people".  

Authoritarian con-servatism always bends to tyranny, racism, and scorn for the poor. They are the servants, and the epitome, of the elites. Screw the "takers" and anyone else who can't afford health care. It is who they are. 

As the Right breaks the rules, or makes up their own, to subvert democracy, and to facilitate less equality and more human suffering, they are the ones demonizing and admonishing liberals for not being concerned for our country. They believe their lies that liberals hate freedom, hate America, and desire a communist dictatorship. And this demonization never ends.

It is their belief system and their true "moral grounding".