Sprinkling
of four links:
How do you like the tons of money (that’s $100 billion a year) hunkered down like a skunk in off-shore tax havens?
Because you never know. The Unofficial MacGyver How-To Handbook (at scribd).
Failed drug laws. The elephant in the room. Wasted money. I say again: start with legalizing marijuana. Tax the hell out of it. Use the funds to set up and maintain free drug treatment facilities. (But those who have a horse in the race as far as maintaining the status quo — think of all those jobs — will quash the idea in its crib.)
Addendum 4/25: the Wall Street Journal (Steven B. Duke) agrees with me on marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs.
A most impressive experiment has been underway in Portugal since 2001, when that country decriminalized the possession and personal use of all psychotropic drugs. According to a study just published by the Cato Institute, “judged by virtually every metric,” the Portuguese decriminalization “has been a resounding success.” Contrary to the prognostications of prohibitionists, the numbers of Portuguese drug users has not increased since decriminalization. Indeed, the percentage of the population who has ever used these drugs is lower in Portugal than virtually anywhere else in the European Union and is far below the percentage of users in the U.S.. One explanation for this startling fact is that decriminalization has both freed up funds for drug treatment and, by lifting the threat of criminal charges, encouraged drug abusers to seek that treatment.
We can try to deal with the Mexican murderers as we first dealt with Al Capone and his minions, or we can apply the lessons we learned from alcohol prohibition and finish dismantling the destructive prohibition experiment. We should begin by decriminalizing marijuana now.
