Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey, calls himself a “social media enthusiast,” and recently engaged Reddit.com’s public, for whom he clarified his stance on drug prohibition:
The so called War on Drugs has not succeeded in making significant reductions in drug use, drug arrests or violence. We are pouring huge amounts of our public resources into this current effort that are bleeding our public treasury and unnecessarily undermining human potential. I see the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars being poured into the criminal justice system here in New Jersey and it represents big overgrown government at its worst.
Yes. Recreational drug prohibition has been and continues to be a horrifying example of “big overgrown government at its worst.”
My only qualm comes with the good mayor’s next sentence:
We should be investing dollars in programs and strategies that work not just to lower crime but work to empower lives.
The biggest reduction in crime would come from ceasing to criminalize peaceful behavior; the biggest relief from the drug war’s horrific consequences would be the war’s cessation itself. People “empower” their own lives, through peaceful work and family life. Are more programs really necessary? Wouldn’t individual freedom and personal responsibility be enough?
We don’t need “big overgrown government at its best.” We need streamlined, accountable government … that protects all peaceful folk. That would be far better. “Bestest.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
9 replies on “Programs for Peace”
Booker wasn’t calling for any new programs, Paul. My first thought was that he was decrying the cuts to education, job training, and the like all while continuing to fund the drastically expanded prisons and drug war mechanisms.
If “personal responsibility were enough”, we wouldn’t need this awful War on Drugs because there wouldn’t be any dopers.
Yes, I realize I’m begging the question at issue. But aren’t you doing the same by arguing that responsible doping is even possible?
What? Are you suggesting crack-rocks be labeled with a suggestion to “Please Enjoy Responsibly”?
Or “Please, Don’t Dope And Drive”?
Or “Please, Don’t Smoke And Shoot Your Neighbor”?
I agree with James, and awould ask yu th question
WHAT ERA ARE YOU LIVING IN?
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY??
THAT WENT OUT WITH THE NANY STATE.
It seems you can’t have a media darling like Booker who hits on one cylinder on an important issue by proposing liberty as a solution… without same media darling conceding the government has to do SOMETHING!
James: “Personal responsibility” doesn’t mean “please enjoy responsibly.” It means a system that holds people responsible for their actions.
If you “shoot your neighbor” (without just cause) and “drive impaired,” there should be consequences, but only for the harm you did, not for the drugs you consumed.
We have the largest percentage of our minority population incarcerated of any country in the world, mostly for the victimless crime of drug use. The war on drugs, then, is as racist as any program or organization in the world.
Every aspect of so-called “drug crime” — including the every activity of the increasingly-perniciously-paramilitarized and already perilously-oppressive Drug-War Industrial Complex’s insidious regulatory bureaucracy, that also massively profits from it — has only one underlying cause:
Prohibition.
And as with every other progressive, incurable and fatal disease (Alcoholism, say) there is only one course of action open to its sufferers:
Total abstinence.
For Alcoholics, alcohol, it goes without saying — and every other mood altering substance.
And for Prohibitionists?
Total Repeal!
Since this site is called common sense, allow me to ask… If we make drugs legal and depend on personal responsibility, wouldn’t we increase the drug problem many fold? I could never figure that out. With drugs illegal, we have one of the largest drug problems in the world. So by making it legal the problem will go away? And what do we do with the millions of more junkies in the country? This is a good thing? How about a REAL war on drugs? Street Dealers get 25 to life. No parole. Heavy duty dealers, life. Watch the drug world dry up real fast.
Sean: What you propose would make the problem far worse. Not only would it be horrendously expensive to taxpayers, street crime would increase dramatically as junkies become more desperate to raise money for their now more expensive habits.
Did alcohol use increase sharply after Repeal in 1933? No.