Local activist Rolland Judd writes the following op-ed:
Any case made to legalize now illegal drugs in the U.S. is really a case to repeal acts that made them illegal in the first place, namely the Controlled Substances Act. When marijuana was first outlawed it was done so in a constitutional, albeit shady, manner. It was prohibited the same way way alcohol was during the prohibition by raising the taxes for it requiring you to obtain a marijuana tax stamp. All of these stamps were locked away so no one could actually obtain one, but at least from a legal standpoint the government was obeying the constitution.
Then Nixon came along with the same mentality as George W. Bush has about the constitution. “It’s just a G. D. piece of paper.” Nixon trashed the constitution in a number of ways during his administration but by far the worst thing he ever did to the American people was signing the Controlled Substances Act. This act does harm to the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden in a too many ways to get into here, but lets leave it at the fact that this is not a political issue, it is a constitutional crime. That should be enough to infuriate any patriotic American.
But it doesn’t infuriate many Americans, does it? Why? Because we have to keep kids off drugs? It’s a proven fact that it is easier for kids to buy illegal drugs than it is for them to buy alcohol or tobacco. The reason for this is that alcohol and tobacco are regulated and illegal drugs are not. A seller of illegal narcotics doesn’t care how old someone is, they care about turning a profit.
Let’s be fair, though, legalizing marijuana is an easy argument and this article is about legalizing all drugs. So let’s take cocaine. Cocaine was used for many years in things like cough medicine and you rarely heard of any cases of kids or anyone for that matter abusing cough medicine. Now cocaine is illegal and what goes in our cough medicine: Sudafedrine. What is sudafedrine used for making: Meth. People find a way to get what they want no matter how many laws say they can’t have it.
Heroine is something worth mentioning here as it was actually created by the company Bayer. Yes, created. You may know that heroine is derived from the opium plant but you don’t get heroine from opium alone, you have to add chemicals to it. It was used again for cough medicine and also in certain pain remedies.
Many people like to make the argument that alcohol is okay because it has been so ingrained in our culture for so long. They don’t seem to realize that so were many other drugs until the 1970’s. Pharmaceutical companies figured out that to get patents on drugs they could make money on that they would have to eliminate other certain substances from the market. The “War on Drugs” is just a scam to make a few greedy individuals some more money at the expense of the American people.
Don’t be confused. Advocating the legalization of now illegal drugs is NOT an advocation for drug use. I don’t know anyone who thinks that doing drugs is good for you and I don’t know anyone who would say that everybody should be out doing drugs. This is a matter of individual liberty and the basic freedom to make your own choices in life and not have them made for you by people that don’t even know you.
