The other outrageous war!

While the war in Iraq may outrageous there is another war that is equally outrageous and is truly bi-partisan, the war on drugs. Like the war in Iraq it has accomplished nothing positive, consumed vast sums of the nations wealth and ruined lives. The reasons for the war on drugs are similar to the reasons for the war in Iraq.

• Political Power
• Corporate Wealth and Power
• Religious Zealotry

The most counterproductive element of the war on drugs has to be the emphasis on marijuana. It is legal in the Netherlands but Important Drug and Violence Indicators in the Netherlands are significantly lower than in the US. The emphasis on marijuana is at least in part to benefit "big pharma". Marijuana has many medical benefits associated with marijuana but there is also a serious problem with it, it can't be patented. It is effective or more effective than many drugs that the pharmaceutical industry makes a great deal of money selling. This is the topic of The Evil War on Drugs by Anthony Gregory.

Speak out too loudly against the drug war, and you might be targeted. Peter McWilliams had AIDS and cancer and was dependent on marijuana to stay alive. It turns out that the people who had been using the stuff medicinally for thousands of years were onto something. No one has ever been recorded as dying from the physiological effects of marijuana. But the federal government wouldn’t let McWilliams, a vocal anti-prohibition activist, have his medicine. They threatened to take his mother’s house away if he used the substance that was keeping him alive. He was found dead in his home in June 2000. The drug war killed him directly.

And now Steve Kubby is in jail, being deprived of the medical marijuana that has kept him alive. About a quarter-century ago, he was diagnosed with an exceedingly rare strain of adrenal cancer that no one else has been able to survive for more than five years. He was expected to die within the same timeframe. His physician, Dr. Vincent DeQuattro, an expert on this rare condition, has credited marijuana with saving his life. Several years ago, Kubby was forcefully deprived of his medicine for three days in jail, during which he suffered extreme vomiting and shivering and went temporarily blind in one eye. In U.S. custody again, after having taken refuge in Canada and being extradited back to the Land of the Free, he now has a good chance of dying, of being murdered by the state, all so it can make an example of this courageous anti-drug war activist.

For Kubby, as was the case for McWilliams, prohibition of life-saving medicine could prove a cruel and unusual execution, all for the non-crime of self-medication, the right to which all humans are born with. Apparently, he has been allowed to use some Marinol, but the synthetic THC simply isn’t a replacement for the complex mixture of cannabinoids in marijuana. Smoking about twelve grams of pot a day has worked for him, allowing him to live a healthy life; the government’s approved version does not quite do the trick, though it might barely be keeping death away. It is very uncertain at this point what will come of his health and legal situation.

As we can see the war on drugs is not just a case of misdirected resources......

The drug war is misdirected. It is foolish. It is stupid, unworkable, disastrous, tragic and sad. But beyond all that it is evil.

There is much more so go check out the original.

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