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| A Drug War Carol |
| Articles |
A Modest Proposal for the Next Drug-War Shootdown, by James Bovard, Freedom Daily, Aug 2001
Related Topic: Peru
"Drug warriors like to stress that anti-drug programs target the guilty and it is only an accident —and a rare one, at that— when innocent people are killed. Yet it is apparently routine policy for Peruvian jets to strafe the survivors of a shootdown." |
An Open Letter to Bill Bennett, by Milton Friedman, Wall Street Journal, 7 Sep 1989
"Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages." |
Drug Legalization: A New Approach, by Daniel M. Ryan, 18 Jan 2007
"The old strategy, based upon the initial lies and hysteria surrounding illicit drugs, was rooted in the assumption that the Drug Warriors were at heart hypocrites. ... As long as there are any proven hazards to the use of illicit drugs, the 'hypocrite' strategy will lead to nothing more than a Mexican standoff, thus perpetuating the War on Drugs, not ending it." |
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Drug Legalization: How to Radically Lower the Number of Murders in New Orleans, by Walter Block, 27 Jan 2007
Related Topics: Louisiana, Prohibition
"The Harrison Narcotics Act of 1917 was implemented for a good purpose: to save ourselves from the scourge of drugs. Has it succeeded? To ask this question is to answer it. People can purchase addictive substances in any major city in the country. No, this 'war' has failed, like so many other such initiatives undertaken by government." |
Drug War Dementia, by James Bovard, Freedom Daily, Nov 1996
"If drugs were legal, we would still see deaths from overdoses, but there would be far fewer deaths from gun battles among drug dealers, far fewer neighborhoods destroyed destroyed by drug dealers, and far fewer deaths from contaminated drugs." |
End the Other War Too, by Sheldon Richman, 1 Dec 2006
"The fact is, without the War on Drugs atrocities such as the killing of Kathryn Johnston wouldn't be happening. It is the very nature of victimless crimes that pushes the police to use unscrupulous tactics. In a victimless crime, such as an illegal drug transaction, there is no complaining witness, no one with an interest in reporting the crime to the police." |
Ending America's Domestic Quagmire, by Paul Armentano, Freedom Daily, Dec 2007
Compares the War on Drugs to the U.S. military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and counsels reassessment of the domestic "war"
"For nearly 100 years, starting with the passage of America's first federal anti-drug law in 1914, lawmakers have relied on the mantra 'Do drugs, do time.' ... America now spends nearly $50 billion dollars per year targeting, prosecuting, and incarcerating illicit-drug users. As a result, the population of illicit-drug offenders now behind bars is greater than the entire U.S. prison population in 1980." |
Free Cory Maye, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, May 2006
Related Topics: Foreign Entanglements, Right to Trial by Jury
"Such tragic events will keep occurring as long as the government asserts power to determine what we may and may not ingest. In a truly free society it would have no such power. Individual rights include the right to take any peaceful action, no matter how ill-advised. ,,, When government enforces laws against consensual activities, police terror is inevitable." |
Mexico's Bold Drug Decriminalization Move, by James W. Harris, The Liberator Online, 11 May 2006
Related Topic: Mexico
"This reform would have put Mexico in the forefront of world drug reform, joining the Netherlands and a few other countries in a far more sensible and humane approach ... Unfortunately, Mexico's President Vicente Fox ... refused to sign it. Although he cited concerns that the bill was too radical, critics say the real reason was enormous pressure from the U.S. government." |
More Drug-War Victims, by Sheldon Richman, 28 Dec 2005
"Nothing is more corrupt than the police-informant relationship in drug enforcement. Countless times informants have fingered innocent people ... Drug raids are notorious for leading to the deaths of people, often cases of mistaken identity, who tried to defend themselves against late-night visits from militarized SWAT teams." |
Right and Simple, by Charley Reese, 30 Dec 2006
Related Topic: Venezuela
"Our politicians try to shift the blame to the drug cartels, as if they were slipping into the country and forcing cocaine up people's noses at gunpoint. ... How much more insane can it be for courts in this country to routinely give celebrities a slap on the wrist for possession and use of cocaine while the U.S. government encourages a murderous, billion-dollar war in Colombia against the drug cartels?" |
The Drug War Hits Home, by David Boaz, Freedom Daily, Jan 1992
"The war on drugs increasingly demonstrates the futility of efforts to prohibit people from engaging in peaceful, voluntary activities. ... We will never stop drug use by stepping up the drug war. We are already arresting far more people and spending ten times as much as we did to enforce alcohol prohibition. " |
The Drug War's Immorality and Abject Failure, by Anthony Gregory, Freedom Daily, Jul 2006
Related Topics: Children, Rights
"The attempt to use government force and central planning — violence and socialism, essentially — to effectively mold society by preventing people on an individual basis from growing, producing, transferring, and ingesting drugs of their choice, is a ridiculous fantasy and always has been. There will forever be ways to circumvent the law." |
The Egregiously Destructive War on Drugs, by Gennady Stolyarov II, Mises.org Daily Article, 30 May 2006
Related Topics: Moral Repression, Taxation
"The War on Drugs harms innocent schoolchildren, who are at risk of being suspended or expelled by draconian public school administrators for bringing in sugar, salt, aspirin, or other 'drug look-alikes.' In the inner cities, the War on Drugs harms anyone who does not engage in drug consumption; it subjects them to the tyranny of black-market drug gangs ..." |
The Longest-Running War, by Doug Bandow, 20 Dec 2004
"Despite the optimistic predictions that often flow from federal officials, there is little good news in the drug war. ... While Miller and Miron might not convince the most dedicated drug warriors, they have presented a powerful case that the drug war is counterproductive. Their evidence deserves a serious response. " |
The Most Absurdities per Kilo, by James Bovard, Freedom Daily, Feb 2006
Related Topic: Tommy Chong
"... on February 24 [2003], Ashcroft proudly announced the most decisive attack ever on purveyors of bongs ... At a time when political leaders warned that a terrorist attack on the homeland could be imminent, more than 1,200 federal law officers were involved in Operation Pipe Dreams, ... the biggest attack on glass bowls in American history." |
The War On Drugs Is Lost, by Wm. F. Buckley Jr. et al., National Review, 12 Feb 1996
"We are speaking of a plague that ... is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail ... I would hope that [lawyers] would ... at least ... protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors." |
Time to Rethink the War on Drugs, by David Boaz, Freedom Daily, Oct 1999
"... drug prohibition creates high levels of crime ... drug prohibition channels more than $40 billion a year into the criminal underworld ... the drug laws are responsible for widespread social upheaval ... the drug laws break up families ... drug prohibition leads to civil liberties abuses ..." |
War on Drugs Taking People to New Lows, by Dimitri Vassilaros, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 14 Mar 2000
"Has a bag of marijuana ever been arrested, handcuffed, arraigned, tried, convicted and then incarcerated? Are you at war with inanimate objects such as a joint, bong or syringe? If not, then the War on Drugs is really the War on People. ..." |
Interview with Governor Gary Johnson, The Week Online with DRCNet, 13 Oct 2000
Related Topics: Gary E. Johnson, New Mexico
"Heroin is the only drug where a model for controlled use existed ... I said we should be looking at a harm reduction strategy and moving from a criminal to a medical model. Indeed, let's not forget that alcohol was once prohibited ... It needs to be talked about, pot needs to be legalized, and we need to reduce the harm." |
John Gilmore on inflight activism, spam and sarongs, by Mikael Pawlo, GrepLaw, 18 Aug 2004
Related Topics: John Gilmore, Cryptography, Due Process of Law
"The drug war is an ugly, corrupt set of policies that were bad when Nixon set it in motion to bash the hippie students ... It was ugly and corrupt when San Francisco passed the first ordinance ... in the 1890s; it outlawed the medicine opium, and was used to bash Chinese immigrants who'd come to build the railroad ..." |
Milton Friedman RIP, by Walter Block, Mises.org Daily Article, 16 Nov 2006
Related Topics: Milton Friedman, Minimum Wage Laws
"The US government ... is responsible for untold incarcerations of innocent people and tens of thousands of needless deaths around the world. When one day we as a society come to our senses and repeal drug prohibition as we previously did for alcohol prohibition, we will owe that happy day to Professor Friedman as much as to any man." |
The Indivisibility of Liberty, by Mary J. Ruwart, 23 Apr 2008
Related Topics: Liberty
Discusses how advocating that others be deprived of some liberties results in negative repercussions on our own liberties
"When we take away our neighbors liberty, because they like to use substances we consider to be harmful, we expose ourselves to harm. Close to one-half of all murders in this country result from the prohibition of drugs. Turf wars between gangs result in the death of many innocent victims. ... Our children are also put at risk. The high black-market profit margin in illegal drugs guarantees that pushers will haunt our schools, addicting our youth." |
The Price of Empire, by Sheldon Richman, 26 Apr 2006
Related Topics: Imperialism, Peru
"Why is the U.S. government bent on destroying the coca crops of innocent Andean farmers? The drug warriors will say that the crop eventually ends up on the streets of America in the form of cocaine. People in Latin America can't understand why they are scapegoats for the American demand for drugs." |
| Books |
Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America
by Ted Galen Carpenter, 2003
Related Topic: Latin America |
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Friedman and Szasz on Liberty and Drugs: Essays on the Free Market and Prohibition
by Milton Friedman, Thomas S. Szasz, 1992 |
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Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use
by Jacob Sullum, May 2003 |
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| Videos |
The High and the Mighty: The War on Drugs, by Milton Friedman, Uncommon Knowledge, 2000
A debate between Milton Friedman and Peter Wilson, former governor of California |
The War on Drugs: A War on Ourselves
by John Stossel, 30 Jul 2002 |
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