Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

[Joe Contrarian]

Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs
TED NUGENT Texas Wildman

Sunday, June 14, 2009

One of the most dangerous places on earth is our own 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Our southern border is a drug-war zone, and we?re losing.

Know it.

Before she became secretary of Homeland Security, former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano declared a state of emergency along the Arizona/Mexico border because of drug trafficking, shootouts and an increasing illegal immigration invasion.

The Justice Department stated that Mexican drug cartels are the ?largest threat to both citizens and law enforcement agencies in this country? with gang members loose in nearly 200 U.S. cities.?

This in the big, bad, brave United States of America! How can this be?
There isn?t a city in America that has not been scorched by drug-related violence.

In 2008 the drug cartels killed more than 4,000 Mexicans. Almost 500 Mexican police officers and soldiers have been killed since January 2007.

Add to this increasing acts of violence against Border Patrol agents by the well-financed and well-armed drug cartels. They are as evil an adversary as the voodoo terrorist Taliban our soldiers face in Afghanistan.

President Obama has stated he will go after the cartels and increase efforts to combat gang-related crime. Good. But he better be prepared to wage war with them with more than just soaring rhetoric.

I?m aware there are prominent conservatives who make strong arguments in favor of legalizing drugs ? for one, that it will take away a tool of organized crime.

I don?t believe that. Legalizing drugs would be like pouring gasoline on a blazing fire in hopes of extinguishing it. :thumbsup

We have all the laws we need to fight drugs. What America needs is the willpower and a renewed warrior spirit to crush evil and evil-doers.

I was ready to serve

Unfortunately, the president tapped former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as his drug czar. Kerlikowske then suggested we tone down our ?war on drugs? rhetoric.

I disagree. Too bad you didn?t pick me, Mr. President.

Hippies, dopeheads, corrupt politicos and various forms of human debris hate me, making me the perfect for the job. :thumbsup

As drug czar, I would charge our mayors and police departments to commit to fighting the drug gangs. It would be our top priority. Our inner cities will remain war zones until we commit to taking the trash out.

America needs to better arm our Border Patrol agents and we need more of them.

The governors of the border states should call out the National Guard to assist the Border Patrol in securing the border. As drug czar, I would challenge them to do this today, as I would the governments of Mexico and South America.

Working with the Colombian government a few years back, U.S. Special Forces filled Pablo Escobar with bullet holes. Until assuming room temperature, he controlled 80 percent of all the cocaine shipped into America.

Every American who smokes dope, manufactures, buys or sells meth or uses any illegal drug is aiding and abetting the enemies of America. Case closed.

This spiritual inbreeding and cannibalism must be identified, admitted and stopped immediately. America can and must do this. Good over evil. Next.

Ted Nugent is a Waco-based musician, television show host and bestselling author of two books. Contact him directly at tednugent.com.

 

[Joe Contrarian]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

This is so easy it's child's play:

Start executing drug dealers and toy with the idea of giving the same "treatment" to heavy users.

Good over evil.

Next.

 

[4625]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

Haha. . This is the type of zaniness that I've become accustomed too!! However, I would have been slightly more amused at the loony-toons here if there were some wacky pics to accompany the rant.

 

[MannyLovitto]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

Ted Nugent made tens of millions of dollars promoting alcohol and drug partying during his salad days as a rock n roller, so it's sadly ironic to hear him demean those who enjoy using marijuana today.

Poor boy can't get much of anyone other than his current hometown of Waco TX to run his Hot Political Opinions.

Meanwhile, as Ted's viewpoints were read by the 20-30,000 people who take that Waco-Herald Tribune; the almost two million (print edition...with a couple million more via the web edition) readers of The New York Times today were given a different perspective from columnist Nicholas Kristof:

US NY: Column: Drugs Won the War

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</td></tr> </tbody></table> </th></tr> </tbody></table> URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n616/a10.html
Newshawk: JimmyG
Votes: 0
Pubdate: Sun, 14 Jun 2009
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: WK10
Copyright: 2009 The New York Times Company
Contact: <script>male2('letters','nytimes.com');</script>letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Nicholas D. Kristof
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Norm+Stamper
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Jeffrey+Miron
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Gil+Kerlikowske
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Peter+Reuter
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Jim+Webb

DRUGS WON THE WAR

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

"We've spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs," Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. "What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It's a dismal failure."

For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.

Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that's because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. ( Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment. )

I've seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr. Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.

Mr. Stamper is active in Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, an organization of police officers, prosecutors, judges and citizens who favor a dramatic liberalization of American drug laws. He said he gradually became disillusioned with the drug war, beginning in 1967 when he was a young beat officer in San Diego.

"I had arrested a 19-year-old, in his own home, for possession of marijuana," he recalled. "I literally broke down the door, on the basis of probable cause. I took him to jail on a felony charge." The arrest and related paperwork took several hours, and Mr. Stamper suddenly had an "aha!" moment: "I could be doing real police work."

It's now broadly acknowledged that the drug war approach has failed. President Obama's new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to banish the war on drugs phraseology, while shifting more toward treatment over imprisonment.

The stakes are huge, the uncertainties great, and there's a genuine risk that liberalizing drug laws might lead to an increase in use and in addiction. But the evidence suggests that such a risk is small. After all, cocaine was used at only one-fifth of current levels when it was legal in the United States before 1914. And those states that have decriminalized marijuana possession have not seen surging consumption.

"I don't see any big downside to marijuana decriminalization," said Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland who has been skeptical of some of the arguments of the legalization camp. At most, he said, there would be only a modest increase in usage.

Moving forward, we need to be less ideological and more empirical in figuring out what works in combating America's drug problem. One approach would be for a state or two to experiment with legalization of marijuana, allowing it to be sold by licensed pharmacists, while measuring the impact on usage and crime.

I'm not the only one who is rethinking these issues. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has sponsored legislation to create a presidential commission to examine various elements of the criminal justice system, including drug policy. So far 28 senators have co-sponsored the legislation, and Mr. Webb says that Mr. Obama has been supportive of the idea as well.

"Our nation's broken drug policies are just one reason why we must re-examine the entire criminal justice system," Mr. Webb says. That's a brave position for a politician, and it's the kind of leadership that we need as we grope toward a more effective strategy against narcotics in America.

 

[4625]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

I like the tobacco campaign analogy made by the former South American presidents. It gives the squeamish something to hang their hat on in a hope to reduce consumption, and it has the added benefit of possibly even being effective at reducing consumption if executed properly.

 

[MannyLovitto]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

The most pertinent question regarding the distribution of drugs in North America is, "Who will be in the most control of the market?"

Clearly the preferable option is for some combination of private business and appropriate government oversight to be in control, which is why North Americans agreeably use such a system for literally 99.9% of drugs sold on our continent.

The less preferable option is for the drug(s) to be 100% controlled by the street, unregulated producers and dealers.

Those producers and dealers sell to minors. They recruit minors to help them sell. And they kill police and civilians alike in their quest to maintain control of the over $400B annual market

The Reader at Large is thus presented with a rather simple choice with regard to the current short list of illicit drugs.

a) Legalize them and make them subject to responsible control and regulation just as we do with 99.9% of the current pharmacopia

or

b) Leave them illegal and cede 100% of control for these in-demand drugs to street dealers, criminal cartels and violent gangs.


Simple. Easy decision.

Ask yourself which is Preferable in your world.

But realize that only two groups of people believe the preferable option is "B"

1) Prohibitionists.
2) The criminal gangs and dealers who currently control that market.

 

[tank]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

Ted Nugent:

I was ready to serve

.

That's funny because when it was his time to serve in Vietnam the chickenshit got a deferment.Typical tough guy 40 some years later and after the fact.Yeah Ted we could really use you now.

 

[Joe Contrarian]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

President Sarah Palin will shoot drug lords the same way she shoots bears and wolves. :thumbsup

 

[MannyLovitto]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

Cool. She can team up with "President Fred D Thompson" and together who's to say what levels of destruction they could wrought?

 

[tank]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

President Sarah Palin will shoot drug lords the same way she shoots bears and wolves. :thumbsup

Only one problem.The drug lords will shoot back and i have a feeling Sarah will not be so brave then.

 

[MannyLovitto]

Re: Ted Nugent: We could be winning war on drugs

I'm pretty sure that neither Mrs Palin nor Mr Nugent are quite so full of bluster when the targets they shoot at can shoot back.