Change is slowly coming on the "War on Drugs"

I wasn't sure if we were supposed to blog about the article we were to find regarding the "War on Drugs", but i figured what the heck, why not?

The article I chose , " 9 signs the War on Drugs is almost over", was written  for Alternet, by Tony Newman, a communication director for the Drug Policy Alliance, back in December of 2012.  He also followed up in 2013 with another article titled, "10 ways the War on Drugs changed forever in 2013".

In this article Tony Newman stated, " 2012 would go down in history as the beginning of the end to American longest failed war, the war on drugs".  That one sentence caught my attention, but after reading the article, two years later i feel we are still in the beginning , there has not been much forward progress on this front.

Momentum to change the War on Drugs did start in 2012, and since then we have seen a number of changes as stated in the article.  Colorado and Washington passed laws legalizing marijuana, California passed Proposition 36, which changed the "three strikes" mandatory minimum law. Latin American Presidents called for an end to the war on drugs and here in America we also saw some states pass the 911 Good Samaritan Law, allowing and encouraging people who witness an overdose to call 911 without fear of arrest. Politicians, started to change their stance on the "War on Drugs", including; Beto O'Rourke, Ellen Rosenblum and Andrew Cuomo started speaking out in regards to changing the laws and decriminalizing marijuana.  By 2013, 58% of the American population , the majority, want to legalize marijuana.

The article, makes you believe as a country we are headed in the right direction and change is occurring, but it is really?  Two years has passed since the article was written and very little change has happened since the beginning.  While it seems we came out of the gate fast,  somewhere coming down the front stretch, we start to stall.

We are still facing high incarceration rates, due to drug persecution.  Profiling is happening everyday in our inner cities by police officers wanting to make quick arrests.  These arrests are quick, not much work and allows the officers to sign, seal and deliver the arrest quickly, offering those officers the ability to move up in ranks because of the large number of arrests they made,  and the government is spending over $50 Billion a year on a war that is hurting people more than it's doing to help them.  No changes are in place to treat the addict, to help them become better members of society, we are still locking these individuals up and in some instances throwing away the key, but at what expense.

If we are going to truly end the "War on Drugs", then we need to start lobbying our congressmen and senators.  We have to have a voice.  It has to start somewhere and the more pressure applied to government, maybe the more they will react and make the changes that are necessary and quite honestly has been a long time coming.

The House I Live in

For some reason, this movie seems to have opened a can of worms so to speak.. So many people, with so many opinions.  None of them are right or wrong.. most are formed from our personal experiences or our upbringing.

The House I Live In, brought up a subject I didn't realize prior to watching the movie, that I had a lot of opinions on.  "The War on Drugs", is such a touchy subject for so many people.. but the truth of the matter is that the system is flawed.. people are being subject to extremely long prison sentences while to me more serious crimes carry a lesser sentence.  The movie has points about social class, ethnicity and inequality all playing a part in the persecution of "druggies" which is leading to the  overpopulation of our prison system.. The government, politicians and the media putting spins on the perception of drugs and the devastation they seem to think it causes to society.  While the war on drugs was in essence started to eliminate immigrants from living the "American Dream"  and taking jobs from white americans,  it was also used as a platform that was fueled by the media to elect Presidents or reelect them..

The system has to be changed.  We as a society are now electing and voting in favor of marijuana legalization.  This in itself should be enough for government to sit back and rewrite the laws.  The world is changing and as it changes and things become more acceptable so do the laws that prohibit them need to change..   I don't believe we should be locking up individuals for years and years.  We need to create a system that looks into and treats the reasons for these behaviors.. We don't lock up drunks just because they are walking down the road carrying a six pack.  The same should hold true for the war on drugs.  We should subject offenders  a way to come clean, to learn how to deal with life and the difficulties they face, to treat depression and to work with the families it affects.  I'm not saying that should they kill someone while high they shouldn't be imprisoned, just like a drunk driver.
However, something needs to change, its a broke system and if what was stated in the movie and police are profiling and spending their time arresting drug offenders, in order to get a quick bust, rather than spending weeks and months trying to solve a murder, there's a problem.  When the government is spending millions on fighting the "war", with not much success and corporate america is making big bucks off of the overpopulation of prisons, there's a problem