Friday, September 14, 2012

Why the Drug War Puts Drug Dealers in our Middle Schools

Survey after survey, from schools across the country are telling us the same story, echoing what our own children are telling us; it’s easier to get some illegal drugs than alcohol or cigarettes. Often students will assert that they can get marijuana within 15 minutes to an hour. How did we get to this point? It’s not from a lack of effort, or funding. We were willing to fund what ever the never ending drug war seemed to require (asked for). 

Well  folks, the fact is that when a society prohibits the use or possession of something that is in demand, the distribution system changes and costs go up. Way up! The reality is, when you prohibit something you’re saying, “No one can have this. No one can sell it or produce it etc., without the threat of criminal penalties.” You’re giving up any real control.
Under prohibition, demand won’t disappear and users will have to pay more to continue buying and using. Eventually they’ll pay a lot more. They’ll have to, because the manufacturing is risky, the distribution is risky, and sales are risky. Everyone in the loop is now a criminal and subject to serious penalties. Everyone in the chain must make enough of money to balance their risks of being arrested and jailed, or robbed and beaten, or worse. The prices go way up. With high profits at stake criminal organizations stand to make a lot of money providing parts or all of these services. Their profits probably won’t be used to build new schools in your neighborhood or fund neighborhood healthcare. Legal sales of regulated and taxed substances could fund these types of things.
 When the criminal justice system (which is now at a much higher risk of corruption from these impressive profits made by people willing to work outside the law) manages to incarcerate these new entrepreneurs, they’re replaced the next day with others who see the opportunity worth taking the risk. Meanwhile we pay for the jail time, and court time, and support for his or her family now that they’ve lost a bread winner. It doesn’t seem like any of this prohibition has helped us out in the least! A thoughtful person can easily make a good case that this series of ill-advised laws passed over the years have done little except exacerbate the situation. More drugs being used, more arrests, more spent on prisons enforcement, eradication, gang problems, corruption, etc. have been the result.
These “entrepreneurs” (drug dealers) can be quite clever when it comes to protecting themselves from the law. It’s common for a mid level dealer (that means there is a lot of them) to work with local kids under 18 to “help” with his sales/distribution business. Since the advent of the zero tolerance laws passed in school settings, these students risk much more than they realize. Who do you think these local kids will contact to expand their sales? Their friends, your kid’s school chums.

So what do we do?
·         Educate, educate, educate. Real information, honest discussions. Join a group like FLCAN and educate yourself, your friends and family.
·          Change our laws to regulate these banned substances. Then we gain control. Control over quality, strength, storage, distribution (we card folks for beer, right?) and more.
·          Reconsider our drug testing policies in schools. The results of the testing have prompted the use of “harder” drugs that pass through the body more quickly than cannabis. Drug testing may keep “at risk” kids out of band, or football or any other extracurricular, the exact activities that help kids stay away from drugs. Let’s see if what we’re doing is working or not. 
L   Learn from history. We’ve been here before with alcohol prohibition. We saw the results of prohibition as we looked back at alcohol laws' consequences in our history. Prohibition bred the gangs, the drive by shootings, the turf wars, the corruption of government and police, the increasing production of whiskey instead of beer and much more.
 This doesn’t look like a drug war. It looks like a gift to those who are willing take a little risk to make a lot of money and not pay taxes on it. It looks like a gift to private prisons. It looks like a way to control people of color who are arrested far more than white people who actually use more drugs per capita. It works to disenfranchise certain aspects of society when they lose their voting rights.
Now we’re seeing the unintended consequences of our generation’s prohibition, “The War on Drugs”.  What is sad, is we never saw the results we were trying to achieve.
·         It’s up to us to say, “Enough, this isn’t working, it’s costing us a fortune, it’s risking our kids and our future!” What else needs to be said?

Monday, July 9, 2012

CANFest Is Coming!


November seems like a long way away, especially with the constant slug fest between Republicans and Democrats over things that seem petty when compared with 75 years of cannabis prohibition, fueled by racism and greed. CANFest is not a partisan event -- in fact, both sides of the aisle have much to benefit from ending the prohibition of cannabis.

I have met many people from all parties -- Democrat, Independent, Green, Libertarian, and Republican -- all of whom think that cannabis prohibition is a farce.  For the most part, we all want the same thing -- safe, legal access to cannabis for all who need it and all adults who want it.

CANFest is a Melbourne, Florida event that was revived last year and brought thousands of supporters together from around the state and around the country.  Held on Thanksgiving weekend, it was two full days of a musical, motivational medley that had been missing from Brevard for some time. The bands were awesome, headlined on Saturday night by Reggae icon Pato Banton.  My neighbor even won his guitar in a raffle.

This year will be different.  CANFest will be at the same time and place, but there will be a whole new lineup.  Bands from around the country have already submitted samples to express their interest in playing at CANFest. There will be great music, great fun, cool things to shop for, food for the body, food for the brain, coffee and tea.  There will be speakers, art and many forms of free expression.  Go to http://www.canfest.org to find out more.

Florida CAN is producing CANFest for a purpose.  Your sponsorship, membership, and donations will make it possible to AGAIN send the experts to fight for your rights in Tallahassee, where prohibition meets the pen. Florida CAN makes it easy to notify your representatives that you support changes in cannabis policy in Florida.  We have an ongoing campaign to send letters and petitions to active members of the Florida Legislature, and this is a key element to change.  Visit http://www.fldecides.org to tell YOUR representatives that YOU support the reform of cannabis laws.

David McKinney
Executive Board
FL Cannabis Action Network