<story><title>Legalize It All</title><url>https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/?single=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>krylon</author><text>&lt;i&gt;We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That sums it up pretty well. It never was about fighting drug use or preventing the harm it can do. Can we now, please, get that behind us and move on? If we only spent 10% of what we now spent on prosecuting drug use on prevention and rehabilitation, that would be a much greater service to society than fourty years of &amp;quot;war&amp;quot; have been. Not to mention the benefits for privacy, the decrease in violence and so on...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>md224</author><text>Does anyone else get almost irrationally angry about this? I &lt;i&gt;HATE&lt;/i&gt; that the freedom to modulate our own minds was taken away from us by these awful politicians for such terrible reasons. Not only has the War on Drugs ruined countless lives through incarceration and overdosing, but so many potentially helpful chemicals have been hidden away from society. It isn&amp;#x27;t just about getting &amp;quot;high&amp;quot;... it&amp;#x27;s about unleashing our full pharmacological potential in a safe and productive manner.&lt;p&gt;The War on Drugs is so fucking stupid and so many people are paying the price. I don&amp;#x27;t know if anything makes me as angry as this.</text></comment>
<story><title>Legalize It All</title><url>https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/?single=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>krylon</author><text>&lt;i&gt;We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That sums it up pretty well. It never was about fighting drug use or preventing the harm it can do. Can we now, please, get that behind us and move on? If we only spent 10% of what we now spent on prosecuting drug use on prevention and rehabilitation, that would be a much greater service to society than fourty years of &amp;quot;war&amp;quot; have been. Not to mention the benefits for privacy, the decrease in violence and so on...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patrickburke</author><text>According to a recent Frontline, maybe we are moving on:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;A searing, two-hour investigation places America’s heroin crisis in a fresh and provocative light -- telling the stories of individual addicts, but also illuminating the epidemic&amp;#x27;s years-in-the-making social context, deeply examining shifts in U.S. drug policy, and exploring what happens when addiction is treated like a public health issue, not a crime.&amp;quot;
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pbs.org&amp;#x2F;wgbh&amp;#x2F;frontline&amp;#x2F;film&amp;#x2F;chasing-heroin&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pbs.org&amp;#x2F;wgbh&amp;#x2F;frontline&amp;#x2F;film&amp;#x2F;chasing-heroin&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>