Lee Wrights: Our Most Shameful War

Lee Wrights for Texas Governor campaign website:

Whenever anyone suggests that the War on Drugs is a failure and it is time to decriminalize most drugs, they are immediately accused of wanting to allow anyone, even “the children” to use and abuse drugs. The moral busybodies scream, “If we legalize drugs, people will drive while stoned, we’ll have tens of thousand of addicts who’ll become parasites on society, we’ll have drug babies, and millions will die!” But that’s what we have now—and the War on Drugs, not the drugs themselves are largely to blame.

This is a typical tactic used by those who have no sane, reasonable or factual argument to defend their view; when the facts aren’t on your side, attack the other side, question their motives, demonize them, and never, ever admit they may hold sincere beliefs. Like most Americans, I believe the War on Drugs is a failure and should end. Do I want children to use drugs? Of course not; not my children, not anyone’s children. Nor do I want anyone, especially children, to eat foods that are not good for them, to drive too fast, or to stand out in the cold until they come down with pneumonia. But I am not willing to use force to stop them, or throw them in jail if they persist in such behavior.

The surest way to pull the financial rug out from under the street gangs, international drug cartels and terrorist organizations, the only people who profit from the War on Drugs, is to legalize the product they sell so that no one would have to murder or steal to support a $100 a day habit. If we are serious about saving “the children” from drive-by shootings and want to get drugs out of the schools, then the best way to do this is to slash the profits of drug pushers. The most effective and efficient way to change people’s behavior so that they avoid harmful drug use is through persuasion, not force, by treating drug abuse as a health problem, not a crime, and showing those caught in the drug trap a better way to live.