Home > A Foul Tragedy. Democrats fled in the face of danger
A Foul Tragedy. Democrats fled in the face of danger
by Open-Publishing - Sunday 13 November 20053 comments
Edito Police - Repression Justice Parties Health USA
By Garrison Keillor
We Democrats are at our worst when we try to emulate Republicans as we did in signing onto the “war” on drugs that has ruined so many young lives.
The cruelty of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 is stark indeed, as are the sentencing guidelines that impose mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug possession-guidelines in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act that sailed through Congress without benefit of public hearings, drafted before an election by Democrats afraid to be labeled “soft on drugs.” As a result, a marijuana grower can land in prison for life without parole while a murderer might be in for eight years. No rational person can defend this; it is a Dostoevskian nightmare and it exists only because politicians fled in the face of danger. That includes Bill Clinton, under whose administration the prosecution of Americans for marijuana went up hugely, so that now there are more folks in prison for marijuana than for violent crimes. More than for manslaughter or rape. This only makes sense in the fantasy world of Washington, where perception counts for more than reality. To an old Democrat, who takes a ground view of politics-What is the actual effect of this action on the lives of real people?-it is a foul tragedy that makes you feel guilty about enjoying your freedom.
If suddenly on a Friday night the red lights flash and the cops yank your teenage son and his little envelope of marijuana into the legal meatgrinder and some bullet-headed prosecutor decides to flex his muscle and charge your teenager-because he had a .22 rifle in his upstairs bedroom closet-with a felony involving the use of a firearm, which under our brutal sentencing code means he can be put on ice for 20 years, and the prosecutor goes at him hammer and tong and convinces a passive jury and your boy’s life is sacrificed so this creep can run for Congress next year-this is not your cross alone to bear. If the state cuts off your right hand with a meat cleaver on my account and I don’t object, then it is my cleaver and my fingerprints on it.
I don’t dare visit Sandstone Federal Prison here in Minnesota for fear of what I’d see there: People who chose marijuana, a more benign drug than alcohol, and got caught in the religious war that we Democrats in a weak moment signed onto. God help us if we form alliance with such bullies as would destroy a kid’s life for raising cannabis plants.
Forum posts
13 November 2005, 21:40
Decades into the "War on Drugs" - primary target being, of course, marijuana - has only spawned an even greater and more dangerous threat: crystal meth. Meth is created in a lab using chemicals that are purchased at hardware stores and pharmacies, whereas marijuana is a natural plant with different strains and families, with a thousand different functions, ALL of which are positive. The goverment now has to pay for multi-million dollar programs designed to help people hooked on meth kick the habit. Bear in mind that this is a problem of their on making; current users may not have turned to meth in the first place had there not been such stigma surrounding cannibus.
Just more of the forward thinking you can expect from governments these days. We can only hope bush’s "War on Terror" does take the same ugly turn as reagan’s "war on drugs". Unfortunately It may already be too late. The longer the U.S. stays in Iraq, the more likely that will be.
14 November 2005, 00:09
The biggest drug dealers in this country are the pharmaceutical companies that sell and get kids addicted to Riddlen and prozack. Not to mention all the illegal drug trafficing done by our ,so called, government leaders.
14 November 2005, 04:23
The military and the CIA is the biggest dealer of illegal narcotics. Remember Afghanistan! That how it goes. Airforce planes load full of opium arriving each day unharmed by customes at military bases. Someone has to make some money for American warfare, right?