"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it "
George Santayana 1863 - 1952
"In the beginning of a change, The Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
Mark Twain 1835 - 1910
Déjà vu:
Ignoring history to repeat it
The flaws of
the current drug war have doomed past efforts as well.
Within this
century, Americans abandoned a different drug war after citizens everywhere
began to realize it created more problems than it solved. Proponents
sometimes referred to the prohibition of alcohol between 1920-1933 as the
"noble experiment." Bars were closed down and the sale of alcohol became
illegal. Predictable results included:
* An
increase in violence
* Increases
in corruption
* Increases
in the potency and danger of alcohol consumed
* A boom in
the organized crime business
To
summarize, prohibition maximized the harm associated with alcohol.
The disaster
of alcohol prohibition wasn't the first attempt to eradicate the use of
intoxicating substances. For almost as long as man has been using drugs,
pioneering prohibitionists have tried to stop drug use. Dozens of failed
attempts to stop the use of drugs have been cataloged, including the burning
of coffee supplies in 16th century Egypt, and the execution of tobacco users
in 17th century Russia. None of them succeeded.
"He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave."
William Drummond 1776-1828
"To stay experimentation in things social and
economic is a grave responsibility. Denial of the right to experiment may be
fraught with serious consequences to the nation.
It is one of the happy incidents of the
federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose,
serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without
risk to the rest of the country."
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
1856-1951
