Rep. Steve Cohen calls the war on drugs 'insane,' notes how pot helped a Navy SEAL

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) took to the House floor last week to ridicule the 40th anniversary of the U.S. war on drugs.

"The war on drugs was initiated by President Richard Nixon," Cohen said. "... And the fact is 40 years later, we've spent nearly $1 trillion on the war on drugs, we have just as much as drug use in this country as ever before, we've incarcerated millions and millions of people for victimless crimes, and when we get people who sell drugs, which we need to do, all that happens is like a shark's teeth, they're replaced by the next in line ... somebody else wanting to make money from a program that the public endorses and supports."

This is in direct contradiction to the White House, which this month said the war was making an impact.

"Drug use in America is half of what it was 30 years ago, cocaine production in Colombia has dropped by almost two-thirds, and we’re successfully diverting thousands of nonviolent offenders into treatment instead of jail by supporting alternatives to incarceration," Rafael Lemaitre, communications director of the White House drug policy office, said June 2.

Cohen said "the war on drugs has been a terrible mistake," mostly because "our approach in treating it as a law enforcement and not as a health matter, a healthcare issue, has led to prison populations increasing, racial disparities ... in the arrest process, and a lost generation of people with no education and no job prospects because those arrests haunt them for the rest of their lives."

The Southerner pointed to the mighty metropolis of New York to see how the war on drugs was working:

"I was shocked recently to read that the New York City Police Department arrested 50,000 people for low-level marijuana offenses last year.  New York City.  Fifty thousand arrests for low-level marijuana offenses. More than during a 19-year period between 1978 and 1996 combined. Marijuana use has not skyrocketed in the last year, but arrests are ramped up and they use arrests as a basis to get people, particularly people of color, where it's seven times more likely you'll be arrested if you're African American and four times more likely you'll be arrested if you're Latino, and more likely if you're African American or Latino that you'll spend a night in jail than if you're Caucasian, as a way to take people and arrest them and deprive them of what should be their basic civil rights to go around the city.  Our local budgets are straining like never before, and yet we see more arrests," Cohen said.

Perhaps the most compelling argument Cohen had was when he shared how a friend of his, a veteran, a Navy SEAL specifically, used weed to regain his appetite and good spirits.

"I had a good friend named O.J. Mitchell. O.J. Mitchell was a Navy SEAL and one of the strongest, toughest, best friends I've ever had.  When O.J. was 54, he got pancreatic cancer, and pancreatic cancer destroys a person, just whittles them away.  And the guy was 210 pounds, can do all those things SEALs can do, the hand-to-hand, the paratroops, and he used medical marijuana, and his grandmother and his mother said, 'Thank God for the marijuana.' It allowed him to have a sense of humor and to eat. It worked," Cohen said.

Candidate Barack Obama in 2004 called the war on drugs "an utter failure," and said that although he did not believe marijuana should be legalized, he thought it should be decriminalized.

Of all the 2012 presidential hopefuls, the only major candidate who favors the end of the drug war is Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

 

RELATED:

White House says the war is working – the war on drugs

Obama was for decriminalizing marijuana before he opposed it

Web lights up with protests over Obama's dismissal of marijuana legalization

-- Tony Pierce
twitter.com/busblog

Photo: Glendale firefighters confiscate marijuana plants in 2007. Credit: Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[legal4u]

Suddenly, it appears as though the MSM, politicians, & police (LEAP) are all figuring out the fact that almost 50% of voters are serious about wanting to end the drug wars. But, even more voters favor cannabis legalization in most states. Smart move Rep Cohen. We're about to see a big change, with more states pushing the Feds to legalize as voters see cannabis as safer than the legal drugs We know that cannabis represents 60-75% of all illicit drug use & legalization will remove a huge source of revenue for drug cartels. It's getting interesting.

[malcolm kyle]

If you are a Prohibitionist then you owe us answers to the following questions:

#1. Why do you rejoice at the fact that we have all been stripped of our 4th amendment rights and are now totally subordinate to a corporatized, despotic government with a heavily armed and corrupt, militarized police force whose often deadly intrusions into our homes and lives are condoned by an equally corrupt and spineless judiciary?

#2. Why do you wish to continue to spend $50 billion a year to prosecute and cage your fellow citizens for choosing drugs which are not more dangerous than those of which you yourself use and approve of such as alcohol and tobacco?

#3. Do you honestly expect the rest of us to look on passively while you waste another trillion dollars on this ruinously expensive garbage policy?

#4. Why are your waging war on your own family, friends and neighbors?

#5. Why are you so complacent with the fact that our once 'free & proud' nation now has the largest percentage of it's citizenry incarcerated than any other on the entire planet?

#6. Why are you helping to fuel a budget crisis to the point of closing hospitals, schools and libraries?

#7. Why do you rejoice at wasting precious resources on prohibition related undercover work while rapists and murderers walk free, while additionally, many cases involving murder and rape do not even get taken to trial because law enforcement priorities are subverted by your beloved failed and dangerous policy?

#8. Why are you such a supporter of the 'prison industrial complex' to the extent of endangering our own children?

#9. Will you graciously applaud, when due to your own incipient and authoritarian approach, even your own child is caged and raped?

[Agnt Duke]

#1. Why do you rejoice at the fact that we have all been stripped of our 4th amendment rights and are now totally subordinate to a corporatized, despotic government with a heavily armed and corrupt, militarized police force whose often deadly intrusions into our homes and lives are condoned by an equally corrupt and spineless judiciary?

>>I'm not going to dignify that with a response.

#2. Why do you wish to continue to spend $50 billion a year to prosecute and cage your fellow citizens for choosing drugs which are not more dangerous than those of which you yourself use and approve of such as alcohol and tobacco?

>> I don't use either. So hypocrite will not work in this situation. Also, should we as a nation stop paying money to prosecure DUIs just because some drunks think it a waste of resources? You get my point.

#3. Do you honestly expect the rest of us to look on passively while you waste another trillion dollars on this ruinously expensive garbage policy?

>> Waste treatment has always been a government responsibility =P.

#4. Why are your waging war on your own family, friends and neighbors?

>> Those who do this are not my friends. As far as my family, if they make their bed I expect them to sleep in it, family or no. And so what can you guess would be my response for neighbors?

#5. Why are you so complacent with the fact that our once 'free & proud' nation now has the largest percentage of it's citizenry incarcerated than any other on the entire planet?

>> This has little to do with the question at hand. Let's just do like California and free prisoners instead when its just too expensive to do otherwise?

#6. Why are you helping to fuel a budget crisis to the point of closing hospitals, schools and libraries?

>> So those hospitals, schools, and libraries which remain open can be drug-free zones. Duh.

#7. Why do you rejoice at wasting precious resources on prohibition related undercover work while rapists and murderers walk free, while additionally, many cases involving murder and rape do not even get taken to trial because law enforcement priorities are subverted by your beloved failed and dangerous policy?

>> Because it is cheaper to catch and prosecute you instead, and it makes us look like we are doing our jobs =).

#8. Why are you such a supporter of the 'prison industrial complex' to the extent of endangering our own children?

>> This has nothing to do with my own children.

#9. Will you graciously applaud, when due to your own incipient and authoritarian approach, even your own child is caged and raped?

>> If my child breaks the law, I support them being caged, for their own good. As for being raped, I'll assume you're up for the job? Why should I support imprisoning others' sons and daughters and not my own, if they are guilty?

[ActivistCat]

-A study by the RAND Corporation found that every additional dollar invested in substance abuse treatment saves taxpayers $7.46 in societal costs.
-$1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $7.3spent on enforcement.
-$1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $10.8spent on border control.
-$1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $23 spent trying to persuade Colombian farmers to grow crops other than coca.1
Source: Rydell, C. P., Caulkins, J. P., & Everingham, S. S. (1996). Enforcement or treatment? Modeling the relative efficacy of alternative for controlling cocaine. Operations Research (RAND), 44(5), 687-695.