- Mr Chairman and Members of
the Committee:
-
- I'm Bob Newland. I'm a
publisher. I live near Hermosa, 15 miles south of
Rapid City. I'm here to speak in opposition
specifically to Senate Bill 210, and generally in
opposition to any bills which seek to increase
sanctions already imposed for possession or sale of
psychoactive substances.
-
- I have several things to
say, but I would like to challenge the committee to
think about a couple of things while I'm talking.
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- First, I'd like someone to
point out to me where in either of these two documents
-- the Constitution of the united States of America or
the constitution of the State of South Dakota -- where
in here does it give government the authority to
prohibit, or even to regulate behavior which affects
only oneself or other consenting informed
people?
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- Second, I'd like someone to
exemplify one single solitary benefit of over 100
years of governmental policies in regulating,
criminalizing, taxing or prohibiting pyschoactive
substances. These policies have coalesced and
accelerated since about 1965 in what was officially
declared a "War on Drugs" in 1968. My question, again,
is, "Can anyone point out any benefits, even one,
after over a century of fighting the fruit of plants
God placed here on Earth for our benefit, and after
nearly a trillion dollars in
expenditures?"
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- I shall list eleven
accomplishments of the so-called "war on drugs --- all
massively destructive.
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- Accomplishment
#1
- The "war on drugs" has
created more drug users than before it was inceived.
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- Accomplishment
#2
- The "war on drugs" has made
heroin, cocaine, hemp, and now amphetamines more
available to more people than they were before war was
declared.
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- Accomplishment #3
- The War on Drugs has
steadily lowered the age at which people first
experiment with drugs.
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- Accomplishment #4
- The War on Drugs has created
jobs --... in law enforcement, prison construction,
corrections personnel, and snitches.
-
- In South Dakota, there are
currently about 2300 people in prison. About 60%, or
1380 of them, are there for sale or possession. At
$25,000 per prisoner, that's $34,500,000 per year of
tax revenue used to keep them there. That's about 5%
-- 1/20 -- of the entire amount of revenue raised by
taxes and fees in South Dakota. The legislature
sometimes spends days trying to scrape up just $4
million to make ends meet.
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- Accomplishment #5
- The War on Drugs has made
thousands of the most vicious people on earth
extremely wealthy. In a perverse sense, the drug war
is a price-support program for drug dealers, since the
price of illegal drugs on the street is about 90%
driven by the risk factor. And every time a dealer is
arrested, that's a job opening for someone else, often
someone more vicious.
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- Accomplishment #6
- The War on Drugs has
interfered with the relationships between patients and
their doctors.
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- Accomplishment #7
- The War on Drugs has
stripped back the covers of personal and financial
privacy from the lives of peaceful honest
people.
-
- Accomplishment #8
- The War on Drugs has
virtually erased the fourth, fifth, ninth and tenth
amendments to the Constitution, and has badly blurred
the script on the rest.
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- Accomplishment #9
- The War on Drugs promotes
massive corruption at all levels of law enforcement
and government.
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- Accomplishment #10
- The War on Drugs promotes
violence. When was the last time anyone here heard of
rival liquor store owners shooting it out? Probably
about 1933, when the Volstead Act was
repealed.
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- Accomplishment #11
- The War on Drugs has
destabilized and/or toppled every governments the
Western Hemisphere south of us.
-
-
-
- If the so-called "war on
drugs" were merely an ill-conceived, inefficient,
counterproductive waste of money, it would simply be
another government program, a yawner. But a smidgeon
of benefit to society can be found in most government
programs, and this is what makes the so-called "war on
drugs" different.
-
- Everything about the "war on
drugs" is destructive. There is nothing beneficial
about it. And every time the strictures of regulation,
prosecution, and incarceration are tightened, the
negative effects are magnified.
-
- To pursue a policy so
clearly demonstrable to be destructive, having been
made aware of its destruction, when no benefits
accrue, can only be characterized as
evil.
-
- Legislators of good will,
from every part of this nation, inceived and
promulgated the so-called "war on drugs", acting on
bad advice from thugs and shysters with evil agendas.
Now, it's plain they made a mistake. We all make
mistakes. The better among us, when we see we were
wrong, admit we were wrong and attempt to make it
right.
-
-
- Let's start from where we
probably all agree -- that it would be preferable if
fewer people used psychoactive substances regularly.
That it would be preferable to reduce the number of
assaults, burglaries, petty thefts, and murders. That
it would be preferable to have room in prison to
incarcerate people who steal from, hurt, or defraud
people, while not having to double prison space every
three years. That it would be preferable to have the
medical benefits from all sources
available.
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- Knowing that a policy of
criminalization, prosecution and incarceration
produces more drug use, burglaries, and murders, AND
that it prevents sick people from taking advantage of
the curative and palliative effects of some drugs,
then we know we MUST take another tack. This can be
likened to driving an unknown road. We don't know why
we're driving down this road. We don't know our
destination. We've simply been told that when we get
there, no one will ever do anything harmful to
himself. However, the road keeps getting rougher, and
it keeps getting later, so we have to go faster. The
road is now so rough that fenders and hubcaps are
falling off our car. What would a sane car owner do?
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- She'd stop. She'd observe
that no one had driven this road lately. In fact,
she'd notice that there really was no road at all.
She'd reflect on the promise that this road would lead
to no one ever doing harm do himself or herself. She'd
think that maybe that promise was a little too
optimistic. She asks us, her passengers, what we
think. Only her husband objects to asking for
directions. "I have a map here, drawn by the
governor," he says. "It says there's a
road."
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- The obvious tack, of course
is to reverse course, not to increase our speed. To
work our way back to where the road is a little
smoother. To see if we missed an easier, safer route
along the way. The governor, however, would have you
put the pedal to the metal, damn the washouts. After
all, it's not his car. It's the peoples' car. And,
like the irrational drug warriors before him, he can
simply say, after SB 210 takes effect and demonstrates
its folly, "You never gave me enough money, you never
gave me enough guns, you never gave me enough dogs,
you never gave me enough cops, you never gave me
enough prison cells for me to stop people from
choosing to do something which might harm them." And
he, or someone else just like him, will ask for an
even stricter law.
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- Many obvious analogies to
the Vietnam War are evident in the so-called "war on
drugs". There's a body count -- for example, 695,000
arrests for hemp violations last year alone, one every
45 seconds. There's the lack of a discernable goal.
What is it? Is it to get people to stop doing things
which might harm them? Is that reasonable? And, of
course, there's the brute force aspect of our field
work. In Vietnam, it was as simple as this, we tried
to make people stop being communists by dropping bombs
on them, and by shooting them. We lost.
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- I happen to believe that
no prohibition law can work. Never has one worked. All
attempts at substance, firearms, information, or any
other form of prohibition have led to results exactly
opposite to those hoped for.
-
- We know what damage
prohibition laws have caused in our history. We have
inescapable evidence of what the current policies are
doing to us. The only sane thing to do is to
decriminalize sale and possession of all
currently-illicit substances.
-
- Then the law-enforcement
community and the courts can concentrate on deterring
and punishing crimes of force and fraud, tasks at
which they are far more effective.
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- Yet, I'm pragmatic enough to
know that total abolition of prohibition laws is some
distance down the road. Therefore, I think that we
must simply resist the misguided and evil cajoling of
politicians to increase sanctions for possession and
sale. Slow the car. Stop it. Then turn it around and
head back.
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- Six states passed laws,
which lessened the sanctions for possession or sale of
hemp, by public referral last fall. Minnesota, North
Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii and Virginia have all passed
resolutions asking the federal government to ease its
restrictions on hemp as an agricultural product.
Evidence mounts that hemp has a wide variety of
medical applications, and that it is absolutely the
safest palliative known to man. No evidence exists
that anyone has ever died of an overdose caused by
ingestion of hemp in any manner. Contrast that with
the 106,000 deaths last year caused by unexpected side
effects to government-approved drugs administered by
government-approved doctors. Or with the approximately
16000 people who die each year from unexpected effects
of aspirin and ibuprofen, both over-the-counter
government-approved drugs.
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- In fact, using figures from
the Centers for Disease Control, the National Center
for Health Statistics, and the Journal of American
Medical Association, in 1995, smoking tobacco
accounted for accelerated mortality in about 419,000
people, and alcohol killed about 150,000 (not counting
50% of highway deaths and 65% of murders). Accidents
killed 94000, and homicide took 21000 lives. All of
the illicit drugs combined killed about 5200 people.
Hemp, or marijuana, if you will, killed no
one.
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- SB 210 will create nothing
of benefit. I retract that. It will provide great
opportunities for those who invest in, or who build
things of, steel and concrete, and for those who make
their careers penning people up.
-
- It will also increase theft,
murder, drug use, and taxes. To vote for this bill,
having been made aware of its potential, having the
evidence before you of its evil lineage ... to vote
for this bill is an act of evil.
-
I thank the committee
for this time, and I am prepared to defend my
allegations, assertions and
suggestions.
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