Task Foce

Create Peace on Earth! Continued from Latest Drug News
by Bonnie Colleen McCool

Many of today's leaders seem to have minds like concrete; thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it," as my mentor Mark Twain put it. There is nothing kinky about ethics. Ethical people and governments can make dollars and sense. When will ethics rule sex, drugs and politics?

Official lawlessness and violence runs riot around the globe; people just disappear. Amnesty Internationals statistics on the disappeared of this world are very disquieting. How can we stop violence in our society? Protective restraining orders fail to do the trick too often.

Take heart, the American dream comes directly from God and God has the power to accomplish it. Spirit filled leaders are channels for Good Orderly Direction! The "Spirit of '76" was and is the Holy Spirit! Return to these roots and the task ahead of us will never be as great as the Power behind us! Ethics will rule America. and we will be a true example of liberty to the world.

America is not supposed to be a centrally planned economy with guaranteed employment for everyone, as long as they do what they are told by the state. A state of authoritarian tyranny is what that is called. Every one of us is in jeopardy of losing our freedom to think, speak and act. King George of England inspired the rebellion in 1776.

Move America out of the dark ages of war by returning to our roots of self-government; free of tyranny and oppression..

Peace, tolerance and free trade in goods and knowledge create a world of abundance. America deserves to have an ethical, efficient, and constitutionally limited government. Here is one great tool to get to know your candidates or try this one to find out your current races.

The people believe in self government and self medication!

The people believe in self government and self medication! Prisons propagate sexual abuse, violence and crime. Placing nonviolent drug users in this "breeding ground" is policy bordering on insanity or reefer madness! Televangelist and former Baptist minister Pat Robertson has seen the light!

Many have been turned away from the church in the past because of the drug question. In the name of justice and humanity, wise church leaders know respecting individual rights and treating drug abusers as patients instead of criminals is the answer.

All major religions believe that life is sacred. The war on drugs devastates the lives of drug users and their families. People of all faiths and goodwill can stand together for more just and compassionate alternatives to the current senseless policy. What does the Bible say about cannabis?

We have freedom of religion, all faiths are welcome here, but we have separation of church and state to keep the government out of moral issues. That is how our founders set things up based on Jesus' teachings. Our constitution is a plan to create the land of abundance in Bible prophecy

"Bong Hits for Jesus," is right on, about religious freedom. Holy smokes, cannabis is often used as a sacrament. Why does that scare people of faith instead of excite them? It is down right sinister, a crime against humanity, for the healing properties of cannabis to be suppressed!

"Bong Hits 4 Jesus," Alaskan high school student, Frederick's banner was a perfectly nonsensical poke at our irrational policy. Or was it? (Continue)

The people believe in self government and self medication! (Continues)

Parents or students do not necessarily hold the same values as the politically and economically powerful who run our government. A separation of school and state might be in our future to insurestudents of free speech and a propaganda free education.

Carl Sagan said, "The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world."

America gets an F in two out of three public safety indicators comparing world governments' statistics concerning homicides, assaults and thefts The US is a material world so we get just above average marks for protection from and solving thefts. Where our government fails is in protecting us from and solving homicides and assaults.

Switzerland and Netherlands do a much better job with their violent crime. Their drug laws help lessen the harm to society by triggering less assaults and homicides. Their teen drug use is down. Could it be because they live in a safer, saner world? Maybe, but California's teen use of marijuana is down so maybe it has more to do with drug sales being handled by legitimate business people less likely to sell to a child or to recruit a minor to sell to their peers.

Science based, fiscally prudent, and compassionate public policy is the wave of our future. I see our Legislatures acting decisively to prevent the spread of AIDS by allowing needle exchange programs, as a turning point to letting all drug policy be governed by science and compassion.

We may finally get a needle exchange bill to pass in Texas in 2009! We are the only state in the union that doesn't allow their operation. Its chief opponent in the House, Rep. Diane Delisi, now retired, refused to allow a vote on the bill in her committee last year. Texas Representative Ruth Jones McClendon, in the final hour of last session attached an amendment to budget bill (SB 10) authorizing an ill-fated pilot program in San Antonio.

The costs of HIV are unconscionable, and needle exchange programs do a good job of reducing both disease and overall cost. Yeah, SB 188 was passed out of committee on a prompt, 5-1 vote.

A study by the Department of State Health Services estimates that needle exchange would prevent 100 new HIV infections per year at an average savings to the state in indigent health care costs of $385,000 per case.

Most people are responsible drug users and practice safe sex. Adults deserve the right to choose safe sex even if incarcerated. Providing addicts with clean needles and making condoms available to prisoners is safer for us all. Almost half of HIV-infected State prison inmates at end of 2004 were in New York, Florida and Texas.

Maybe these aren't leaps but they are definitely wonderful first steps to making science based, fiscally prudent, and compassionate public policy the wave of our future!

Restore justice in America; construct science based drug policies about saving and rehabilitating instead of ruining lives. Move America out of the dark ages of war by returning to our roots of self-government; free of tyranny and oppression.

Support for the federal war on drugs is inconsistent with support for individual freedom, constitutional government and the teachings of Jesus.

French researchers report; Cannabis ingredient may prevent Mad Cow Disease. A Polish woman grew marijuana to calm the nerves of her cow and has been charged with cultivating a narcotic. The rowdy cow once broke someone's arm. After a friend suggested mixing cannabis in with its feed, "The cow became as calm as a lamb," the 55-year-old woman said, according to the PAP news agency.

The drug war has made the US a prison kingdom. Texas has the highest incarceration rate in the world! We have ten times the incarceration rate of Communist China!

U.S. police arrested an estimated 1,702,537 persons for drug related violations in 2008, according to the latest FBI annual Uniform Crime Report. Simple possession arrests were 82.3 per cent of total and marijuana violations made up 44.3 percent of all drug arrests.

Meanwhile across the US 36.4% of the murders, 59.6% of the rapes and 45.1% of the aggravated assaults became cold case files! The cumulative effect of this is horrendous. While we police individual social and medicinal use of drugs; murderers and violent sexual predators roam free.

"After millions of people arrested and incarcerated, it is clear that the "war on drugs" has reshaped the way America responds to crime and ushered in an era of instability and mistrust in countless communities." According to a new report from the Sentencing project, a half million poor souls are presently incarcerated for drug offenses. Drug abusers deserve medical help. Instead we lock them in prison, a breeding ground for crime.

According to a report by the Pew Center on the States’, at the start of 2008, 2,319,258 adults were held in American prisons or jails, or one in every 99.1 men and women. Texas beat out California as the nation’s prison leader.

"A close examination of the most recent U.S. Department of Justice data (2006) found that while one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, the figure is one in nine for black males in that age group. Men are still roughly 13 times more likely to be incarcerated, but the female population is expanding at a far brisker pace. For black women in their mid- to late-30s, the incarceration rate also has hit the one-in-100 mark. In addition, one in every 53 adults in their 20s is behind bars; the rate for those over 55 is one in 837."

Problems don't go away just because the government makes them illegal; they go underground, creating a black market, causing worse problems. Sellers arm themselves since they cannot rely on police protection, they form gangs, recruit minors to sell to their peers, charge monopoly prices and kill the competition. Customers steal to pay the high prices.

Marc Emery, Willie Nelson, Michael Phelps and other buds punished for a safer choice, are true American heroes. They are rebels with just cause taking a stand for freedom; as our founding fathers did. Remember, those brave men who defined what a patriot would be. Harassing responsible citizens is un-American activity! Texans who seek change keep up to date on cannabis policy.

Responsible adults deserve the right to choose their own social or medicinal intoxicant. We deserve the right to the best buy on our medicines worldwide. Americans deserve better protection from violence, especially our children and babies! We deserve better protection from fraud, especially government moralizing and propaganda.

Vested interest's hype surrounding hemp, another variety of cannabis or marijuana, has overshadowed the plant's benefits as a source of paper pulp and substitute for other wood products, its uses as a cotton and biodegradable plastic substitute, its nutritional uses and more.

These are real snake oil salesmen catering to the needs of special interests and our corrupt, sold-out government, prefer to incarcerate more of our people than any dictatorship in the world, incite terrorists by forcing senseless policy on other nations, destroy our national forests, cause global warming and have us all using poisonous products instead of the beneficial and virtually harmless plant, cannabis or hemp.

Fear mongering and war runs their gravy train!

Current policies destroy families and official lawlessness rules. Alcohol makes domestic violence 8xs more likely, cannabis does not. Taking children out of homes of nonviolent cannabis users and placing them in homes in which alcohol is the drug of choice is policy bordering on insanity!

Americans deserve policies that build family bonds instead of destroying them. Our children deserve an education free of lies, half truths, innuendoes and any similar government propaganda.

"Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free." US Congressman Ron Paul notes.

As long as there is a demand for illicit drugs they will be made available. As long as work is available; they will come. As long as people are physically able to make love; they will! The free market with its laws of supply and demand always manages to carry on; no matter what new laws are written to slow the process.

Celebrate our similarities; instead of prisons, build bridges of tolerance to differences in religion, race and lifestyle. Change to a more compassionate policy about rehabilitating all but the most hardened. God Himself does not propose to judge a man until he is dead. So why should we? Except to protect our selves from violence or fraud we could adopt a policy of live and let live.

DNA testing has shown our judgment to be totally unreliable! In case after case corruption or ineptness has found innocent people guilty of murder and allowed the real predator to roam free. So many of the incarcerated are mentally ill, nonviolent drug offenders or the innocent; very few should be in prison!

We all agree drug abuse is a problem! Reformers say there is a better way to handle it. Treatment of drug abuse saves people and money. The statistics reveal that racism is epidemic in the drug war. African, Hispanic and other minority Americans are needed to work for reform!

After someone has served their time, they should not have to admit to a nonviolent felony drug conviction on work applications. Maybe make that illegal to ask just like race, age and religious questions. How much do we owe in reparations to all nonviolent drug offenders?

If our mission was to build a paramilitary style police force, huge prison industry and a totalitarian state, by George we've done it! War creates a booming economy for some on the suffering of many. Drug warriors are so befuddled by the noble idea of preventing drug abuse, they ignore the lessons of history.

No legitimate business lasts long if it kills its customers or shoots the competition. No legitimate business would sell drugs to children or recruit minors to sell to their peers. This happened during alcohol prohibition. Once again, today, prohibition triggers more danger to the user and society by increasing violent crime and corruption of public officials. Meth will go away like bathtub gin with regulation.

Recent bar raids bring back shades of the '20s Speakeasies. Less people who hit skid row or stoop to prostitution would get stuck there if we had more compassionate policy offering helpful treatment.

We have accomplished a scary amount of collateral damage beyond that caused by abuse of drugs. Drug abuse, including alcohol and pharmaceuticals, etc. is a medical problem and we'll do a better job preventing overdose deaths, of keeping kids drug free and inebriated folks off the road by offering helpful treatment.

When the innocent, the nonviolent unarmed or our officers are injured or killed in prohibition-triggered violence it is especially disturbing because our policies are causing a scary amount of collateral damage beyond that caused by abuse of drugs. "We just have to keep our guard up for the 1 percent that your mother always warned you about," said Capt. Andrew Lewis, Bay City's lead investigator.

Ninety-nine per cent or most people are nonviolent. Yet, all of us need to keep our guard up. Be careful of the situations we put ourselves in; be safe, make responsible choices. Our policies need to encourage such behavior! Instead we arrest those like, Willie Nelson and buds for a responsible, safer choice!

The people believe in self government and self medication! Concerned citizens want a safer world. Put people in prison for violence and fraud but with compassionate treatment hopeful of rehabilitation for all but most hardened. Most people are responsible drug users. Prohibition triggers a scary amount of collateral damage to our precious lives and resources. Stop drug prohibition, its violence and corruption.

The Controlled Substances Act is one of those bad laws like the Fugitive Slave Act and the Volstead Act. When juries refuse to convict on "drug crime," drug warriors will be politically dead bodies. Jury nullification is a constitutional power tool we the people pack!

The military and law enforcement have recruitment problems because current policy attracts those interested in working in a corrupt system and milking it, thereby creating a pervasive disrespect for the law.

Our system could run with the milk of human kindness, if America had the ethical, efficient and constitutionally limited government; our founders envisioned.