I think pot is relatively harmless. It certainly is a lot safer than booze. I am for legalization. Regulated like booze. I think this would take the pressure off cops and reduce crimes.
In excess of 50% to 75% of the jail population are people who have mental condition. So he says 90% of the jail population is related to drugs. The high functioning mentally ill generally are riddled with addictions of all sorts.
There are methadone programs all over the place. I would agree to a heroin maintenance program if the government ran it. We going to have to feed and house them too? Why not go off welfare to get on the gravy train of heroin. You talking about open heroin stores. They would have to trade giving their identities and DNA to the feds…get it on a government data base. The way this will play out is it would be administrated and the councilors would be barely be trained. All these clinics would be fly-by-night operations. The methadone programs are really expensive to the uninsured. I would agree to if if heroin users on a maintenance program were required to live responsible lives and try to better themselves. I think the cartels response to this would be ever lower prices of heroin and higher concentrations. These guys would be supplementing their government supplied heroin with really cheap on the street heroin.
I would favor a new safe heroin intoxicant that would disrupt the cartels. It would have to be a intoxicant creating a better high than heroin. The people who become addicted to heroin are basically trying to blot out their lives.
Remember prohibition came about because of wide spread abuse of alcohol. There were drunks lying all over the place. We used alcohol at a much higher rate in the beginning of the 20th century than today. I think the anti heroin conservatives would gain a lot more political leverage over this than the liberals.
I think we need to pick a few large heroin producing countries…then crush them as example to everyone else. Remember the apex of terrorism occurs in un-governable heroin areas throughout the world.
Van Wickler speaks out against war on drugs
By Xander Landen Sentinel Staff | Posted: Friday, August 19, 2016 12:00 pm
Richard Van Wickler, the superintendent of the Cheshire County jail, remembers when he first questioned the war on drugs. He was working his first job as a correctional officer in the Merrimack County Department of Corrections in the 1980s, when one day, he was tasked with putting a man accused of homicide and a young contractor accused of marijuana possession in the same holding cell.
“I’m looking at this contractor, who is frightened to death, who is about to be convicted next this person who has just committed homicide. ... It was that moment that I realized that there’s something very odd about these types of laws,” Van Wickler said in an interview with The Sentinel.
Today, Van Wickler’s open about his opinions on U.S. drug laws. He believes all illegal substances should be decriminalized and that no one should be put in jail for possession or use of drugs.
He also believes that without enough government-funded treatment centers and services for drug addicts, the job of rehabilitation has fallen unfairly on the criminal justice system.
Van Wickler spoke about his opinions and advocacy against today’s drug policy at a meeting of the Kiwanis Club at The Pub Restaurant Wednesday.
His comments come as New Hampshire contends with a opioid crisis, and an unprecedented number of people in the state dying of drug overdoses.
Van Wickler also suspects that 90 percent of people currently serving sentences in the Cheshire County jail are doing so for crimes connected to their addictions or drug use. Among inmates who report to be drug users, the majority say they abuse heroin, he said.
Van Wickler told about 20 people at the meeting that since laws targeting drug users became stricter under the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan administrations, the government’s effort to create a drug-free society — also known as the war on drugs — hasn’t come close to reaching its goal.
According to data he cited at the meeting, one in three Americans today admits to using an illegal drug at some point in his or her lifetime.
“If the solution to create a drug-free society is to find these people, arrest them, incarcerate them and hope that when they’re released, they never use again, it’s not working,” Van Wickler said at the meeting.
If the war on drugs has succeeded in doing anything, he said, it’s putting people in jail. While the U.S. contains only 5 percent of the world’s population, it holds 25 percent of the world’s inmates due, in part, to laws that target drug users, according to Van Wickler.
Ideally, he said, he wants drugs to be legalized, which he claims would dramatically decrease both the number of people in jail and crime rates throughout the country. But he thinks a more realistic first step would be to decriminalize drugs throughout the country.
He’s also a member of an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which shares that same view. The group is comprised of 80,000 supporters — including police, prosecutors, judges and corrections officials — who support the decriminalization of drugs not only because of the effects drug laws have on users, but also the effects they have on law enforcement officers.
The group believes legalizing drugs would sharply reduce the amount violence that officers face in the field every day.
“The Drug Enforcement Agency has determined that the majority of gang violence and the reason why gangs exist is over illegal drug marketplace disputes,” Van Wickler said.
He serves as LEAP’s chairman of the board of directors as well as one of LEAP’s speakers, who represents the organization at public events. He said he’s the sole LEAP speaker who’s an active member of law enforcement, as many officers who participate in the organization fear disapproval or judgment from their colleagues.
Van Wickler said he’s never experienced any of that.
“The opposite is true. There’s great admiration. When I speak to law enforcement officers ... most of them agree. It’s not working,” he said.
Van Wickler stressed that although LEAP supports the legalization and decriminalization of drugs, neither he nor the organization are pro drug use. Members just believe the benefits of striking down the current drug laws would far outweigh its costs, he said.
Multiple Kiwanis Club members at the meeting were skeptical of the idea of a society in which drug users could not be punished and drugs could be obtained legally.
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