HispanicVista Columnists
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By
Sal Osio, JD - From the Publisher's Corne
- January 2010
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Mi Punto de Vista
- The Season for Sanity and Justice
- By Sal Osio, JD,
Publisher
- The explanation to our dilemma is manifold, albeit senseless. But the most accepted rationalization is that our politicians seek to stay in power through fear of lawlessness. ‘Tough on crime’ is the holy grail of the politician. Never mind that we created the crime and the criminal that in turn provided a back door access to become the alternative supplier of the illegal drugs. Once more: the law of unintended consequences.
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- Sal Osio is the Publisher of HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com). Contact at: SPosio@aol.com
The mayhem in
But the more important lesson, that we tend to forget, is that by prohibiting legal access to popular drugs - whether tobacco, alcohol or marihuana – we create a back door, a subterranean illegal network to supply the demand. It happened in our country during the Prohibition era that launched an unprecedented reign of lawlessness as the criminal underworld fought within themselves for territorial and distribution rights and against law enforcement that sought to prevent the supply of the illicit demand. We created drug lords that compromised the very core of our criminal justice system – law enforcement and the judiciary were equally bought off – and our political leaders were similarly corrupted.
The same thing is happening in
In less than 20 years, as our young and better educated electorate reaches its turn to govern, we will decriminalize the consumption of certain drugs such as marihuana. And, we will license its distribution in the same manner as we now regulate alcohol and tobacco products. And, we will collect billions of dollars in taxes and save billions of dollars in the prosecution and incarceration of consumers. We will have eliminated the supplier, distributor – the drug lord – and, in so doing, the mayhem in his path for territorial control and distribution channels.
The few hundred thousand victims that are incarcerated each year for consuming drugs due to our criminalization of ‘victimless crimes’ and the thousands that die and are disabled each year in the fight against drugs – throughout North America – ask and plead:
“Why do we have to wait 20 years?”
Why can’t we stop this costly idiocy – costly in terms of economic and human loss – NOW?
Why wait until a more rational electorate makes this inevitable decision?