Unfortunately, in California, the current answer, from the rejection of Proposition 5, is "no."
In the October 30th Rolling Stone, yet more publishing of the obvious:
"In the United States, the War on Drugs is a political slogan for a policy disaster that has cost taxpayers at least $500 billion over the past 35 years. In Mexico, it is a brutal and bewildering conflict — a multisided civil war that has taken 3,000 lives this year alone and brought the federal government to a state of near-collapse."
How many more must die before we can revisit this failure, and move towards a better approach? Using cops and the military has only led to more, not less, death. Drug policy was supposed to be about protecting the public - instead, we're victimizing them domestically and internationally.
We, collectively, are bathing in denial around the fundamental truth of this: the black marketing of drugs, similar to prohibition, fuels the economy of it, and fuels the violence.
For every dead person in this tragedy, we have nothing but our policies to blame. The money wasted on these futile policies would be better served administering to the public health - billions of dollars that could be re-routed to proven techniques of basic health care, education, and prevention.
We have a new president-elect, with a slogan of "Yes We Can!" We need to take this message to heart, and end our longest ongoing war, a war against ourselves - the misnomer (since it's really a war against our own families) "drug war."
Until we move past these prohibition policies, we can't say, "yes we can," with any honesty.
Posted by Malakkar Vohryzek