If Ron Paul’s foreign policy is viewed by some as out of the mainstream, and if his views on the gold standard are misunderstood, it seems his views on decriminalizing drugs and putting an end to the so-called “War on Drugs” are simply opposed. I think much of this opposition is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the war on drugs itself and an unwillingness or inability to admit that said war has not been as successful as we had hoped. By most non-governmental accounts it is a failure. In times past my view was to decriminalize drugs was an implicit admission that it was okay to do drugs. If drugs were made legal there would be stoners on every corner. The solution was more money, more agents, more enforcement–more, more, more. We had to win. “Just say no!” “This is your brain on drugs.” Any questions? A little history: not only have I never smoked or inhaled pot, to my knowledge I have never held a joint. I have never taken a pill that was not over the counter or prescribed by a doctor and filled by a pharmacist. I do not smoke cigarettes and have never tried. I do not drink alcohol of any kind, though I really like those Jack Daniels Steaks at TGIFriday’s and Southern Comfort Vanilla Spice Eggnog is the best. (Yeah, yeah, it is non-alcoholic.) Drugs were popular when I was in high-school, so predating them is not an issue for me though I was not around when Dr. Pemberton was slipping coke into Coke. I knew kids who came into school most every day stoned. There was one kid who overdosed before school, but it did not reach full effect until after we were in gym class. His overdose became obvious when we saw two of his drug user buddies carrying him as they ran to the office for help. When I was a junior, a senior girl did a skit for a pep-rally in which she played the role of Gilda Radner’s SNL character, Rosanne Rosanna Danna. Her “cheer” went this way: Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, All for a 714 stand up and holler!! Much to the surprise of everyone in the gym, all the drug users stood up (slowly and unsteadily, but up they went) and cheered lustily, laughing the entire time. The fact they never moved during pep-rallies and that no one else got it made it all the more weird. It was only later I discovered that “Lemmon 714” was the production name of the popular sedative Quaalude and “714” was shorthand for it. In Ron Paul’s previous and current campaigns for the White House, he has been very clear that he opposes the “War on Drugs.” This is not a unique position, even for a mainstream politician. In 1996 William F. Buckley, the “preeminent voice of American conservatism” (George Nash) said this to the New York Bar Association about the problem of illicit drug use: We are speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen — yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect. Little has changed in the ensuing 15 years. Here are a few reasons I think Paul is right about our government’s attempt to curb the drug trade being a failure. 1. The war on drugs is bad strategy. I have become convinced the negative reaction by many people against the decriminalization of drugs is a knee-jerk reaction resulting from too little information. The way some people carry on about it, you’d think Ron Paul was going to appoint Cheech and Chong to his cabinet. This is the height of low thinking. Here are a view stats on the cost and success of the war: Amount spent annually in the U.S. on the war on drugs: More than $51,000,000,000 Number of people arrested in 2009 in the U.S. on nonviolent drug charges: 1,663,582 Number of people arrested for a marijuana law violation in 2009: 858,408 (Number of people in history who have died from smoking marijuana: 0) Number of Americans incarcerated in 2009 in federal, state and local prisons and jails: 2,424,279 or 1 in every 99.1 adults, the highest incarceration rate in the world. Estimated annual revenue that California would raise if it taxed and regulated the sale of marijuana: $1,400,000,000 Number of murders in 2009 in Juarez, Mexico, the epicenter of that country’s drug war: 2,635+, the highest murder rate of any city in the world. (See source.) 2. The war on drugs is racially unjust. From the Palm Beach Post had this to say following the report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy in June 2011: [The Commission found] “Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption. Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use. Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction.” The commission noted that current policies have generated massive violence and undermined political stability in drug-producing and distributing countries. At the same time, such countries as Switzerland, Portugal and the Netherlands, which have replaced repression with harm-reduction, have seen significant public health benefits and, in the case of heroin, reductions in use and addiction. Of particular concern, the War on Drugs has led to widespread violations of constitutional and human rights, racially skewed enforcement, and an explosion in the U.S. prison population, by far the world’s largest. In 2008, four out of five arrests