Roar Mikalsen - HUMAN RISING - radiofri..

136 Om forbudslinjens manglende nytteeffekt
Tilgjengeligheten av de illegale stoffene er ikke blitt mindre: Selv om krigen mot narkotika er
intensivert med en mangedobling av budsjetter, og selv om amerikanerne har satset mer og
mer på straffeapparatet i forfølgelsen av sine narkotikapolitiske ambisjoner, er de illegale
stoffene minst like utbredt som før. Og de er av bedre kvalitet og billigere pris. Det er på
dette området de tilbudsreduserende tiltakene til ONDCP burde virke, men som vi ser har
ikke økningen på hundrevis av milliarder hjulpet noe:
”According to government-funded researchers, high school seniors consistently report that
marijuana is easily available, despite decades of a nationwide drug war. With little variation,
every year about 85% consider marijuana ‘fairly easy’ or ‘very easy’ to obtain. (Johnston, L.
D., O’Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G. & Schulenberg, J. E. (December 11, 2008). “Various
stimulant drugs show continuing gradual declines among teens in 2008, most illicit drugs
hold steady.” University of Michigan News Service: Ann Arbor, MI. Available:
www.monitoringthefuture.org; accessed December 29, 2008.)
Heller ikke brukerprosenten er blitt lavere. James Ostrowski forteller: “Perhaps the most
telling indicator of the ineffectiveness of U.S. drug laws is their failure to reduce the overall
use of illegal drugs. On a per capita basis, the use of narcotics was no more prevalent before
prohibition than it is today, and the use of cocaine is more widespread today than when it
was legally available. In 1915, the year the first national control laws became effective, there
were about 200,000 regular narcotics users and only 20,000 regular cocaine users.
Today,there are about 500,000 regular heroin users and two million regular cocaine
users. (Opium and morphine, also narcotics, have essentially been driven out of circulation
by the more profitable heroin. Prohibition has not reduced narcotics use, but it has made
narcotics more powerful.) Thus, with a population more than twice what it was in 1915, the
percentage of the population using narcotics has remained about the same, while cocaine
use has increased by more than 4,000 percent. Seventy years of intensive law enforcement
efforts have failed to measurably reduce drug use”. (James Ostrowski Thinking about Drug
Legalization Policy analysis nr 121 Cato institute funnet på
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=981.)
137 LEAP & Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, We Can Do it Again, Desember 2008.
138 Doris Marie Provine, Unequal Under Law; Race in the War on Drugs (the University of
Chicago Press 2007), s 149.
139 James P Gray, Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed And What We Can Do About It; A
Judical Indictment of the War on Drugs, (Temple University Press 2001) s 2.
140 Ibid s 2.
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