calling babe ruth

I am a news addict.

I start my day with breakfast (or lunch. depending when I manage to roust myself from my bed) on the patio.  Accompanied by my former hometown newspaper.

At times I feel as if I am reading about a distant planet.  The current budgetary mud wrestling is the antithesis of my edenic existence.

What amazes me is that I have heard no one in The States take a serious look at what strikes me as one of the most obvious ways to cut governmental spending.  (For the moment, let's just assume that the revenues currently available to the various levels of American government are the only funds available.)

The president elect of Mexico recently made a comment that caused me to do a little research and to pull out my calculator.
 

The United States incarcerates more people than any other nation.  That is not necessarily a bad thing.  As a criminal defense attorney, I quickly learned I was glad Oregon had prisons.  There are some rather evil characters that need to be kept away from the rest of the public.  And prisons are a good place for them.

But the majority (or thereabouts, depending on the state) of inmates are not violent offenders.  They are prisoners of war in the War on Drugs.  People who have violated one or other drug law, and are imprisoned for no other reason.

When Peña Nieto suggested it might be time to look at legalizing drugs, he was not talking merely about Mexico.  After all, Mexico has allowed possession of small amounts of all types of drugs for three years (a hole in the dike). 

But the tens of thousands of Mexicans, who have died in the Mexican drug wars, have not died because of a Mexican drug problem.  They died because of an American drug problem.  The wars are about transportation routes to The States.

If all that sounds familiar, it should.  It is exactly the same type of gang wars and government-inflicted deaths that happened in The States during Prohibition.

And that is only one of the lessons of the 1920s we have forgotten.  Almost every argument used against legalizing the sale and manufacture of alcohol is now used against the legalization of illegal drugs.

I will also concede that those of us on the legalization side must concede other points.  Legalizing alcohol did not solve America's alcohol problems.  Alcohol is still the number one drug addiction in The States.  But no one seriously talks about going back to the days of Prohibition.

We have learned our lesson.  Or so we say.  For some reason, we cannot extrapolate the lessons we learned with alcohol to illegal drugs.

I once thought that it was because the number of alcohol users made the first Prohibition politically prohibitive.  If that is the case, time may be on the side of legalization.

According to a recent study, 47% of Americans over the age of 14 have tried at least one illegal drug during their lifetime.  The largest percentage, of course, is for marijuana.  But cocaine and hallucinogens were close behind.

But most Americans seen to dabble and then move on to alcohol as their drug of choice.  The same study shows that only 8% of Americans used drugs in the previous month.  If you strip out marijuana users, the number drops to 2%.

Recent polls have shown, for the first time, a majority of Americans are in favor of legalizing marijuana.  That wall has been eroding over the past decade with the approval of medical marijuana laws.  A reform that was far more political, than medical.

And that is undoubtedly where the breach will occur.

The question now is who will lead the charge?  It cannot be the Democrat Party.  The Republicans stole their law enforcement clothes back in the 1980s.  And they are now as vulnerable on crime and defense as the Republicans are on social security and medicare.

And the leadership, unfortunately, must start in Washington, DC.  When Congress nationalized the drug issue (in my opinion, without any constitutional authority), it took away the ability of the states to do what they are guaranteed under our federal system: to address local issues with creative solutions.

If drug legalization is to occur, it will never come from any politician who has admitted to using drugs in the past.  Anyone can see how that would play out politically.

It will need to come from someone who is squeaky clean on the drug issue, but who is also able to persuasively argue that any government program that is not working should be terminated.  And the War on Drugs seems to top that list.  Perhaps that is the reason a large group of libertarians and conservative Republicans have long opposed America's current drug policy.

There is tax money to be saved and political laurels to be burnished if the right leader will step up to the plate and hit a home run.

I just hope one is running for president this year.  If not, I am certain someone is warming up in the batter's box.