[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9722]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE FAILED DRUG WAR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Colorado (Mr. Polis) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, 40 years ago this month, President Nixon 
launched the war on drugs. Four decades later, I've asked through New 
Media for Americans to share with me their thoughts on what I believe 
to be a major public policy failure. Just listen to this story of Neil 
from Baltimore that Law Enforcement Against Prohibition shared with me.
  Late in the evening on October 30, 2000, Neil was awoken by the 
ringing of a telephone. As the commander of training for the Baltimore 
Police Department, late night calls were not unusual, but this call was 
different. He was told that one of his officers had been shot and taken 
to the hospital.
  The officer was a corporal and a 15-year veteran and undercover 
narcotics agent for the Maryland State Police. He was assigned to a 
drug enforcement task force and on that night was making his final drug 
buy in Washington, D.C., from a mid-level drug dealer when the dealer 
decided he wanted both the drugs and the money for himself. He returned 
to the car the officer was driving, paused for a moment, and shot the 
police officer at point-blank range in the side of the head.
  Arriving at the hospital among the scores of family and friends, Neil 
was guided into the room where the officer laid with his head bandaged 
and bloodied. Neil had to face the officer's wife and children and 
explain why their caretaker was no longer with him.
  Neil finished his story by writing, ``When the people are gone and 
quiet comes, so does the question: Why? Initially thinking of the 
covert operation, you rehash the event. How could this happen? What 
went wrong? What was the protocol? But then I realized that the 
questions I was asking dealt only with the symptoms of a much larger 
problem, the war on drugs--the broken policy of drug prohibition.''
  Every comprehensive objective government study over the last four 
decades has recommended that adults should not be criminalized for 
using marijuana, and medical science tells us that by any reasonable 
health standard marijuana is comparable to alcohol. It is less 
addictive, less toxic, and, unlike alcohol, marijuana does not make 
users aggressive and violent.

                              {time}  1010

  We also know that criminalization comes at a very high cost. Each 
year, more arrests are made for marijuana possession than for all 
violent crimes combined. Marijuana arrests in the U.S. average 850,000 
a year. That's one every 37 seconds; and 89 percent of those are just 
for possession, not sale or manufacture. Marijuana prohibition is even 
having a negative impact on our national parks and forests. We have 
Mexican drug cartels growing millions of plants on Federal land.
  We've been down this prohibition path with alcohol, and it failed. It 
increased crime and violence. Crime bosses got rich, murder rates 
skyrocketed, the prisons filled, and deaths from tainted booze soared. 
We're seeing the same results today from marijuana prohibition. 
Prohibition does not stop people from using marijuana. In fact, 
marijuana is the largest cash crop in the country. It just gives 
criminals and violent gangs an exclusive franchise on marijuana sales. 
It drains resources from law enforcement that would be better spent 
fighting violent crime. It makes it harder to keep marijuana away from 
children.
  So what have we learned in four decades of the failed drug war? It's 
this: The biggest part of the harm involving marijuana is caused by the 
criminalization of marijuana. And it's time to bring it to an end.
  Let me end with a story of Brian from DuPage, whose son was caught up 
in the senseless criminalization of marijuana. When Brian's son was in 
eighth grade, an incident at school led to the discovery of a small 
amount of marijuana. Charges were brought. He was sentenced to 
community service. But the real tragedy followed. As a result of the 
incident, Brian's son was expelled and barred from reentering any 
school in the district. He was forced into a school for delinquents 
where he was grouped with kids who had committed violent crimes. He was 
basically treated like a criminal. Needless to say, his education 
suffered immensely.
  Here's what Brian, the father, had to say about his son's experience: 
``Did doing this teach my son a lesson? It did not help him. It harmed 
him. It disrupted his academic achievement. The school district's 
solution to finding a small bag of marijuana was to expel four 
students. No education. No counseling. No help. Just kick them out and 
wash their hands of the whole thing.''
  Using marijuana is harmful. Smoking is harmful. Drinking is harmful. 
In fact, I applaud the FDA's new highlighting of the dangers of smoking 
and encourage similar efforts to discourage marijuana, which are 
impossible under the current criminalization regime. The war on drugs 
hurts America, wastes billions of dollars of taxpayer money, fosters 
drug-related violence, and does nothing to help Americans who are 
confronting serious addiction or serious health issues.
  After 40 years, it's time Congress put an end to the drug war's 40-
year failure.

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