VIDEO: War on Drugs stirs emotional Hawaii Council debate
Resolution to support LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, fails to pass committee
Video by David Corrigan
The Hawaii County Council Committee on Public Safety and Parks and Recreation spent a chunk of Tuesday’s meeting discussing America’s “War on Drugs”
North Kona Councilman Kelly Greenwell, who in the past has expressed his view that the illegality of drugs has inflated their market value and created revenue for the criminal element, submitted a controversial resolution asking the council to support the organization called “LEAP” – Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
The resolution describes LEAP as former members of the law enforcement and criminal justice communities that have joined together to end the War on Drugs. LEAP does not promote the use of drugs, but it does advocate for the “elimination of the policy of drug prohibition and the inauguration of a replacement policy of drug control and regulation.”
With an audience full of hopeful marijuana advocates, the councilmembers – many of whom also have felt the devastating effects of hard drug abuse on a personal level – discuss the measure in an emotional round of debate, before giving it a negative recommendation with a 7-2 vote.
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Prohibitionists dance hand in hand with every possible type of criminal one can imagine.
An unholy alliance of ignorance, greed and hate which works to destroy all our hard fought freedoms, wealth and security.
We will always have adults who are too immature to responsibly deal with tobacco alcohol, heroin amphetamines, cocaine, various prescription drugs and even food. Our answer to them should always be: “Get a Nanny, and stop turning the government into one for the rest of us!”
Nobody wants to see an end to prohibition because they want to use drugs. They wish to see proper legalized regulation because they are witnessing, on a daily basis, the dangers and futility of prohibition. ‘Legalized Regulation’ won’t be the complete answer to all our drug problems, but it’ll greatly ameliorate the crime and violence on our streets, and only then can we provide effective education and treatment.
The whole nonsense of ‘a disaster will happen if we end prohibition’ sentiment sums up the delusional ‘chicken little’ stance of those who foolishly insist on continuing down this blind alley. As if a disaster isn’t already happening. As if prohibition has ever worked.
To support prohibition is such a strange mind-set. In fact, It’s outrageous insanity! –Literally not one prohibitionist argument survives scrutiny. Not one!
The only people that believe prohibition is working are the ones making a living by enforcing laws in it’s name, and those amassing huge fortunes on the black market profits. This situation is wholly unsustainable, and as history has shown us, conditions will continue to deteriorate until we finally, just like our forefathers, see sense and revert back to tried and tested methods of regulation. None of these substances, legal or illegal, are ever going to go away, but we CAN decide to implement policies that do far more good than harm.
During alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, all profits went to enrich thugs and criminals. Young men died every day on inner-city streets while battling over turf. A fortune was wasted on enforcement that could have gone on treatment. On top of the budget-busting prosecution and incarceration costs, billions in taxes were lost. Finally the economy collapsed. Sound familiar?
In an underground drug market, criminals and terrorists, needing an incentive to risk their own lives and liberty, grossly inflate prices which are further driven higher to pay those who ‘take a cut’ like corrupt law enforcement officials who are paid many times their wages to look the other way. This forces many users to become dealers themselves in order to afford their own consumption. This whole vicious circle turns ad infinitum. You literally couldn’t dream up a worse scenario even if your life depended on it. For the second time within a century, we’ve carelessly lost “love’s labour,” and, “with the hue of dungeons and the scowl of night,” have wantonly created our own worst nightmare.
So should the safety and freedom of the rest of us be compromised because of the few who cannot control themselves?
Many of us no longer think it should!
Prohibition is a sickening horror and the ocean of incompetence, corruption and human wreckage it has left in its wake is almost endless.
Prohibition has decimated generations and criminalized millions for a behavior which is entwined in human existence, and for what other purpose than to uphold the defunct and corrupt thinking of a minority of misguided, self-righteous Neo-Puritans and degenerate demagogues who wish nothing but unadulterated destruction on the rest of us.
Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior which has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of past attempts at any form of drug prohibition would point most normal thinking people in the direction of sensible regulation.
By its very nature, prohibition cannot fail but create a vast increase in criminal activity, and rather than preventing society from descending into anarchy, it actually fosters an anarchic business model – the international Drug Trade. Any decisions concerning quality, quantity, distribution and availability are then left in the hands of unregulated, anonymous, ruthless drug dealers, who are interested only in the huge profits involved.
Many of us have now, finally, wised up to the fact that the best avenue towards realistically dealing with drug use and addiction is through proper regulation which is what we already do with alcohol & tobacco, clearly two of our most dangerous mood altering substances. But for those of you whose ignorant and irrational minds traverse a fantasy plane of existence, you will no doubt remain sorely upset with any type of solution that does not seem to lead to the absurd and unattainable utopia of a drug free society.
There is an irrefutable connection between drug prohibition and the crime, corruption, disease and death it causes. If you are not capable of understanding this connection then maybe you’re using something far stronger than the rest of us. Anybody ‘halfway bright’, and who’s not psychologically challenged, should be capable of understanding that it is not simply the demand for drugs that creates the mayhem, it is our refusal to allow legal businesses to meet that demand.
No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, diminution of rights and liberties, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safer, only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?
If you still support the kool aid mass suicide cult of prohibition, and erroneously believe that you can win a war without logic and practical solutions, then prepare yourself for even more death, corruption, terrorism, sickness, imprisonment, unemployment, foreclosed homes, and the complete loss of the rule of law and the Bill of Rights.
“A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
Abraham Lincoln
The only thing prohibition successfully does is prohibit regulation & taxation while turning even our schools and prisons into black markets for drugs. Regulation would mean the opposite!
Thank you for posting this video. And a big thank you to Councilman Greenwell for putting this resolution forward, and also to Councilwoman Neole-Beason for supporting it.
I was the representative from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition who toured the Big Island in January, and so I’ve spoken with most of the Hawaii County Council about this issue.
It’s great to see this issue is being kept alive in the media. Often progress is so slow that we don’t notice it, but I think many people are gradually coming to the realization that the War on Drugs is a tremendous failure.
Keep up the great work!
We can not afford to question the reasoning of American’s founding fathers. The annals of history provide the resulting evidence of this paradigm for those wise enough to see it. For that reason I firmly stand with Abraham Lincoln “A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
MORE LOSER STONERS…Keep lying to yourselves and everyone else…Someday it wil catch up to you!
Greenwell is a stoner too!