Well, one of the best ways to kill legislation is to put the matter into study committee. And so often executive-level commissions get formed where their recommendations go nowhere. The Nixon Administration's commission on drugs, for example, recommended marijuana be decriminalized. So what happened? Well, you know the story. Politicians milked this issue over and over, relying on flawed medical studies and whipping up a public frenzy, even refusing to fund plausible medical studies relative to marijuana.
In fact, a lot of America's drug policy is based on ancedotal evidence. Genuinely concerned citizens have conditioned to only fear illicit drugs, not understand their social, cultural and economic effects. Thus, what positively could be gleaned from strong, well-funded education, preventative and treatment methodology gets completely lost as the prevailing focus which spurs what ultimately becomes counterproduct criminalization policies. Please name one society which effectively legislated morality. Is not the choice to use drugs or not use them a moral decision; and not a legal one?
I think it was the Bush Administration, perhaps Reagan's, which initiated policy such that federal highway funds were withheld from states which did not comply with federal marijuana laws. Smart, huh?
Unfortunately, neither a Republican or a Democratic administration will cure this problem. And countless drug policy measures become enacted on the basis of ancedotal evidence. |
