This will be very brief.
Many here don't want to listen to this but they will respect Amy Goodman.
The whole thing is at the link below. Below the fold I have posted a couple excerpts, with little discussion of my own.
'This Debate Will No Longer be Suppressed': Legalizing Drugs Breaks Into the Mainstream
In this issue of Democracy Now! Ms. Goodman talks to Ethan Nadlemann PhD, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Dr. Nadlemann recently went to "Mexico and Guatemala for high-level talks on drug issues".
Some Salient points:
three things that stood out to me about Biden’s trip down there. The first one was that even though he said the U.S. government is not going to talk about this, he did acknowledge that this is legitimate subject for debate. He raised that a number of times, and thereby repeated what President Obama had briefly said last year, but which none of the lower-level officials in the U.S. government had been willing to say. So I think it’s important that he’s sending a message to say that the United States would at least participate in a debate, which is more than they’ve ever said before. Now, obviously that’s just reading tea leaves.
Biden acknowledges what I have been saying: it's 'worth' having the debate.
I translate that as supporting my contention that Democrats should AT LEAST mention, in passing, that it is time to "at least talk about options".
I think the second thing was the flimsiness of his arguments. I mean, what you saw is that the way—he says, "What happens if you legalize drugs, we’ll have a vast bureaucracy to regulate drugs," ignoring the fact that the bureaucracy we have, the prison-industrial complex, costs dramatically more than any regulatory system ever would.
Brilliant point. We already are choking on a 'bureaucracy' - read Big Government Program - that is counter-productive, to say the least.
And I think the third thing that was significant is that Biden’s trip, in his words, are not going to shut down this debate. This discussion now has a serious momentum. You know, it’s from the Latin American presidents commission, to the Global Commission on Drug Policy, then President Santos in Colombia, now Otto Pérez Molina in Guatemala opening it up in the region. So this debate now is no longer going to be suppressed.
I have to run off to work, but I wanted to post this and "get it out there".
One of my new personal goals is to convince Kos and the Front Page staff to start regularly including discuss of or reference to changing American policy on cannabis prohibition: AlterNet and Raw Story are doing an excellent job of this. Daily Kos should be as well.
And regarding the importance of the issue; don't take my word for it - go read the whole thing.