ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

For Christmas, I want an END TO THE WAR ON (SOME) DRUGS.

Trying to get people to obey drug laws is causing corruption in our banking systems, violence in our inner cities, and prisons full of people of color.

Worse, it has had NO EFFECT ON ACTUAL USE OF DRUGS.

Unless, of course, you count all the people who are dying of heroin when they can not get prescription pain medication. Did you know that opiate addiction rates have not changed in over 100 years? Opiates can be legal or illegal, addiction rates stay at about 1.5%.

It is very EASY for President Obama to take marijuana entirely off the federal drug schedules. This would remove marijuana as a federal crime, and EACH STATE can then decide whether to keep marijuana illegal. All he has to do is cite the SIX presidential commissions who have recommended marijuana be removed from the federal drug schedules.

Then President Obama can declare a national emergency, and move all the other recreational drugs to schedule V, which would allow for reliable research on these mostly natural remedies which are being misused.

Did you know that a large percentage of drug overdoses involve opiates combined with anxiety medications?

For me, the worst part of the War on Drugs was how trying to make people stop using drugs messed with the US Constitution. The courts allowed seizure of property without a conviction, searches of vehicles, drug raids with battering rams.

NONE OF THE CURRENT RECREATIONAL DRUGS ARE WORSE THAN ALCOHOL.

When Obama is moving drugs onto schedule V, he should state that no drug can be put on any other schedule unless it causes a higher percentage of deaths than alcohol. Require that proving a drug caused a death must take into consideration other substances that the user was also taking.

Alcohol prohibition ended December 5, 1933. We all know how incredibly stupid and ineffective it was to try to keep alcohol illegal.

It is just as incredibly stupid and ineffective to try to keep recreational drugs illegal.

The best way to keep drugs from children is to make them legal and regulated. In states where marijuana is legal, teenagers complain that they can no longer easily buy marijuana.

LET'S GET MEDICAL HELP TO THE ADDICTS, LIKE WE GIVE MEDICAL HELP TO ALCOHOLICS.