

Focusing On Prevention And Neuroscience, President Ends Reagan’s War On Drugs - deepvibrations
http://newsone.com/2412446/obama-war-on-drugs/
Lets hope he sticks by his word on this one...
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veidr
Sounds great. An evidence-based, religion-free, pragmatic approach to
minimizing the direct and indirect harm of drug trafficking and abuse (and
use) is what has been proven to work in other countries, and our current
policy has been proven to be an idiotic catastrophe of epic proportions.

 _However_ , Obama _says_ a lot of things: he's said that his feds won't go
after pot in states that have legalized it (nope), that he would gonna close
Guantanamo (nope), etc etc.

Still, on balance I think it is better to have a leader who at least knows how
to _say_ the right things (as opposed to insane, anti-science things), even if
saying them doesn't always mean he will actually get them implemented.

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greenyoda
_"Still, on balance I think it is better to have a leader who at least knows
how to say the right things ... even if saying them doesn't always mean he
will actually get them implemented."_

I think that could be even worse than saying the wrong things. If he's going
to say he's going to change things but not really change them, the people who
are actually interested in getting things changed may become complacent and
_less_ will get done.

I'll believe that the "war on drugs" is over when federal SWAT teams stop
crashing through peoples' doors (sometimes the wrong peoples' doors) looking
for pot growers, and when the federal government stops funding similar
paramilitary operations and equipment for state and local governments.

And what about the thousands of people who are in prison solely for non-
violent drug crimes, or have been released from prison and will find it
difficult to get employment for the rest of their lives due to their
conviction records? What will be done for these victims of the war on drugs?

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veidr
You may be right about happy talk actually preventing meaningful action.

You are definitely right that the "war on drugs" cannot really be said to be
over until armed violence against nonviolent drug (ab)users by the state is
halted, and the prisoners of war, so to speak, are freed.

Perhaps a better title would be, "President States Intention to Make Drug
Policy Somewhat Less Illogical and Immoral".

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eco
Sounds like how he ended the War on Terror in 2009 (which basically amounted
to asking everyone to stop calling it that). Drug court has always been heavy
on treatment for addicts arrested for lesser drug charges in lieu of prison
time. I don't see anything new here.

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MaysonL
Flagged for spelling.

For a less sensationalist view:
[http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/obama-drug-
czar...](http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/obama-drug-czar-
treatment-arrests-time/story?id=19033234)

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msandford
Considering that they haven't stopped people from being arrested, this isn't
really stopping the war on drugs. Until drug use (and perhaps
sale/distribution) is legal, the war continues.

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ladzoppelin
So basically its worse now because drug possession is still illegal yet the
administration gets it's sound bite which gets morphed into "President Ends
Reagan’s War On Drugs" by the media.

"The Obama administration continues to say that drug use should be treated as
a health issue, but at the same time they continue to treat drug use through
the criminal justice system," he said. "So their actions don't match their
rhetoric."

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laveur
Can anyone find a second source for this?

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Devlin_Donnelly
Yes here's the post from the official White House website:

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/24/drug-policy-
reform...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/24/drug-policy-reform-
action-21st-century-approach-0)

~~~
deepvibrations
Thanks! Very little coverage of this story, appreciate the other links,
slightly easier to read when the text isn't swimming in ads!

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fyi80
Here's the actual policy document:
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/drugpolicyreform>

(It uses that horrid layout with broken scrolling that the NYT popularized
with its Snowfall story.)

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jaggederest
How is the scrolling broken?

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tehwebguy
There's a fixed background image that fades as you scroll, fully disappearing
approximately when the body text gets to the top. It's pretty annoying.

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jaggederest
That's not broken scrolling. Broken scrolling is when you can't scroll the
page correctly. That's shitty graphics :P

