Letter to the Editor: Terrible policy
BY Reggie C Pulliam, Owasso
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
In regards to the tragic front page article
in the April 19 edition (“Kingfisher
mother could get parole”), the travesty
that is the American justice system becomes
as obviously demented as a sick
person on oxygen asking for a cigarette
outside the hospital. The fact that nonprofit
community organizations had to
rally around this injustice and bring the
Draconian sentence to a public arena
exemplifies why something (anything)
must be done with the way this country
processes nonviolent drug offenders
and how we perceive our nation’s losing
battle with drugs.
The intent of this letter is not to advocate
or educate the readers about the
harmlessness of marijuana, or the fact
that no death or addiction can be directly
traced to the plant. The purpose
is a call to arms over the ineptitude of
our government to bring down drug usage
rates in the 30 years of its useless
war on drugs.
Harsh, incomprehensible prison sentences
have not stifled the market, but
prisoners in “The Land of the Free”
have grown nearly exponentially since
President Ronald Reagan declared
drugs “Public Enemy No. 1.”
As a nation facing inevitable drastic
budgetary cuts, the first to go should
be prisons (nonviolent drug offenders).
We must look for immediate tax revenues
and not expenditures, save money
and create a taxable market at the same
time. Undoing policies that allowed for
a black market to thrive will assuredly
decrease the violent crime heavily associated
with the practice, and will allow
for the end of a terrible policy.
Letters to the editor are encouraged. Send letters to letters@tulsaworld.com.
