The American justice system is failing. America has the highest rate of incarceration with many offenders filling the cells due to mild, personal drug use, and while this is one of many reasons for the decimalization of drugs, the decriminalization of drugs isn’t the point of this article. The point is to focus on what this failing justice system means and how drug laws have in a very real way helped to create an American tyranny.
In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution went into effect prohibiting the sale of alcohol in America not just by law, but by a Constitutional Amendment, but over a period of 13 years, Prohibition failed miserably, and in 1933 the Twenty-First Amendment was ratified placing alcohol back on the streets. The importance of this was two-fold: 1) There was documented evidence that making drugs illegal doesn’t work and 2) a precedent was set that to illegalize drugs a Constitutional Amendment is necessary.
In the first case, it is readily seen even today by mass incarceration of drug offenders that the illegalization of drugs still doesn’t work, but the focus of this article is on the second issue and the fact that that precedent is no longer being followed. Drugs are now made illegal simply by law and law alone. Now this might not seem like a big deal, but it is arguable that when America first stopped following this precedent, many seeds of tyranny were planted in the American garden.Details