Hollywood actor Brad Pitt stopped by a screening of the movie “The House I Live In” which he is executive producing. The movie centers around America’s 40 year so-called “War On Drugs” – a war that hasn’t done anything except kill a whole lot of people and put a lot of people behind bars who don’t necessarily need to be there. But that’s just my opinion! And Brad’s too, apparently. This, coming from the guy who popularized the honey bear bong in True Romance? No way!
“My drug days are long since passed, but it’s certainly true that I could probably land in any city in any state and get you whatever you wanted. I could find anything you were looking for. Give me 24 hours or so. And yet we still support this charade called the drug war. We have spent a trillion dollars. It’s lasted for over 40 years. A lot of people have lost their lives for it. And yet we still talk about it like it’s this success… It’s such bad strategy. It makes no sense. It perpetuates itself. You make a bust, you drive up profit, which makes more people want to get into it. To me, there’s no question; we have to rethink this policy and we have to rethink it now.”
Brad’s Chanel ad also popped up on the internet today. In it, he talks for 30 seconds about nothing. Drugs, you guys! This guy used to do drugs and now he sells Chanel! There’s hope for us all yet.
October 16, 2012 at 5:21 am, Malcolm Kyle said:
How can any responsible parent not desire a saner drug policy, and one that’s based on facts rather than reefer madness? Prohibition guarantees that many illegal drugs are far easier for our children to procure than even alcohol or nicotine. That's because, even though these are both very dangerous and addictive drugs, they are at least sold in properly controlled and regulated environments.
Under our present regime, certain plants/concoctions/drugs are sold only by criminals and terrorists; the huge black-market profits are used to threaten innocent civilians, bribe law enforcement officials, and buy support from unconscionable politicians; the availability and usage rates tend to go up, not down, and our prisons have become filled to capacity with easily replaced vendors and smugglers —this list of dangerous and negative consequences is actually endless. To continue prohibition is ludicrous, and those of us who can't see that by now, must be either severely and mentally challenged or using something far stronger than any of us have even heard of.
Why on earth should we be willing to whack ourselves with ever-bigger and more-repressive prohibition hammers, while drug use and availability keep going up, not down, and while we all plunge deeper into Loserville?
Prohibition is the most destructive, dysfunctional, dishonest and racist social policy since Slavery. Prohibition is a holocaust in slow motion. We MUST end it NOW!