End the Drug War

This is the most important election of our lives. You all hear that every 4 years. This year is different. In the past, people would threaten to leave the country if the wrong man was elected president. There is always that failsafe in the back of your mind: "Canada isn't such a bad place, maybe I could move there," you might think. But because of the pandemic, every other country has blocked all travel from the US. Nobody can leave now. This will likely be the case until there is a vaccine or COVID-19 just burns through all available victims. For better or for worse, we are stuck with each other. Since there is no where to run anymore, we need to find a way to end the escalating cycle of violence and chaos that is happening right now. We're approaching a point where not even isolated gated communities are completely safe.

For this and many other reasons, I propose that we end the War on Drugs. By repealing the Controlled Substance Act, we can dramatically reduce the violence that goes on in our cities. Gangs fight over drugs because it's an illegal product. Change the law, and they won't have anything to fight over. Our homicide rate could be as low as Western Europe.

As it stands now, the US has the most prisoners in the world. China has three times as many people as the US but still has fewer prisoners overall. One in 4 prison inmates on Planet Earth is locked away in the US. And it is not a coincidence that 1 in 4 COVID-19 cases are recorded in the US. The virus spreads so easily from inmate to inmate that prisons are practically coronafarms.

Drug addiction is a disease that is worse than any sentence that a judge will hand down in a drug case. Most diseases we can be open about: people will talk about their weight loss goals, rare congenital conditions,etc. Drug addicts have difficulty coming out in the open about their problems because they are at risk of going to jail. So they end up shunning friends and family and seek the company of other drug addicts. And yet even while in jail, addicts often find ways to get a hold of what got them there in the first place.

As it stands now, society shows more compassion to the wealthy white woman who is addicted to opiods than the black teenager with a baggie of weed in his back pocket. While we have a long road to go when it comes to racism, we can reduce it's negative effects. Racist cops can easily plant evidence without being caught by their own body cameras: simply stand with the camera facing away from the suspect vehicle, pull a baggie out of one's side pocket, toss it on the floor of the vehicle, and pretend to find it for the first time where the body camera can see it. While I have full confidence that most police are honest, hard working public servants, highly publicized accounts of police corruption gives minorities reason to believe that there is way more corruption than politicians are willing to admit. By ending the Drug War, honest cops have a better chance to win the trust that they deserve.

I'm Robert Enders, the 2020 Libertarian candidate for US House of Representatives (IN-3). I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke, and I don't use illegal drugs. My goal is to end the War on Drugs so that I don't have to hear gunshots in my neighborhood anymore.