Appeal-Democrat, 01 Nov 2009 - Forty years ago, President Richard Nixon used the unfortunate phrase "War on Drugs," launching a misguided crusade that has encouraged street violence, eaten away at state budgets and packed our prisons with nonviolent offenders. The nation's punitive approach to drugs has turned us into a penal colony. We lock up more of our citizens per capita than brutal dictators like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro. There's an old saying about seeing the opportunity in a crisis. Perhaps the multiple crises caused by the Great Recession - which has bled state and local treasuries and swelled the federal deficit - will prompt lawmakers to end this futile era of prohibition, which has been costly far beyond the money spent.
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