The Most Important Civil Rights Issue Trump Could Solve with an Executive Order: End the “War on Drugs” Gulag, by Charles Hugh Smith

Charles Hugh Smith’s proposal is so sensible that the cynical among us will say it has no chance of ever seeing the light of day. With President Trump, however, who knows? From Smith at oftwominds.com:

Here is an opportunity for “Black Lives Matter” and the Trump administration to find common cause.

President Trump has a golden opportunity to strike a major blow for civil rights with a single executive order: end the failed “War on Drugs” and shut down America’s drug-war gulag. None of the previous three presidents expended any political capital on curbing the immensely destructive “War on Drugs” or freeing the (in many states, preponderantly African-American and Hispanic-American) prisoners in America’s drug-war gulag.

“Fake-liberal” Bill Clinton did nothing, “fake-conservative” George W. Bush did nothing, and “fake-liberal” Barack Obama did nothing to end the “War on Drugs” or curb the gulag it created. Their parties and supporters were delighted to appear “tough on crime” while destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of African-American, Hispanic-American and other Americans with long sentences in the gulag for selling nickel bags of “illegal” drugs, while America’s parasitic Big Pharma industry reaped billions of dollars in profits selling “legal” opiates while handing our self-serving politicos millions in campaign contributions.

The imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of young Americans–preponderantly Americans of color in state after state– in America’s drug-war gulag is the greatest violation of civil rights since the 1960s– yet fake-liberals and fake-conservatives alike have done nothing but turn their self-serving gaze away from this needless, costly, stupid waste of lives and treasure.

Step one: fully legalize marijuana on the federal level. Isn’t it time for the federal government to finally move beyond the “reefer madness” propaganda of the 1920s? President Trump could do so much good by wiping out the insanely counterproductive federal statutes against marijuana.

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