Restore Humanity: Remember Cannabis Users Are People Too

“Marijuana legalization is a human rights issue. For Universal Human Rights Day on December 10, I urge you to remember that all people deserve dignity and respect. And remember that cannabis consumers are people, too.”

That is the closing line of a rather stirring piece on human rights by Amber Langston and reposted to TheWeedBlog.com. Langston draws some interesting lines between early American racial history and the characterization of drug users. She claims it all started when American law makers decided that black people were only three-fifths of a person. When you set the bar like that and deem a person as less than yourself, it becomes very easy to justify maltreatment.

“Under the rule of drug prohibition, and heightened by the culture wars of the 60s, the discrediting of entire political movements through disparaging and derogatory labeling as druggies, dopers, and stoned-out-hippies, became a predominant tool for silencing dissent. Beginning with the Nixon administration and multiplying throughout every administration since Reagan, it became acceptable for society to make marijuana and other drug users a group of “others” who did not have the same value as human beings as the rest of us. While this has no doubt extended to persecution of persons of all races, the facts are there to show how our drug policy still overwhelmingly targets black communities. That’s why the drug war is sometimes called “The New Black Crow.”

Today we see this disregard for universal human rights of drug users being played out on a massive scale, turning into a full-scale assault on the entire civilian population by our increasingly militarized law enforcement. Because we have bought into the idea that drug users (particularly those with addiction) are not in the same category as the rest of us, we have accepted as normal many very sick behaviors.

No-knock SWAT raids routinely kill innocent civilians across this country, and almost all those raids are served looking for drugs and the associated money which cops seize to buy themselves toys of violence.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that police, sometimes during routine traffic stops, are entitled to search any body cavity they think might contain illegal drugs. In a different world, this would be called sexual assault. But because drug users are only defined by the characteristic of “druggie,” then we are resolved from giving them the same rights as other human beings.”

Maybe that is how the government has justified the overblown, overreaching tactics to fight this failed drug war.