Nader Calls For End Of War On Drugs, Urges Crack-Down On Corporate Crimes
http://www.rttnews.com (http://www.rttnews.com)
Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader Friday called for an end to the war on non-violent drug offenders in favor of a war on corporate crime.
Nader said that the "so called war on drugs" consumes far too many resources while clogging the courts.
"We pour almost endless resources - roughly $50 billion every year - into catching, trying and incarcerating people who primarily harm themselves," Nader said. "This insane war on drugs damages communities and drains crucial resources from the police, courts and prisons. These resources could be better used to combat serious street and corporate crime."
He added, "Nader/Gonzales would empty prisons of nonviolent drug offenders and fill them up with convicted corporate criminals."
Drug offenses are better addressed as health concerns rather than criminal matters, Nader said.
"As with alcoholics and nicotine addicts, the approach to drug addicts should be rehabilitation, not incarceration," he said. "We don't put nicotine addicts in jail. We don't put alcoholics in jail. They lead to far greater mortality and morbidity than drug addicts."
On the other hand, Nader said, corporate crime costs "hundreds of billions of dollars" every year, kills tens of thousands and injures or sickens hundreds of thousands more.
Special Agent Michael Sanders, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administrations in Washington, vehemently disagreed with Nader's characterization of drug use as a victimless crime.
He pointed out that even marijuana use can have serious long-term health and neurological side effects.
"There is no such thing as a victimless crime," Sanders told RTTNews in an interview. "Somewhere along the line, somebody's going to be paying for it."
Sanders added that even small amounts of marijuana have to come from somewhere, and in many cases that somewhere is the hands of violent drug trafficking organizations.
"There is a lot of violence, a lot of people get killed," Sanders said. "The small amount some ordinary kid has in his pocket, probably some Mexican federal police and possibly U.S. law enforcement died protecting our border [from the traffickers who supplied it]."
Winning the war on drugs goes all the way from the large criminal organizations … all the way to the casual pot smoker," he added.
Nader emphasized the need to crack down on corporate crime by noting that just a few corporate frauds on the level of Worldcom and Enron easily account for more monetary loss to Americans than all burglaries and robberies around the country in a year.
"Health care fraud alone costs Americans about $200 billion a year just in computerized billing fraud and abuse," he said, adding that 56,000 workers die every year from work related diseases like black lung or exposure to asbestos while "tens of thousands of other Americans fall victim to the silent violence of toxics, pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products and hospital malpractice.
Nader called for a dramatic increase in the budgets of the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange commission to go after corporate crime, banning "corporate criminals" from receiving government contracts, baring corporations that incorporate overseas to escape U.S. taxes from government contracts, a database to track corporate crime, regulation of derivatives trading, limiting executive pay, expanding corporate disclosure, democratization of corporate governance and ending the legal treatment of corporations as people as part of his plan of solutions.
Such ideas aren't new or radical, Nader said.
"In 1938, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in a message to Congress calling for a similar inquiry on corporate power and abuses, which he called the Temporary National Economic Commission … said that a government controlled by private economic power, quote, is facisim, end quote," Nader said. "Today the corporate state rules America and overrules the sovereignty of the American people."
Notice how they put in the usual lies from the administration without challenging them or checking facts. That's all the anti-pot forces have left, lies and BS.
"He pointed out that even marijuana use can have serious long-term health and neurological side effects."
This is a blatant lie and in fact, pot has been shown to be neuroprotective and to delay the onset of alzheimers disease. There are no serious long term effects from pot use. The canard of it giving you lung cancer was disproven recently.
Unlike Obama, Nader has firm well thought out positions that he stays with. He will say the same thing tomorrow and a year from now. I will not vote the lesser of the evils even though I'd rather have Obama than shrub jr. I will vote Nader if he's on the ballot. I'd vote Ron Paul if I had the chance but I don't.
"Sanders added that even small amounts of marijuana have to come from somewhere, and in many cases that somewhere is the hands of violent drug trafficking organizations. "
"There is a lot of violence, a lot of people get killed," Sanders said. "The small amount some ordinary kid has in his pocket, probably some Mexican federal police and possibly U.S. law enforcement died protecting our border [from the traffickers who supplied it]."
But its the laws about these drugs that make them attractive to the gangsters.
Causes of death in USA per year.
-Tobacco - 430,000
-Alcohol - 200,000
-Prescription drugs - 140,000
-Motor vehicles - ~50,000
-Firearms - ~50,000
-All illegal drugs - <10,000
-Marijuana - 0