SPEAKER REBUTS DRUG POLICY

Students, Professor Discuss The Effects And Future Of War On Drugs

American's fight against drug trafficking and abuse needs a fresh
outlook, according to Students for Sensible Drug Policy's guest
Stephen H. Frye.

Frye researched the topic for three years and released his book "We
Really Lost This War! Twenty Five Reasons to Legalize Drugs" in May
of 2008. Each chapter discusses one reason to legalize drugs.

Frye projected the table of contents of his book and talked
extemporaneously about each topic, focusing on prisons, race, the
government, children and solutions.

"We (the U.S.) use more drugs than the world combined," Frye said.

The U.S. comprises 5 percent of the world's population yet uses 60
percent of the world's drugs. The war on drugs has been waged for 70
years and has cost $1.5 trillion.

Frye emphasized the distinction between drugs and the drug war. He
said the drug war encompasses everyone touched by the effects of
drugs and drug policies. Though he saidd that the total number of
people killed due to the drug war is 700,000, he emphasized, "Drugs
kill far less people than the drug war."

Frye argued that the prison system worsens the drug epidemic.

"Jail is a career college for criminals," he said, "You turn a tax
payer into a tax burden with the criminalization of marijuana."

The speaker also addressed race-related problems in the drug war,
stating that 87 percent of drug users are white yet 74 percent of
people sentenced for drug possession are black. "Whites do the crime
and blacks do the time," he said.

SSDP President Ben Weiser became interested in drug policy because he
saw people affected. "Good people are being prosecuted under bad
laws," he said.

The lecture pointed out that Nevada's consideration of opening
another prison can be tied to losses in education.

According to a report by the National Center of Public Policy and
Higher Education, Nevada ranks the worst nationally in higher
education. Teachers with a college degree start at around $32,000
annually and a university professor with a Ph.D. starts at around
$47,000 annually, but prison guards with a GED or high school diploma
earn $50,000 plus overtime pay annually to guard non-violent pot
smokers and drug offenders.

Frye believes releasing non-violent drug offenders, closing prisons
and lowering guards' pay to the national average, $30,000 annually,
will help fund education.

Frye also discussed the government's strategies on the drug war.
"Everything you have been told by the government about drugs is a
lie," he said. "The two proven gateway drugs are already legal:
alcohol and cigarettes."

Frye believes America would benefit from a drug policy model like the
Netherlands'. Marijuana would be legal and sold like alcohol and
tobacco. "Marijuana is the safest drug in the history of the world,"
he said. "No one has ever died from marijuana."

The government would control hard drugs and provide users with
information. "The only thing that has proven to reduce use and demand
is treatment and education," Frye said.

He cited an experiment conducted with heroin users in the
Netherlands. The government provided users with needles, drugs and
information - a federal cost of $1 per day. The project had an 80
percent cure rate in four years and the public voted the program into law.

Comparing the government-issued needles to the cost of one AIDS
victim's $1 million treatment, Frye said. "Everybody wins for a buck a day."

Weiser and Frye emphasized the difference between supporting the
legalization of drugs, and supporting drug use.

Weiser feels the topic is not discussed enough, especially because of
the stigma attached to it. "The second you mention drugs people don't
want to talk about it. Perhaps silence is part of the problem."