MORE BLS FOR JC

The US Supreme Court should take a cue from the nonsensical banner
that inspired its decision to limit student free speech. It might do
the judges some good to take a few bong hits for Jesus.

Before sacrificing any more civil liberties at the altar of the drug
war, they should ask themselves: What would Jesus do? Would Jesus
persecute, incarcerate and deny forgiveness to nonviolent drug offenders?

Zero tolerance is decidedly un-Christian. Morally, the drug war is
wrong. On a practical level, the drug war is an abject failure.
According to the FBI, there were 786,545 marijuana arrests in 2005,
the vast majority of them for simple possession. America is one of
the few Western countries to punish citizens who prefer marijuana to
martinis, yet lifetime use of marijuana is higher in the United
States than any European country.

Thanks to the war on some drugs, the Constitution is increasingly
irrelevant and the land of the free now has the highest incarceration
rate in the world. This is not a policy worthy of constitutional
exemptions. The drug war has failed to keep drugs out of prisons,
much less schools.

The Supreme Court should prioritize protecting civil liberties over
perpetuating drug-war failure.

The results of a comparative study of European and US rates of drug
use can be found at www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/espad_pr.pdf .
United Nations stats are at
www.unodc.org/unodc/global_illicit_drug_trends.html , and marijuana
arrest stats are at www.drugwarfacts.org/marijuan.htm