Do drug warriors really think parents matter?
“Parents Pivotal In Keeping Teens Away From Drugs Reveals New Data.” No, this is not a headline from the fake newspaper The Onion, but from a February press release from the geniuses at the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).
Election Night 2006 And Prison Spending
Run Time: 0:12:48 MP3 11/8/06 Justice Policy Initiative Director Mike Krause on how the Democrats and Governor-elect Bill Ritter will have to address sentencing reform and prison spending in order to offset additional funding for health care and K-12 education. Amy Oliver Justice Policy
Amendment 44: Is treating grown-ups like children really a sound drug policy?
The strategy of opponents to Amendment 44, which would re-legalize marijuana possession for adults in Colorado, goes something like this: In order to protect children from marijuana, we must also treat grown-ups like children.
Minimum wage laws violate morality and rights
While most economists agree that minimum wage laws cause unemployment and other economic ills, most ignore the more fundamental question: is a government-mandated minimum wage moral? Minimum wage laws are immoral because they violate the rights of both employers and employees to contract freely, and so can make criminals of decent, honest workers and employers.
Unnecessary and Intrusive: REAL ID is a real threat to Colorado
If the Colorado Legislature does nothing but implement the REAL ID Act, as the federal government demands, then after May, 2008, all Colorado driver’s license holders will have to be “re-enrolled” under as of yet unknown regulations decided by the federal Department of Homeland Security. In other words, the state driver’s license will become a de-facto national ID and the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles will be little more than a branch office of Homeland Security. Moreover, Colorado lawmakers (and thus Coloradoans) will have little or no say as to how driver’s licenses are issued, what information will be attached to the license or who will have access to that information.
Doing it for The Children: The drug war against local control and parental responsibility
John Walters, the federal “Drug Czar,” recently told the editorial board of the Cincinnati Enquirer: “I believe there will come a day when we’ll wonder what took us so long to do drug testing in schools.”
Breaking Ranks
House Bill 06-1145, signed into law in May, creates a State Methamphetamine Task Force in Colorado that has as part of its mission “to examine the prevention, intervention, and treatment of the abuse of methamphetamine.”
This would be a radical departure from the traditional drug war orthodoxy of trying to arrest and incarcerate away the drug issue. Unfortunately, Colorado’s continued obedience to federal drug-war priorities means that fresh thinking on methamphetamine will continue to take a backseat to the national obsession with marijuana prohibition.
Federalism up in smoke
House Republicans will soon get a chance to cast a vote in favor of states’ rights, and against an over-reaching federal regulatory apparatus. In other words, two of the main principles Republicans claim to champion. That the issue at hand is medical marijuana, and Colorado has a voter-approved medical marijuana law, makes it all the more powerful an indicator of what Colorado Republicans really think about federalism.
Radical departure from traditional drug war orthodoxy
House Bill 1145, signed into law last month, creates but does not fund a state methamphetamine task force in Colorado.
Unfortunately, the bill also ensures a continuation of the currently failed drug war strategy of trying to arrest and incarcerate away the drug issue.
Pot enforcement a waste of resources
Our national addiction to marijuana prohibition leads to astonishing numbers of marijuana arrests. So it’s worth asking why Colorado continues to participate in this misappropriation of valuable criminal justice resources.
Stop being tax chumps — switch to consumption-based taxation
Are you getting a tax refund this year? Actually, nobody is, since a refund is what you get when a product or service does not work as promised.
Throwing Away Money
After several decades of an ambitious incarceration campaign, Colorado’s booming prison population has run headlong into the fact that the state can spend only so much on corrections.
Simply put, Colorado faces a prison spending meltdown. This leaves taxpayers with the option of either paying for a hugely expensive long-term prison expansion project, or demanding that lawmakers make sentencing changes to slow the growth of the prison population a main public policy goal.
