Published in Suburban Trends
Dear Editor:
Please let me be one of the first to commend you folks at the Suburban Trends for your editorial today (April 2, 2014) calling for the end of marijuana prohibition.
As we all know, alcohol prohibition didn’t work in the 1920s (and created all kinds of crime problems) and the so-called "War on Drugs" isn’t working either. Ninety years may have passed since the first "prohibition" but economic laws never change and certain substances will always be available.
The late free-market economist Milton Friedman called for the repeal of drug laws decades ago, and he was ridiculed for his Libertarian pro-individual choice views; time has, however, shown him to be correct.
I would call upon all Tea Party-type Conservatives who claim to believe in the Constitution as well as Liberal Progressives who claim to believe in civil liberties to join with those of us who are consistent defenders of liberty and get this intrusive and authoritarian laws repealed once and for all.
Like slavery (which could not have existed without government support), the theft of native American land by the federal government, and the forced interment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the time has come to close the book on this dark chapter of American history and end all forms of drug prohibition and be ever-vigilant that they will never be repeated.
Mark Richards,
West Milford