The simple fact is that just about everyone knows someone -- a loved one, a friend, a co-worker -- with a mental health or addiction issue. Nevertheless, politicians routinely ignore the need to treat these populations.
We undermine the basic concept of 'one-citizen one-vote' with the Electoral College, an idea that may have seemed like a good idea in 1789 but has not been emulated by other countries for countless reasons.
One of the most neglected issues in this year's presidential elections is the Drug War, the longest running war in U.S. history.
While many have connected me with the destruction of the black community, those same detractors fail to have a historical grasp on this countries long cyclical history of slavery, convict leasing, chain gangs and now mass incarceration. My role as a kingpin was as much a stop-gap to poverty...
By 2012, 17 states have passed medical marijuana laws. Many activists say the best thing about the movement has been its success in showing that the side effects and addictive dangers of cannabis are no more serious, and probably less, than that of alcohol or cigarettes.
I'd like to ask a few pointed questions of those who still think they're fighting the good fight by continuing to support this disastrous so-called war on so many peoples' private habits and behavior.
After a month-long trek across the United States, a caravan of victims of violence in Mexico has made its way to Washington, D.C. to make its case to the U.S. that "drug-war" policies have only served to strengthen impunity in Mexico.
Drug use will never be completely eradicated, but that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and do nothing. We need to get back to what should have been the goal of the War on Drugs all along: a society where drug abuse is as rare and as manageable as we can make it.
Liberals often insist that the president cannot be blamed for current trends they dislike. Yet in most areas where Obama's defenders attempt to pass the buck, the president enjoys wide latitude.
The first time I met with Sheriff Allman, in his office full of valor citations and flanked in the hallway by framed photos of every other county sheriff since Mendocino's 1850 incorporation, he told me that, in his view, "maybe five percent" of medical cannabis claims were legit.
On Thursday, September 6, the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity will arrive in New York City on its voyage across the United States calling for an end to the failed drug war that has left more than 60,000 dead in Mexico in the last five years.
This year, exactly three decades after both Democrats and Republicans first focused on creating the office that today leads drug policy efforts, both parties should co-lead today's drug challenges based on what we know can work.
Of the many issues that national politicians routinely gloss over during campaign season, one they're least likely to touch -- and haven't, in any real way, since the 1980s -- is drug policy. But the country ignores the issue at its own peril.
After waging a futile war on drugs for more than four decades, while causing horrific unintended consequences both here and abroad, it is well past time to try a different approach.
We spend billions of dollars on the war on drugs while communities are collapsing because of unemployment, yet neither Republicans nor Democrats will even discuss the failed punitive prohibitionist policies of the drug war.