Press Release

Fri, Jan 23, 2009

“We Really Lost This War! Twenty-five Reasons to Legalize Drugs”

The War on Drug kills people, not the drugs!
* In 70 years our drug war has killed 700,000 of our citizens, more than all our other wars combined and far
more people than drugs kill. And with 5,000 Mexicans killed this year alone, we now export murder.

The War on Drugs has been a catastrophic failure in every arena.
*The US has five per cent of the world’s population but now uses 60 per cent of the world’s drugs.

We have the highest incarceration rate in the world with more prisoners than China or India.
       *Our prisons kill one-third of prisoners by age 45 and two-thirds are rearrested within three years, meaning
            at best they rehabilitate only one-third. They are thus a total deadly failure as ex-felons can rarely get
            work other than dealing drugs, so our drug policy actually increases the drug epidemic.

The propaganda: We wage this war to protect our children. The devastating and deadly facts:
       *We have deprived millions of children and teenagers of their incarcerated parent(s).
       *Kids placed in foster care have four times the death rate of those left with their parents.
       *This drug war has created an obscene teenage murder rate that’s nineteen times higher than in the
          Netherlands where drugs are legally available.
       *We have turned a million of our teens into drug dealers and they have four times the death rate of
            prisoners on Texas’ death row.
       *Only 50 percent of high school students graduate in our ten biggest cities and only 40 per cent graduate in
          NYC, Baltimore and Detroit. In the Netherlands where drugs are regulated, controlled and taxed, 92 per
           cent graduate; that’s No Child Left Behind!

This War on Drugs is also Racism Worse Than Slavery ever was.
        *Whites commit the crime (87% of the drug users), while blacks do the time (74% go to prison). This war
            has done much more harm to black families than slavery ever did. Our African-American
            incarceration rates are atrocious and prisons actually rehabilitate/kill about the same number.
         *Our major cities have drug-war created ghettos, while there is not one ghetto in the Netherlands.

This war destroys the environment and increases global warming.
        *It has contributed to the deforestation of South American rain forests equivalent to the acreage of four
            U.S. states, while dangerously adding hundreds of tons of toxic chemicals to the environment.
        *It has increased global warming directly by this horrendous deforestation, and indirectly, as we are
            the only industrialized nation in the world prevented from using the very ecologically-friendly hemp for
           paper, wood and hemp fuel, which could dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Narcoterrorism: Our drug war funds terrorists!
*It’s totally immoral for us to wage a war on terrorists and kill innocent Iraqi women and children, while
at the same time funding terrorists with drug cartel profits.

The greatest corruption in the history of the U.S.
* It has caused more corruption of citizens, policemen, judges, etc. than anything else in our history and
has also resulted in the trampling of our Constitution. This corruption has now become international.

The Netherlands absolutely has the answer.
         *We have six times their incarceration rate and still have four times their murder rate. By making all
            drugs legally accessible with treatment available for anyone that wants it, they have one-fifth our hard
            drug use and half our marijuana use, which really makes no difference as no one dies from marijuana.
            They provide extensive treatment, the only thing that has ever proven to reduce drug use and demand.

Economically: We squander $70 billion on this war annually and this would pay for half a health plan. We also
lose the tax revenue from drugs and marijuana is the biggest cash crop in both the U.S. and Canada.

The Nobel Prize. Based upon my recommendation, NORML is pursuing the nomination of the Netherlands for
a Nobel Prize for their success and information is available at www.Netherlands4Nobel.

Author: Stephen H. Frye, M.D., Retired professor, University of Nevada School of Medicine
Cell phone: 775/772-8868, PST

E-mail: Steve.a.reno@Juno.com. Web site: 25Reasons.org contains the Table of Contents and sample pages.

Dr. Frye’s Bio

Stephen H. Frye, M.D., was born in Boston and educated at Boston Latin School and Boston University, and earned his M.D. degree at the George Washington University School of Medicine. After his internship in 1968-1969 at the San Francisco General Hospital, he was drafted as a physician and volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) during the Vietnam era. After his military service, he completed his psychiatric training at the Langley Porter Neuro-Psychiatric Institute of the University of California, San Francisco. He served as the Director of Mental Health for Sonoma County, Calif., for four years, then founded a private practice multi-specialty mental health group and directed it for 18 years. He concluded his distinguished career by teaching for one year at the University of Nevada School of Medicine before retiring. Dr. Frye then hosted a radio talk show in Reno called “Politics and Health,” where he first became interested in drug legalization. After more than three years of full-time study and research, he has become an expert on drug issues. He’s the divorced father of two adult sons, and is also a pianist, sailor, skier, and world traveler, having visited 45 countries, 44 states, and 8 Canadian provinces.

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