Saturday, January 07, 2006

The Drug War helps schools, eh?

The Governor of Wisconsin thinks he's doing students a favor by forcing law enforcement to give a portion of asset forfeiture seizures to school libraries across the state.

A law signed this week by Gov. Jim Doyle makes it easier for law enforcement agencies to collect money from drug crimes. A portion of that money is then funneled to the Common School Fund, which gives money to the state's school libraries.

Previously, law enforcement agencies could sell property confiscated from a drug crime. A portion of that money went back to the law enforcement agency, while the rest went to the Common School Fund. But in drug busts in which $5,000 or less in cash was confiscated, neither benefited.

Well, this is just precious, but I've got a better idea. How about if we stop wasting taxpayers' money on waging the harmful and ineffective War on Drugs? Then we'd have a lot more resources to improve our schools, wouldn't we?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually this plan is ill-conceived because books cause drug abuse. One time, I read all these books about drug policy and they all said that the drug war was a failure, which is the same as saying that kids should take drugs. I tried to find books that say our drug policy is good, but I couldn't find any because people who like the drug war don't know how to write a whole book.

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, textbooks. But that's just one chapter per book and its not really about drug policy, it just says drugs will give you AIDS. I don't think I've ever seen a book on drug policy that wasn't primarily critical of the status quo. This makes sense because if Calvina Fay tried to write a book, it would be really short. Those people don't know how to do research or anything like that.

Micah Daigle said...

"That's why I took 7 months out of my life to write one. Of course, I couldn't even get it considered by any educational association, any public school, drug policy alliance or ssdp."

You attempted to present your book to SSDP and you were shot down?? This is news to me.

Who did you present your book to? Under what circumstances did this person or people tell you that it wasn't worth considering?

As a member of the SSDP Board of Directors, I am working with some others in a national effort to compile materials worthy of distributing to our chapters. I'd be happy to look over your book if you sent me a copy. E-mail me at micah@ssdp.org and I will give you my mailing address.