The student news site of Naperville North High School

The North Star

The student news site of Naperville North High School

The North Star

The student news site of Naperville North High School

The North Star

Civil Liberties: A letter to congress

Editor’s note: In an open letter to Illinois House Representative Peter Roskam, student writer Sasha Cohen elaborates upon his personal opposition to the “war on drugs” in our country. His letter is included here in its entirety as an addition to the Civil Liberties blog.

sashacohenmugcrop By Sasha Cohen

Dear Congressman Roskam,

My name is Sasha Cohen, and I am a student at Naperville North High School. I have lived in Naperville my entire life, and while I have always been an activist for change, never before have I felt so strongly about an issue. I am writing to you because I feel that it is my moral obligation to oppose the war on drugs in this country. I support the end of federal prohibition for three main reasons.

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The first of these reasons is one which should appeal to any fiscally responsible politician. Dollar for dollar, the war on drugs is one of the least effective battles our government has engaged in throughout its history. Yet we continue to pump more and more money into a fight that cannot be won. In addition, the money we spend is also the money we do not collect. An excise tax could easily be established, bringing in both a legitimate market, large tax revenues, and severe weakening of drug cartels, as the need for a ‘black market’ would no longer exist.

Secondly, there is serious doubt in my mind that this is a war we should be fighting on a governmental level. The decision to use or abstain from drug usage is an issue of personal responsibility. While there is an obvious need for common sense regulation (i.e. a ban on intoxicated driving), I feel that we as citizens do not have the right to impose our own morals or ideals on others, and as such have no business sticking our collective, governmental noses into the private lives of otherwise law-abiding citizens.

My third and perhaps most troubling issue with the war on drugs is how it has been applied. The utilization of discriminatory sentencing, racial profiling, and brutally oppressive police tactics are of great concern to me. For example, census statistics have revealed that while 13% of Americans are African-American, 44% of people convicted of a drug crime are black. More than 2/3 of all people arrested convicted and sentenced in the war on drugs are minorities, both racially and socio-economically. The laws regarding drug usage and drug crime sentencing and, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I believe that “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” I cannot find a way to ethically be a party to a government that imprisons and arrests people at such striking rates for crimes that should not even be considered crimes.

For all of these reasons and more, I find it my duty not only as your constituent but as a human being to urge that you oppose any more needless expansion of the war on drugs, that you support the movement to end federal minimum sentencing guidelines, that you advocate for the oppressed members of our society languishing in jails across this great nation, and that you support the movement to finally end this failed war of aggression.

Respectfully yours,

Sasha Cohen

 

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Civil Liberties: A letter to congress