In December 2006, reason's Nick Gillespie spoke on a plenary session at the annual conference of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP). The panel's topic was "What Would a Sensible Drug Policy Look Like" and Gillespie focused not just on that topic but how drug prohibition functions as what he calls a "structuring event" in American life, forcing all sorts of activity—from education and athletics, from law enforcement to foreign policy—to pay hypocritical and misdirected lip service to a Just Say No mentality.
"The drug war screws with everything that it touches, and it touches everything," says Gillespie. "What I want to do is try to create a post-prohibitionist mind-set, where we are no longer merely reacting to prohibition and trying to get rid of it, because in a way we become twinned with it."
Approximately 17 minutes.
SSDP's 10th annual conference will take place in Washington, D.C. from November 21-23 and will feature, among many other speakers, reason's Radley Balko. Go here for more information.
