Jaime Valderrama TRAVEL AS A POLITICAL ACT 1) In the U.S., we have over 2.

2 million citizens incarcerated in federal, state and county imprisonment facilities. Approximately one quarter of those prisoners are non-violent drug offenders. So the U.S. approach to the war on drugs is obviously to just lock them up. In the Netherlands they have taken the harm reduction approach. They have not made a cannabis arrest in over 25 years. Creative solutions for hard drug users include education in prevention. The Netherlands have instituted heroin maintenance clinics as a safe place for junkies to go where they have not had any overdoses in millions of clients. In Portugal about ten years ago they decriminalized all drugs. They also take now the harm reduction approach. The idea is that decriminalization will take the crime and violence out of the equation, and a war on drugs is a war on their people. The other thing is that users will not look at the police as enemies but as advocates. The United States also places trade sanctions for countries that legalize drugs so that is the reason for the term de-criminalization instead of legalization. 2) According to Nationmaster.com, the U.S. ranks third around the world with 12.3% of the population being cannabis users. The Netherlands ranks ninth with 5.24% of their population cannabis users. In a column called Legalization Nation regularly in the East Bay Express they compared Dutch and American teens (15-16 year old) use of cannabis. Only 14% of Dutch teens use cannabis while in America it is 15.6%. 3) The spatial effects legalization will have on California I think will cause a spike in legal immigration from people trying to scramble here from states that have lengthy, sometimes decades long prison sentences for repeat cannabis offenders. Some people might even be so

inclined to move out of California if they have moral or political objections to having these cannabis growers and users living in their neighborhoods or districts. The economic effects will strain even further social services that are simultaneously having funding cuts legislatively and being abused by residents with unreported illegal income. This could be detrimental to families who are truly in transition with assistance, forcing them to move out of state. This aspect alone I feel will cause a rise in theft and violent crime by peoples food stamps and cash aid or Medi-Cal being taken away, they must survive suddenly without governmental assistance. California will not be able to sustain the economic stomach punch caused by the migration. Cannabis must be legalized nationwide to avoid these economic problems. 4) There were many things in the first half of the video that I learned but Ill narrow it down to three. The most profound was when Rick went to El Salvador and they had a war memorial similar to our own Vietnam War memorial. The names were into the seventy thousands. They were names of El Salvadorians who had lost their lives fighting the U.S. . The ironic thing was that an American tourist would be welcomed there, which leads me to the next thing. I had no idea that Iranians were so warm and hospitable to Americans, although there were skyscraper murals with American flags made from falling bombs and skulls they seemed like nice people. The third thing is when the man from Afghanistan told Rick that around the world it is evenly split between people who eat with spoon and fork, those who eat with chopsticks, and those who eat with their hands. This is something I had never thought about. He explained that this is no measure of human development just regional culture. Arabs who still eat with their hands invented algebra.