A cute title for a not so cute little war…..the War On Drugs……a war that has been fought for so many years that few will remember when it began……does not really matter for it is an endless war and a war that CANNOT be won…..

Let’s look at little at the monetary side of this so-called war……during 8 years of Reagan the US spent $1.86 trillion on this war…….4 years of Bush 1 went spent $1.378 trillion and in FY 1999 under Clinton went spent $140 billion….and so far this year we have spent $49 billion…..just a small overview of the money spent since 1980…….all that cash spent and we are NO closer to and end or even a win in this war…..

The War on Drugs has accomplished a few things…..as written by Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)

It is beyond time to STOP wasting resources on an un-winnable war……why not legalize and tax the piss out of it….kinda like what we are doing to cigarettes?

Sad to say you mental midgets….we cannot legislate morality!  Apparently, nothing was learned during Prohibition…..how well did that war go?