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?
Organised crime will ALWAYS manage to cash in on ANYTHING that’s made illegal (for instance, prohibition!)
I’m not sure that I’m in favour of legalising drugs, but I’m equally convinced that banning anything is also pretty much a waste of time and frequently counterproductive. Catch 22, eh?
The biggest criminals live in D.C. while spouting nonsense like “Just Say No” Reagan and his thugs made trading guns for drugs their top priority.
Happy New Yea, Ignacio……….I agree about Washington….only they do not need a gun, they have the vote to help them commit their crimes….now that is just pathetic…..
Further to that… this is where the question of education that we were discussing a while back comes in. If you persuade (educate) people to be more discriminating, then that’s pretty much the end of the problem. If on the other hand you ban it, you then have to police it – at enormous expense! 👿
Like you said….Catch-22…….but people are gonna do stuff like drugs……we cannot protect people from themselves…..so at least the country could make a buck or two off of the stupidity……..
Very true. I think you’ll find that the vast majority of people who DON’T do drugs, behave that way because they believe it’s right for them, not because it’s illegal.