40 yrs & $1 tril later, War on Drugs Fails to Accomplish Any Goals

[Pangloss]

That darn ultraconservative Fox News has done it again, elevating the War on Drugs as some sort of noble, effective effort.

 

Or not.

 

After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

 

Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.

 

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

 

Now it's $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation.

 

Pretty staggering statistics. I don't know that I would ever support a full-blown legalization effort, but I have to say it's pretty compelling, especially in these particular economic times.

 

What do you all think?

 

(Edit: Wups, forgot the link.)

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-impact-years-trillion-war-drugs-failed-meet-goals/

[Double K]

Isn't the US and it's military arm responsible for most of these drugs anyways?

(creation and distribution?)

Air America etc...

[vordhosbn]

The particular medium of distribution or it's source is irrelevant, imo.

It's simple - people like drugs. And no form of criminal prosecution will prevent drug distribution.

Except maybe capital punishment, as in some Middle East countries...

 

Anyway drug abuse is a problem of the individual, and his responsibility.

Government's intervention in this has shown to be not only unproductive but rather counter-effective.

[Mr Skeptic]

I think at least the most popular/safe drugs need to be legalized. I would not be opposed to legalization of all drugs, so long as there remains a ban on pushing/encouraging drug use.

[Phi for All]

Anyway drug abuse is a problem of the individual, and his responsibility.

Government's intervention in this has shown to be not only unproductive but rather counter-effective.

I think it's rather a problem of how the government decided to intervene in this instance, not in government intervention in general. Portugal's government has been offering counseling instead of incarceration for almost a decade now and it seems to be having a positive effect.

 

I think at least the most popular/safe drugs need to be legalized. I would not be opposed to legalization of all drugs, so long as there remains a ban on pushing/encouraging drug use.

This is the twitchy part. If you make them legal, you open them for market exploitation. If they remain illegal, you have people crowding prisons who really don't deserve to be there and criminals profit at our expense.

 

Can we meet in the middle somewhere, with government controlled licensing for manufacture/distribution/taxation of drugs so their purity can be assured and the criminal element removed, while at the same time requiring their sale to be free of advertising and marketing pressure? Education regarding the effects of various drugs would be much more effective than incarceration, imo.

[Sisyphus]

I would support an effective end to the War on Drugs. If it's "defeat" we're worried about, we can declare a War on the War on Drugs, then end it and declare victory.

 

That even Fox News is critical is a hopeful sign, I guess. Though I guess they're prone to push Wasteful, Incompetent Government stories when Democrats are in charge (though this is obviously a bipartisan problem) and mention Czars, and I wouldn't be surprised if the very next segment was some hysterical piece about Drugs in Our Schools Leads to Sexting or something.

 

But anyway, yes, hopeful sign. Public perception is the most important thing, since the only thing is based on irrational public perceptions anyway.

[Phi for All]

That even Fox News is critical is a hopeful sign, I guess. Though I guess they're prone to push Wasteful, Incompetent Government stories when Democrats are in charge (though this is obviously a bipartisan problem) and mention Czars, and I wouldn't be surprised if the very next segment was some hysterical piece about Drugs in Our Schools Leads to Sexting or something.

I wondered, when Glenn Beck started talking about legalizing pot, if FOX wasn't trying to bait Obama into tackling drugs during his first administration to entangle him in months of debate and so they could set up conservative leadership with a prime talking point for next election. It's one thing to talk about how ineffective the War on Drugs is, and a whole other thing to talk about legalizing them.

 

I admit that this thinking stemmed from the fact that FOX started talking about "Obama and his Czars" without ever mentioning that it was Ronald Reagan who started the practice.

[john5746]

I think its time to legalize pot and see how it goes. I don't like the idea of legalizing cocaine and other highly addictive and mind altering drugs.

 

Legalization will increase usage and addiction and these people will have to live with the ramifications of that addiction for the rest of their lives, not just come clean and be well. Some costs are more difficult to tally, like wasting minds.

 

I would also want to see alot of the money go into education against using drugs, not just treatment for damaged people.

[ParanoiA]

Well, despite the alcohol gangs and wine cartel that bring violence to our streets, selling beer and whiskey to school children, I still think legalizing drugs will end the violence and much of the risk associated with them.

 

Wish I could have linked this, but a quick search on Youtube for Stossel's debut on the O'rielly Factor is the only cost - and is just hiliarious; reminiscent of Refer Madness. O'rielly tells Stossel that dope dealers are buying legal pot from dispensaries in California and then selling it to kids. Yeah, because everybody knows kids are running around loaded and if you want to make money you aim for children - the holders of the wealth in America - as the adults are all broke, no money to be made there...

 

So yeah, we still have irrational adults to contend with on the issue. A couple of isolated cases of kiddos buying some weed doesn't indicate a freaking market, Bill...

[ewmon]

Nuclear threat, overpopulation, the environment, Wall St vs Main St, making ends meet, the rat race, etc … take away the causes of our melancholy, and the self-medicating need for drugs will seriously decline. Otherwise, wherever a need exists, a capitalist society will find a way to supply it.

[bascule]

That darn ultraconservative Fox News has done it again

 

That's an interesting AP story for them to carry, albeit still an AP story. Wonder if John Stossel was involved.

[pioneer]

The drug laws create jobs, making it difficult to repeal, especially in hard economic times. First and foremost, it creates good paying, no tax jobs, in the inner city. The revenue generated then helps other industries, such as firearms, clothing, housing, boats, and premium autos. This, then created many good paying jobs for lawyers and the entire legal system, jobs for law enforcement, and even allowed the creation of new government agencies, with great benefits packages. It also helped the self help industries, with therapists and social workers seeing a boost in jobs.

 

It also created jobs internationally, making it very profitable for poor farmers, and middlemen. This helps to boost the local economies. It also helps boost the income of corrupt politicians, law enforcement, in places where this is business as usual, etc.

 

This entire trillion dollar economic benefit package was sort created by accident; luck of the three stooges. Nobody anticipated the full economic benefits the future would bring, even if predictable. The laws were implemented to control behavior for political gain. The boneheads swung the hammer, missed the future target, but through shear luck of folly, hit economic gold. Now it is such big business, with so many dependent, both pro and con, it would be hard to cut all those jobs. The con side boosted the economy by $ trillion, while the pro might have created more than ten times that.

 

Picture the scenario of repealing the prohibitions and the resultant loss of jobs. No politician would want jobs loss in their state. Some of this revenue makes it way back for campaign contributions, but indirectly.

[Dak]

I don't like the idea of legalizing cocaine and other highly addictive and mind altering drugs.

 

I've seen the anti-drug propoganda in the US, and compared to in the UK it's somewhat shocking in it's blatant unrepresentativeness.

 

Simple fact is that most people who do highly addictive drugs (such as cocaine and heroin) don't get addicted; same is even true of niquotine, with most people who have smoked not progressing onto full-blown niquotine addiction. Which isn't suprising (espescially with harder drugs like heroin and cocaine) as you have to do them pretty regularly in order to get addicted; and neither do they (mostly) steal to support their habit, nor get coked up/pissed and go around beating people up.

 

it's a bit more complicated when you consider people with pre-existing mental problems that drugs 'cure', e.g. extreme anxiety and heroin, where 'addiction' can be effectively instantanious; but the take-home message there is 'dont do drugs if you've got mental problems'.

 

hmm... for that matter, if the money from the 'war on drugs' is ploughed into psychiatric care, betcha anything that significantly less people would try to self-administer drugs in order to deal with their problems, and you'd have lots less addicts.

 

Legalization will increase usage

 

Actually, whenever i've heard statistics, useage seems to be inversly proportional to the amount of legislation against doing it. i.e., legalization would probably result in a drop in usage.

 

otoh that'd imply that more people drink in countries where it's illegal, and I doubt that's true...

 

---------

 

illegalizing consentual crimes -- espescially drugs -- organizes crime. You want someone killed, or kidnapped, or a riot started, or agent provocaters, or something/someone smuggled into/out-of the country, or someone intimidated, etc etc etc (all entirely deniably), then organized crime can do that for you.

 

Cynically, you could consider it a branch of the secret service tasked with being ready to excert power and influence on a local-level, which is why, i suspect, there's so much organized-crime-enabling legislature knocking around the place.

 

Good luck getting the government to decriminalize the one thing that ensures that, wherever you go, there'll be self-financing organized crime gangs willing and able to do whatever you'll pay them to do.

[Pangloss]

That's an interesting AP story for them to carry, albeit still an AP story. Wonder if John Stossel was involved.

 

Yes, they pulled an AP story off the wire and ran it on their own site. Here's another one, which Fox reporters wrote themselves:

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/11/obama-strategy-treats-illegal-drugs-public-health-issue/

 

President Obama's new strategy to treat the illicit drug trade as a public health issue rather than a crime is the strongest sign yet that the war on drugs as the nation has known it for a quarter of a century is over.

 

And the shift in focus from incarceration for possession of illegal drugs to prevention and treatment for using them has drawn support from unlikely quarters.

 

The article goes on to talk about new administration prevention initiatives in a positive light.

[The Bear's Key]

I think it's rather a problem of how the government decided to intervene in this instance, not in government intervention in general. Portugal's government has been offering counseling instead of incarceration for almost a decade now and it seems to be having a positive effect.

The same would be good in any nation as part of a multi-faceted approach to legalization.

 

I think at least the most popular/safe drugs need to be legalized. I would not be opposed to legalization of all drugs, so long as there remains a ban on pushing/encouraging drug use.[/quote']This is the twitchy part. If you make them legal, you open them for market exploitation. If they remain illegal, you have people crowding prisons who really don't deserve to be there and criminals profit at our expense.

Actually if you look at Mr Skeptic's point again, the ones heading to prison would be just the pushers. And then they can sell to each other in there.

 

 

Actually, whenever i've heard statistics, useage seems to be inversly proportional to the amount of legislation against doing it. i.e., legalization would probably result in a drop in usage.

 

otoh that'd imply that more people drink in countries where it's illegal, and I doubt that's true...

According to a show on Prohibition by the History Channel, during Prohibition the rate of drinking and the citizens doing it were each higher than before Prohibition started.

[Phi for All]

Actually if you look at Mr Skeptic's point again, the ones heading to prison would be just the pushers. And then they can sell to each other in there.

Mr Skeptic can correct me, but I'm pretty sure he was talking about what a legal drug market would do to advertise their new products. I'm for decriminalizing drugs, but I don't want them hyped like the pharmaceuticals are doing with other drugs.

[Pangloss]

According to a show on Prohibition by the History Channel, during Prohibition the rate of drinking and the citizens doing it were each higher than before Prohibition started.

 

I'd have to know more. According to Burrough (2008), the prohibition/pre-depression era was an unprecedented new age of prosperity for the country, so people were seeking more entertainment anyway, spreading out across the country and greatly changing the way people exercised previously-standard living patterns.

 

That trend hasn't ended, by the way. If you add up just the categories of film, DVD, video games, and books, humanity now spends in the neighborhood of $150 billion annually on entertainment. (source) All hail western civilization!