Richard Nixon started the War on Drugs as a campaign issue to show Republicans were the “law and order” party. Have we won the war on drugs? It seems the answer is “no.” Is it time to re-assess our strategy?
Despite the fact that thee United States has just 5% of the world’s population, we hold 25% of the world’s prisoners! We have more prisoners per capita than North Korea. (So much for calling ourselves “the land of the free”!) In the world of supply and demand, supply of drugs has gone up (despite U.S. efforts), resulting in prices for drugs being cheaper than ever. There is even a documentary on Netflix, The Drug Wars, that indicates that the government is actually providing help to drug dealers, and it has crossed both republican and democratic administrations.
- During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military transported drugs in servicemen’s coffins.
- The CIA has admitted to selling drugs on the streets of Los Angeles
- There are some who claim that the Iran-Contra Affair also involved the transport of illegal drugs to fund the operation as a way to get around Congressional funding limits.
- Some watchdogs have claimed the recent Fast and Furious scandal was actually a case where the federal government provided weapons to the Siniloa Drug Cartel. The deal was that the Siniloa cartel would provide influence to find other drug groups, while the U.S. government would allow them to increase their territory.
We tried Prohibition once, and it was such a failure, that the state of Utah cast the deciding vote to repeal Prohibition. Prohibition actually increased violent crime, and increased the number of criminals in jails. When the public was fed up with the violence, we decided to tax alcohol.
The state of Utah (as well as other states) are tired of paying more taxes for more jails, and are looking at better ways to deal with non-violent, drug addicted inmates. The fact of the matter is the “law and order” party is now having to deal with high taxes to incarcerate these so-called criminals. Is it time to start legalizing drugs and taxing them in order to shrink our prisons and cut down on the associated violence?
Mormon Heretic 
The dirty little secret is that most of those in prison are in prison for violence. While this may be indirectly related to the drug war, the reality is that there are very few “drug possession only” prisoners one could release.
I’m strongly in favor for a rethinking of the drug war. Many drugs have far less harm that alcohol or tobacco but are treated like heroin. (Seriously treating ecstasy like heroin makes zero sense) It’s not just that marijuana and many other drugs aren’t much worse than cigarettes or alcohol it’s that we really don’t treat those drugs seriously. It’s hard to take seriously allowing alcohol advertisements everywhere while ecstasy possession puts one in jail. At a minimum alcohol should be treated like cigarettes with severely restricted advertisements.
And if we want to get rid of the violence associated with drugs, then make them easily available in hospitals . That’ll kill the markets, will reduce abuse and more important vehicle misuse while on the drugs. It’ll cut our *huge* costs for prisons and police, hopefully make communities safer, and one would think deescalate the problems of police violence. And the added plus is that the government gets to tax the drugs.
Do what Portugal did legalise all drugs, then use the money that used to be spent on policing drugs on rehabilitation.
yes and no. Prohibition obviously it’s not a viable solution to the problems that drugs pose in our country.
It has been proven in parts of Europe that legalization and regulation lowered the crime rate and also the amount of overdoses reported.
Heroin users actually go into a clinic to get there fix seringes and other perafinilia and are not allowed to leave for 30min after injection.
My personal openion on legalization of narcotics is, it would certainly be the lesser of the two evils compared to illegalization. But ,still not exactly a perfect solution . I feel that awareness at the elementary to high school level along side “scare tactics” and other forms of anti-drug propaganda utilizing the vast attention payed to social media these days fb Twitter ecetera is the way to go.
“The real terrorist ” in our world are not Isis or other similar organizations it is the siniloa cartel cooking there meth just south of our bordering state of California . Worse yet is the price of there meth has dramatically dropped and availability at an all time high. Forget legalization and regulation let’s all stand together and put pressure on our government to put pressure on the government’s of all these third world countries and there regimes to take drugs out at there scourses.
There will always be a garage chemist here and there America but they will never be on a level as the Mexican cartels cooking there dope by the train load. It’s the scourses of the problem that one must focus on to take care of the problem . Focusing on local level narcos is just a waste of time . There would not be heroin junkies if there were no heroin in the first place as there would not be tweekers without meth. Easy solution with the proper resources but it seems our government has some twisted idea that it boosts our economy ….joker’s of the first degree ..the hell with immigration and a wall let’s bomb the cartels meth labs .
My personal openion on legalization of narcotics is, it would certainly be the lesser of the two evils compared to illegalization. But ,still not exactly a perfect solution . I feel that awareness at the elementary to high school level along side “scare tactics” and other forms of anti-drug propaganda utilizing the vast attention payed to social media these days fb Twitter ecetera is the way to go.
“The real terrorist ” in our world are not Isis or other similar organizations it is the siniloa cartel cooking there meth just south of our bordering state of California . Worse yet is the price of there meth has dramatically dropped and availability at an all time high. Forget legalization and regulation let’s all stand together and put pressure on our government to put pressure on the government’s of all these third world countries and there regimes to take drugs out at there scourses.
There will always be a garage chemist here and there America but they will never be on a level as the Mexican cartels cooking there dope by the train load. It’s the scourses of the problem that one must focus on to take care of the problem . Focusing on local level narcos is just a waste of time . There would not be heroin junkies if there were no heroin in the first place as there would not be tweekers without meth. Easy solution with the proper resources but it seems our government has some twisted idea that it boosts our economy ….joker’s of the first degree ..the hell with immigration and a wall let’s bomb the cartels meth labs