War on Drugs has failed

What war on speeders?

You are correct, the "war on drugs" will never eradicate drug use.

Starting from that premise, the question then is whether the scores of billions spent each year on the war for law enforcement and jailing millions of people and funding Mexican drug gangs makes sense.

 

They behead people in Saudi Arabia. Yet, every year, they catch people using drugs, and behead them, too. You would think that threat would be enough, but apparently it's not. Human beings want drugs. This is called demand. Where there is demand, there will be supply. We can't even keep drugs out of prison, it's laughable to think that we can somehow keep them off the streets. Not to mention, out of every 1,000 cases of drugs being consumed, how many do you suppose get caught. I don't know, I don't know if it's possible TO know, but my guess is you could count the number on one hand and have fingers left over.

It is unwinnable, and the side effects of the WOD are worse than the drugs themselves. It's time to face reality.

 

There is no 'war' on speeders just as there is NO 'war' on drugs...it's the age-old and very simple root issue of funding the enforcement of the rules/laws we create.

Regarding the cost of enforcement, this question needs to be asked of all laws. It always seems stupid to me when we create a law but miserably fail to provide funding for the enforcement...

 

I certainly didn't coin the phrase drug war. But therein lies the question, should we have these rules given the costs of enforcing them versus the benefits they provide.

Sure. Start a thread and debate whether it makes sense to have speeding laws. This thread is about drugs. And as others have pointed out, there is certainly credible arguments to make that prohibition has not worked.

As to funding, we spending scores of billions on law enforcement, incarceration, and the justice system to process it.

 

War on drugs failed hard and never should have started .

 

It'll be legalized on a federal level within our lifetimes. As soon as the old farts and old bats die off, they'll be replaced by todays younger generation which overwhelmingly support marijuana legalization. Now it's just a waiting game.

 

The people that want drugs kept illegal all benefit from it in some way.
The Mafia turns a profit
The Politician gets an issue to demogogue
The Priest/Rabbi/Pastor/Mullah gets to rail against the evils of drug use.
The terrorist gets a source of funding.

All that goes away if you legalize them and you can grow marijuana and coca in your back yard.
The crime stops because nobody has to steal to get a buzz.
Law enforcement gets a break to fight real crime.
Prisons suddenly don't have to let out the hard criminals to house druggies.
You get to tax what is sold to fund treatment programs.
You get to pay less tax on prison space from overcrowded prisons with revolving doors.
People get jobs selling legal drugs.
Since it costs less to get high you have fewer people on social services.
A bag of weed that goes for $100.00 now will sell for about $5.00.
The funding for terrorists goes away.
Border traffic gets less dangerous for our border patrol because there would be no reason to import what you can grow. And it would be legal anyway.
The underground balance of trade would stop hemmoraghing our nations cash.
Fewer cops get killed trying to stop crazed drug trafficers.
Gang activity would almost cease.
Our neighborhoods would be safer.

The whole thing makes money available to bribe politicians with. It makes it possible to intimidate people to keep them from talking. It makes prostitution necessary for many women hooked on drugs by pimps that use them for a source of income.
This is why we should also legalize prostitution. Eliminate the pimp and the prostitute may get help. She will certainly be able to keep her money and get treated for diseases. The dirty politician won't be able to intimidate the prostitute into silence. Neither could the dirty priest/pastor/rabbi. They would have no hold over the prostitute.
I could go on and on.
But will the dogmatists listen?

Why would a God fearing American help drug dealers make money off of your kids?
Why would they let the pimps be able to bribe politicians into turning your daughter into a hooker?
Legalize it and control it and tax it and that will stop.

Punish the acts of the individual. Not society as a whole.
Punish the drunk driver but keep alcohol legal.
Punish the drugged driver but make drugs legal.

Only a dealer would be against legalization.
Or maybe a terrorist. Or a politician trying to hide something.
Or a priest/rabbi/pastor/imam trying to hide something.
Or a brainwashed true believer.

 

This^^^^^^kind of nonsense needs to be stopped and censored. If people hear common sense like this, they may begin to understand that the war on drugs was and is not about drugs. It is about power and money plain and simple. The powers that be will eventually give us legalized marijuana in order to make us happy and shut us up, but they will never go farther than that and give up the TRILLIONS of dollars spent in this farce of a war.

 

worse yet, the war on drugs supports terrorism

 

Please reprint it and pass it around. Maybe we can get the ball rolling strong enough that they will have to step aside or get run over. Share it on all of your social networking sites.

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Please reprint it and pass it around. Maybe we can get the ball rolling strong enough that they will have to step aside or get run over. Share it on all of your social networking sites.

 

Some of the largest and most powerful dealers are pharmaceutical companies that consider re-legalized drugs a threat to their business. It wasn't addiction that got the Harrison Narcotics Act passed in 1910, it was the medical industry that wanted control over medication.

 

The easy age of progressivism. Wilson et al. signed our freedom away way back then.

 

Obviously to answer your first question voters approve of legislation which also means they approve the funding of the programs. But the same voters, and government, never want to properly fund the programs...we can call this half-assed government policy. They seldom create laws but when they do they almost never follow up to enforce those laws. Try to name a single government program which is managed effectively and fully funded??

There are also credible arguments to keep certain drugs illegal...so who gets to win? IMO if allowing drugs to be legal leads to drugs showing up at parties and street corners and in parks etc. then I am for keeping them illegal.

Regarding the speeding laws, an example of how political and stupid we are, traffic accidents cause about 30-35,000 deaths each year and we NEVER debate improving this. Yet a few adults and kids at a school are killed and the debate controls the media for weeks/months. If we truly cared about deaths, we would debate our traffic laws.

Depending on the source, 20-25% of prisoners in the USA are in jail for drug charges. We don't know what percentage of these are criminals versus what might be deemed casual or recreational uses?? If it's 1/2 then only 10-13% of prisoners in jail might be considered unnecessary with new drug laws...

 

Why would that happen? Did everyone in America become an alcoholic after prohibition was repealed? How many Federal drug laws did George Washington or Thomas Jefferson sign into law?

 

In this case, the progressivists Taft and Roosevelt.

 

As if there isn't rampant drug use at parties, on street corners, and in parks already. And it's made even worse by the illicit profits, and the damage done by poorly manufactured products.

It's a great start.

 

Prohibition : the abuse is there legal or not, just one makes criminals of those that did not abuse


.

 

The junkies are already on the public dole. Legalizing drugs won't change that. It'll just save us untold billions of dollars.

 

Since when have they been underfunded? We spend what, 30-40 billion a year on drug law enforcement and incarceration? For what benefit? How much more do you want to spend?

Is it worth paying the $30+ billion a year, funding gangs and Mexican cartels and the like? What parties are you worried about? As for street corners, its already on street corners. But just like there are ordinances that prohibit consumption of alcohol or tobacco in certain public areas you can do the same for other drugs.

Start a thread and maybe someone will be interested in the subject.
Depending on the source, 20-25% of prisoners in the USA are in jail for drug charges. We don't know what percentage of these are criminals versus what might be deemed casual or recreational uses?? If it's 1/2 then only 10-13% of prisoners in jail might be considered unnecessary with new drug laws...[/QUOTE]

 

There's a huge difference between 'your' rampant use of drugs which are for the most part hidden from society and having the same drug use within our personal zones, in our face, in public. My problem with legalizing drugs is it takes them from privacy to public; I don't give a rip what someone does in their homes but I do give a rip about what they do in public.

Do you believe society will change if drugs are legalized and parents and schools and government etc. can tell kids, young adults and others that drugs are now okay? They must be 'okay' because they are legal.

There will always be illicit profits and black markets, etc. I'm guessing Mexican and other drug lords are pleased that the USA is talking about legalizing drugs...this means more and more business for them.

 

So we should spend more money on drug enforcement??? Really???

Most if not all arguments for keeping them illegal are countered by arguments for making them legal. When looked at objectively, legalization makes more sense. Even if you do not believe that it would be better, could it really be worse? Drug addicts will be drug addicts if it is legal or illegal. Recreational use will increase some if drugs are made legal but other things could also drive use down.

Traffic accidents cause those deaths, not even close to all traffic accidents are caused by speeding. Many accidents that are attributed to speeding are not actually caused by speeding but happen when someone is speeding. If we cared about traffic deaths we would make cars illegal and spend billions of dollars a year arresting users of cars and put them in prison for the rest of their lifes. If the speed limit is 70MPH, IMO someone going 15MPH under is as great or greater a threat than someone going 15MPH over.

I believe your numbers are low but we can use them. If 10-13% of the 2.3 million prisoners were not there, we would be talking about 230,000 to 300,000 men and women in jail for being casual or recreational users. pretty big group of people. Financially we are talking about pretty big numbers also, most calculators wont even use that many digits. None of this even accounts for the real long term damage done by serving a jail sentence and what being a felon does to the rest of a persons life. Below are some nice facts for you from WIKI

By 2003, 58% of all women in federal prison were convicted of drug offenses
African American women's incarceration rates for all crimes, largely driven by drug convictions, have increased by 800% since 1986
The typical mandatory sentence for a first-time drug offense in federal court is five or ten years
The percentage of Federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses declined from 63% in 1997 to 55% in that same period
The United States has less than 5% of the world's population and 24% of the world's prison population
As of 2008, 90.7% of federal prisoners, or 165,457 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent offenses.
Imprisonment of America's 2.3 million prisoners, costing $24,000 per inmate per year, and $5.1 billion in new prison construction, consumes $60.3 billion in budget expenditures.

 

Only the right, in its cognitive dissonance, would condone the moral turpitude of bearing false witness to our own laws, in favor of central planning and the coercive use of force of the State required to prosecute a War on Drugs, which the wealthiest are unwilling to be burdened with wartime tax rates, as civil persons of wealth in our republic.

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why shouldn't we confide in the sincerity of the Jesus the Christ in this matter which deals with (profit) motives and persons of wealth?

 

Legalization does not mean that they can be used in public or without any rules. If you dont give a rip what someone does in their home, you should be fine with legalization with restrictions of public use. The route we take to legalization could cause many problems. Decriminalization is a bad route in my opinion, it leaves many if not all of the bad parts the same. Legalization allows for commercialization, taxation, cost controls, safety measures, etc.

Many things are legal that are not good for you. What someone teaches their children is their choice. Some of these drugs have ALWAYS been OK, you have been misled. Alcohol is legal and is far worse than some illegal drugs, do we teach children that alcohol is good in schools?

Legalization actually destroys the black market and would all but stop most every drug from coming into the US. Are there big black markets for alcohol, cigarettes, caffeinated drinks, and other drug type items? Black markets would be created for any one of those things if they became illegal. You do understand what a black market is and what drives it dont you?

 

So, limit public use. The fact that you don't want to see something done in public doesn't justify putting people in cages because they do it elsewhere. I don't want to see naked old fat ladies running down the street, and, yet, if they are running around nake in their homes, I don't see why they should be put in cages for it out of fear that not banning nakedness everywhere causes people to run around naked in public.

Does the government and parents and schools teach children that lying and adultery are ok? The former has never been illegal, and the latter has been legal in almost all states for more than a century. Most people don't obtain their morality from what government tells them is right or wrong, though it would certainly like that power. You would allow the government that power, which only leads to more usurpation of personal responsibility by government. After all, if people can't be responsible with their bodies, how can they be responsible for their health care? Or their education? Or any other aspect of their lives?

Your signature suggests that you advocate personal responsibility, and yet your arguments put the solutions for all problems firmly into the hands of authoritarian government.

Explain how there would be more business for them? Where there are very high profits, there are entrepreneurs looking to find ways to get a cut, and that drives prices and costs down. A gram of heroin costs less than $1 to produce, and yet it sells for hundreds on the street. If more people can produce it, and sell higher quality product at competitive prices, explain how your upside down model of supply and demand would work on behalf of the Mexican drug lords.

 

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If a government program is not achieving what it was intended to achieve, then it's either underfunded or mismanaged. It makes no difference how much is spent? What counts is whether or not the program is working as predicted. There's not much we can do about mismanaged programs because IMO everything in government is mismanaged. And funding is a game of musical chairs, rob from one program to pay another, etc. You obviously believe legalizing drugs comes at no cost which would be a mistake. You need to think through the downside of legalizing drugs to understand the issues and costs and weigh this with the current laws.

So when I enjoy our weekly summer concerts in the park, in which about 1000 people are butt-to-butt, all drinking wine and some beer, when drugs are legalized many of them will also be doing drugs? Every time a drugged person causes an accident with damages, injuries or deaths, what are the tests for determining if they are under the influence...just haul everyone to jail? If drugs are legal then how can we arrest anyone for causing accidents...there's no such thing as a .08 drug level.

There should be no one in jail for simple possession. There should be no one in jail for drug use unless this use attributed to damages, injury or death. How many people are in jail today for these reasons? Legalizing drugs won't remove the illegal drug trades. Legalizing drugs creates another whole set of issues to enforce which is not free...