“If we took all of the resources we waste fighting the War on Drugs and focused them on the fighting terrorists, there would be no terrorists.”
You just don’t know what you are talking about. Drug sales are a primary means of raising money for terrorist causes. In Afganistan, if we could stop the production of opium, the Taliban would dry up from lack of funds.
I am surprized that marijuana is still a problem though. In Okla. & MO it used to be the number one cash crop. Of late the former marijuana growers are into meth labs now.
If the US wanted to stop the flow it's simple, and would require very little money.
We could buy the entire Afghani opium crop directly from the farmers, and give them a better price than do the heroin cartels. We could then sell what was needed to US and/or foreign pharmaceutical companies to make legitimate derivatives (morphine and such), and destroy the rest.
In addition, we could offer more money for other crops to the same farmers.
Of course, too many important people are making a profit in the war on (some) drugs for that to happen.
This might apply to opium grown in Afghanistan, but real terrorists finance their operations with Daddy's oil billions. They wouldn't rely on the flakeys and shakeys who grow weed in California closets.
When the opium harvest is done, many of the locals have no gainful income. That is when the Taliban and al Qaeda hire them to plant IEDs and ambush convoys. You can buy an assasin in Afghanistan for 50 bucks, and the bad guys do.
Maybe we can convert them all into growing fries for McDonald's, but somehow I doubt the profit margin is the same.
My point is that even the IED planters in Afghanistan may not be ideological terrorists, they are merely doing odd jobs for cash. They don't necessarily harbor hostility for us nor want to kill us or make us leave. They only want 50 bucks. We could probably hire them for $75 and the Taliban would have no traction. Plus, they would like to have their movies and music back. God Bless the USA.
I think the reference was to fighting drugs within the US, not without. Besides, if drugs were legal than the terrorists would have to compete with philip morriss.. now they don't compete with anybody.
It’s funny that you are accusing people of not knowing what they are talking about. Missouri and Oklahoma both passed laws a few years back (Oklahoma first) putting pseudoephedrine behind pharmacy counters and cutting the number of meth labs drastically. There is still plenty of pot being grown in both states, but a lot lot less meth cooking going on. Was there ever a big shift in either state where pot growers all starting giving up growing pot in favor of cooking meth? I sincerely doubt that. There is no evidence that such a think ever occurred, but you are free to imagine whatever you want to imagine.
You can get drugs in prison easier than you can on the street. Good luck in your endeavor to create a prison society. It still won't succeed.
Our allies against the Taliban were primarily drug lords who were upset over that Taliban’s anti-opium efforts. It is true that the Taliban now profits from opium production, but we’d almost certainly encounter fierce opposition from neutrals and allies in Afghanistan if we tried to re-implement a ban on opium production.
http://opioids.com/afghanistan/
Whether or not marijuana production funds terrorism, their is no effective way to eliminate it. There is too great an economic incentive to produce and distribute it. It would be far better to legalize and regulate it so you can follow the money.