U.S. drug war has met none of its goals (40 years and $Trillion later)

AP ^ | 5/13/2010 | AP

[mainsail that]

MEXICO CITY - 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."

[mainsail that]

some of the expenses: "$121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.

$450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses."

Throw more money at the problem or maybe 40 years isn't enough?

[paul51]

Anyone that ever thought the point of the war on drugs was to win something is hopelessly naive. It has been nothing more than a trillion dollar stimulus package for law enforcement and the longer they can keep it going the better for them.

[Zakeet]

... hundreds of thousands of lives ... ??

AP hyperbole, I'll bet.

The MSM, once known for at least trying to check facts and edit their work,
has gone downhill so far and so fast they are virtually unrecognizable today.

This is truly pitiful.

[pissant]

Welcome to FR. You likey Ronny Paul?

[pissant]

By the way. USE SEARCH. duplicate

[SoConPubbie]

Are you a Paulbot?

You sure sound like one.

[nathanbedford]

Should we decriminalize?

It seems to me the question is not whether you or I should care about what a third party puts into his body, that is afterall a moral judgment, rather, the question is whether the government should care about what someone puts into his body?

Clearly the government has a constitutional right to regulate and criminalize drugs just as it has the right to regulate food and ethical drugs. The question is not whether it's constitutional but whether it is good public policy.

Seems to me that if a government prohibition on the use of drugs actually eliminated drug use, few except perhaps some aging hippies and top models would argue vehemently against such laws which would redeem so many wretched lives. But experience has shown that government fiat does not eliminate drug use. So the real question is, does government prohibition reduce drug use? And if it does, is the price worth paying? It is not entirely clear that the laws against drug use actually reduce their use because the prohibition itself creates a financial incentive which works to subsidize its use. The government has never found a way to eliminate or reduce drug usage without inserting a profit factor. Worse, the more the government is effective in reducing the inflow of illegal drugs, the more it creates a counter incentive of increased profitability by the law of supply and demand. Perversely, since the drugs tend to be addictive there is a physical compulsion to seek more of the drug and, since government efforts to eliminate it inevitably raise its price, users who are in withdrawal are tempted to finance their habits by becoming dealers. So it is not clear whether the government's efforts to reduce drugs by prohibiting their use actually does more harm than good.

One of the prices we pay for our government's campaign against drugs is certainly a loss of liberty. I tend towards the Libertarian's view that it is none of the government's damn business what I put in my body. However, I recognize that such usage inevitably presents a risk to society. I do not want inebriated drivers plowing into my automobile whether they are drunk on alcohol or drugs. But society has learned a hard lesson, that it is better to make the drunk driving the crime but not the consumption of alcohol itself.

Another price we pay is a loss of privacy. Mandatory testing of both government and private employees is to some degree intrusive. Queries about drug use and application forms are equally intrusive. Undercover agents operating in public bathrooms is an affront to our dignity. Eavesdropping of telephone conversations is unquestionably an invasion of privacy. It is the reduction, or rather the presumed reduction, if any, in the amount of drug usage obtained by these intrusions worth the price?

We pay a great financial price as well. The war on drugs costs us billions of dollars annually in enforcement and incarceration costs. Is this money well spent?

There is an insidious price as well: corruption and its handmaiden, cynicism. Our police, our border agents, our judges, one might say the entire criminal justice apparatus has been infected with a corruption generated by the huge profits to be made-profits which are there only because the government by its policies has created them. Inevitably cynicism results in the whole of the people beginning to despise rather than revere the rule of law.

Because drugs are illegal, the price is high and profits are enormous. Yet we send our boys to fight in Afghanistan to deprive Taliban chieftains of their poppy fields which finance at least indirectly the very terrorism we fight against. Would it not be better simply to eliminate the profits in poppies by legalizing the drug? Can we ever hope to bring sanity to Columbia while we in effect subsidize narcos by billions of dollars a year? Is the damage to our foreign policy, like the damage to our precious rule of law, worth what benefit we get from criminalizing drugs use?

On balance, I have to throw my lot in with William F. Buckley and say that the war against drugs is lost and we ought to try a new tact.

[MetaThought]

Eloquently put. Thank you.

[mainsail that]

40 years and $1 Trillion has not solved thing. More money? More time? Or maybe several administrations haven’t done it ‘right’?

So instead throwing labels at people, tell us how YOU would run the war on drugs

[rockhardo]

News flash: prohibition doesn’t work, it was tried 80 years ago. Although it does funnel a lot of money and loot to judges, lawyers, and crooked cops, the drug war props up prices, reduces competition, and promotes habit-supporting crime. I don’t like drugs, I don’t take them. As long as people aren’t burglarizing my house to pay for their drugs, it’s none of my business what they take.

[KDD]

When the government can prohibit the growing

Kudzu Vine from chokeing all life in its path off, then I might be ready to see how well government can eliminate a weed that people seem to want.

[Wpin]

Same can be said about murder, robbery, assault, etc. Would any of you like to legalize those?

[Wpin]

Perhaps we should go a step further in decriminalizing. Let’s ignore the harm that drugs and drug users do to society for a moment and let’s focus on murder.

Why is it wrong to take a life if we feel that the life to be taken is not worth living? We can reduce population, can you imagine how cleaned up the inner cities would become. For the most part criminals would murder other criminals...we can even set aside specific areas, or arenas where they can safely murder each other. What right does the government have in judging who should live and who should die, let’s legalize it and put it in the hands of the people.

Why should I care if someone murders someone else? Why should you? There undoubtedly were several murders yesterday, unless you were personally involved somehow you really do not care about it, bet you don’t even think about it.

[nathanbedford]

Why should I care if someone murders someone else?

Because you might be the "someone else." Hence you have an interest in preventing the murder and society has an interest in preventing the murder because there is an easily identifiable and innocent victim. If the victim were not innocent it would not be murder it would be self-defense or a killing in the defense of another which the law recognizes as justifications and so the act is not "murder."

Hence, society does not proscribe killing but only unjustified killing in which there is an identifiable victim.

Far more relevant to your case might be the question, "why should I care if someone commits suicide, or, put another way, the killing of the self?" In my judgment, assuming the person is competent and of age, society has no such interest although you as an individual might have an interest on a moral or religious level.

The use of highly dangerous drugs is far more analogous to suicide than to murder and the considerations which apply are likewise parallel. I return to my argument that society has a strong interest in preventing criminal behavior which victimizes people other than those who consume the drug providing the consumer is competent and of age but society should refrain from dictating to the individual whether he should consume, just as society should not prevent a competent adult from committing suicide. Why does society have a right to condemn a terminal cancer patient to prolonged and unendurable pain if that patient chooses euthanasia. I can understand why society would not want treating physicians involved, because that would break down the doctor patient relationship for all patients but that is a different issue

[corkoman]

"I Have Sworn Upon the Altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny...")

And yet throwing folks in jail for possessing or using naughty vegetables is AOK with you.

You bring that little bit of tyranny that is so easy to justify in your "smoking a doobie is the same as murder" mindset. Yours is the justification of the Nanny State. There are so many of you a rational discussion of re-legalization is a challenge.

[Wpin]

Hmmm, well if I am the somebody else I would expect to protect myself just as I would anyway.

I owned and managed large apartment complexes for over ten years and I can tell you. Nearly all the time drugs and/or alcohol are involved in violence. Legalizing will make this worse not reduce it. The violence is not limited by any sense of the word to drug dealers...drug addiction screws up our mind horribly and we do things that normal people would not. As a recovering alcoholic and someone who used a lot of drugs when I was young I can tell you from personal experience that addiction causes us to be violent. I once put a cigarette out on a guys chest, slowly to hear him scream, while I was high on LSD...it was the last time I used it. I have seen some pretty horrible things that drug addicts or users do while I was in the apartment business and personally experienced the insanity as illustrated above, but not limited to that one violent act.

I was being facetious with the murder analogy and I want to thank you nathanbedford for your thoughtful and gentlemanly response. I have come to respect your intellect and kindness on this website and always enjoy reading your posts...even if we disagree...which does not happen all that often.

[Wpin]

Oh yes, I remember using Peyote a nice vege...what a rush and cocaine and crack come from plants, not to mention heroin, opium, thai stick, and a bunch of other drugs.

The question is not if using drugs is naughty it is do we want to promote and increase violence and the harm people do to one another?

You would not have wanted to meet me on a dark street while I was pumped up on veges when I was young...that had nothing to do with it being illegal, had everything to do with the insanity drug use brings out. And yes, even marijuana screws up your mind...violence can be a real rush while high on drugs.

So, nanny state? I don’t think so, but reasonable laws to put criminals in prison...and it is reasonable to put people in prison over drug use...they are criminals after all.

[palmer]

drug addiction screws up our mind horribly and we do things that normal people would not. As a recovering alcoholic and someone who used a lot of drugs when I was young I can tell you from personal experience

With all due respect to your experience, and your observations "managing apartments", that hardly makes you an expert in the policy ramifications of the WOD. That requires a broader perspective or at least a balance of perspectives. From my perspective the WOD has pushed violence into my rural area by funding gangs. It has created new breeds of home brew chemical drug users. Without the WOD things would be more peaceful where I am (and frankly I could care less what happens in the cities).

[Wpin]

Hmmm, so first hand experience is not good enough to make one an expert eh? What fantasy world do you live in?

All due respect...

[palmer]

No it does not. Drugs were not part of my life thanks to my upbringing (I claim no credit until during college when I started to make something of myself). But addiction which you obviously know something about is only part of the equation. The other part you seem to be missing is that I don’t want to be knocked over the head because of an artificial orders of magnitude rise in the price of drugs. Sure, it will be worse if we hand out drugs on the street corner, but that’s the other extreme and there is lots of room in the middle.