How America Lost the War on Drugs

Rolling Stone ^ | Novermber 27th, 2007 | Ben Wallace-Wells

[cryptical]

Nice article, it really lays out the timeline and problems well.

[antinomian]

The only thing that has really worked in the war on drugs has been a private initiative. The introduction of pre-employment drug screening has broken the main stream cultural acceptance of recreational drug use.

[RDTF]

you gotta be kidding

[ClearCase_guy]

some conservatives, including Republican senators Jeff Sessions and Sam Brownback, have begun to question the logic of mandatory-minimum sentences.

[snip]

'We're never going to crack this problem without a real demand-reduction program.'

So, let's stop punishing drug users with mandatory-minimum sentences, and let's also try to come up with some way to reduce the number of people out on the street using these drugs.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. This could be challenging.

[cripplecreek]

Control the border and you’ll stop a lot of drugs from coming in.

[mvpel]

Coleman and other agents began to work deductively, backward. "We had always wondered why his guys, when we caught them, would always go to trial and risk lots of jail time, even when they would have saved themselves a lot of time if they'd just plead guilty," he says. "What we realized when we saw those binders was that they were doing a job. Their job was to stay on trial and have their lawyers use discovery to get all the information on DEA operations they could. Then they'd send copies back to Medellín, and Escobar would put it all together and figure out who we had tracking him."

[Pinkbell]

Definitely.

[A CA Guy]

I wonder if there will be any correlation between the pro-recreational drug fans and Paul fans here.

I’ll check back later for the results. :-)

[SatinDoll]

Any business requires two things: supply and demand. Demand dries up, the seller goes bankrupt.

My sister and her shack-up stud were both addicts. They have never shaken the habit completely. Both are on SSI. We the taxpayer pay for these two miserable excuses for human beings.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to eliminate the drug trade is to eliminate the demand, literally.

Addicts get two chances to clean up. The first is kindly, the second is harsh. The third time they are arrested it is a capital offence crime.

Kill the demand, cure the supply.

[damondonion]

A hundred and thirty years ago there were no drug laws in America and no meaningful drug problems. Nobody should need to be Albert Einstein to figure it out.

[ClearCase_guy]

I'd love to return to a world in which food, housing and medical care were only available to those who could work and support themselves. In a world like that, drug addicts die quickly, and pose much less of a social problem.

Sadly, our current society has mechanisms in place that allow a drug addict to survive for decades, committing crime after crime after crime.

[justkillingtime]

hmm..so if your sister didnt reform..kill her! Is that your position? Should we extend that to smokers, or maybe chocolate lovers??after all those are sddictions also.

[Leisler]

Americans have always loved their drugs. We love them more than ever. The more prescribed, the better. Supposedly.

[Army Air Corps]

Yep. When you remove the consequences for stupid behaviour, it continues. When you subsidise it, it flourishes.

[paul51]

“America” lost the war on drugs for the same reason it loses the war on gangs, war on crime and every war on anything else. The very agencies funded to ‘win’ the war have discovered it’s in their best interest to keep all the wars going for ever.

[G Larry]

1) Pretending Drugs are no worse for society than booze.
2) Pretending that adding to the number of choices of poisons doesn’t hurt society.
3) Corrupt Judges and Law Enforcement officials.
4) Lack of border security.

[DemEater]

The War on Drugs has contributed immensely to the economy over the years. The most rewarded sectors have been: Construction, legal, federal government, state government and pharmaceutical. Of course this has been to the detriment of the taxpayer, civil liberties and many, many families.

[paul51]

Kill the demand, cure the supply.

Declare open season on every known drug pusher and the people will eliminate the supply in 10 days

[mvpel]

They had open season on Escobar, and shot him in the back, and here we are, decades later...

[paul51]

there is a difference between Columbia and the US