[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."

[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.

[Leisler]

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

[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.

[microgood]

America's drug warriors are just like our HOV lane designers. Neither are trying to solve a problem. Instead, their goals are ideological.

A drug warrior is not trying to eliminate the drug problem, they imprisons drug users and dealers because they are morally wrong and imprisoning them is morally correct.

An HOV lane designer creates HOV lanes not because it will reduce traffic congestion, but because it is morally correct.

Problems are hard enough to solve when you are trying to solve them, and virtually impossible when that isn't even your intent.

There is no intention of ever ending the War on Drugs. Heck, it is now a major way of harassing other countries and sticking our nose in the their business, and the DEA is now involved in manipulating foreign policy.

[airborne]

Article?

More like a mini series.

[Tears of a Clown]

I always found it absurd that we spend so much time, money, and energy on marijuana suppliers and smokers when you can just go to your local pharmacy and get thousands of different drugs that are considerably more addictive and more dangerous.

I never have taken any drugs, by the way. But I’m willing to see the failures of the war on it.

[AZLiberty]

Stop the insane war on drugs. Stop the welfare subsidization of drug use. Let people bear the consequences of their own stupidity.

[purpleraine]

We lost the war because we’re trying to stop people from getting high, loaded, and such. Something people have been trying to do for years. We didn’t always try to stop it because we used to have common sense in this country, but that’s long gone along with hundreds of billions of dollars spent in our taxes. What did it do? Make a bunch of gangsters rich.

[SShultz460]

bm for later

[Cali Redneck]

My simple solution is: legalize pot, mushrooms; execute coke, meth and heroin dealers.

[TheThinker]

The biggest problem in solving the drug problem is the courts. There’s always a way for a rich drug dealer to get out of a fix.