“s for legalizing marijuana, the defeats in this area may reflect a weariness with a 40-plus year, unsuccessful “war on drugs”. Why, for example, were Romney’s call for a stronger defense and criticism of the Benghazi disaster ineffective in winning votes? Many voters have tired of an endless and inconclusive “war on terrorism”. Failing government policies lose support. “
I expect this is the case. Innocents are losing their lives, having their homes invaded, and watching their dogs become shot over this War on Drugs. The government solution has proven worse than the “problem” it vowed to “correct”.
The “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terrorism” are really two parts of the “War on the Constitution”.
In the former case, the war on drugs has proven as ineffectual as alcohol prohibition was in the early 20th Century or anti-gambling laws are. Not only does the war on drugs lead to expansion of police and prosecutorial power, but it has little effect on drug consumption simply because the profits of the illegal drug trade are too high. Look at the meth problem; in spite of making it difficult to obtain certain cold medicines, it continues to thrive. If meth labs cannot obtain ingredients from CVS or Walgreens, they find other means. A regulated environment for narcotics, as exists for alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, may be the most practical solution.
As for the endless "war on terrorism", we have been no more successful in Afghanistan than were the Soviets and British before us. The "Arab spring" resulted in replacing bad, but not anti-American or anti-Israeli, dictators with worse tyrants who want to purge the Middle East of "Zionists and Crusaders". America has legitimate interests in protecting the sea lanes and preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Monies spent on Wilsonian pipe dreams of democracy in cultures ill-suited for them, could be better used upgrading our armed forces to focus on the primary need to protect the nation from both small scale threats, like Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea, and larger and more dangerous ones, like China and Russia.