“Have we lost the drug wars?”
Yes, duh.
Not nearly as much as you might think. When cops arrest someone for most any crime, and they are in possession, they often drop the other charges and prosecute for possession, since it is easier to prove.
IOW, the drug charge is often a form of plea bargaining that makes the courts run more efficiently. If drugs were made legal, then those other charges would be filed. I'm not sure prison populations would drop greatly.
The article makes it sound like most people in prison are non-violent non-criminal folks who got caught with a joint. There are some, no doubt, but they are certainly the exception.
Fiscal Conservatism and Social Conservatism are linked.
With the Great Society, the government established ground rules: personal responsibility doesn’t matter. Work ethic doesn’t matter. School and family do not matter. Do whatever you want — the government has tons of money and will do whatever it can to help you maintain a lifestyle that is fun and void of all responsibility.
Any Fiscal Conservative should read the above and say, “We need to cut back the government.”
And any Social Conservative should read the above and say, “It’s no wonder so many people have gotten involved in drugs over the past 40 or 50 years.”
One could say that “we’ve lost the drug war” — but I think it is more important to note that we’ve lost the “limited government” part of our heritage. With fewer social programs, we’d probably have a whole lot less reason to worry about people taking drugs.
I don't think this author has a firm grasp on the subject about which he writes.
The war is not against drugs anyway. The war is against the little guys trying to compete against the official government black-market drug trade.
Yes, they vote Democrat.
Nope. Nobody mentioned gay marriage back then, or even imagined it. It was the sexual revolution that started at the same time, and gay marriage is just the latest stage in the Rev.
40 years ago was 1973 - the year the DEA was created, so clearly drug use had already been growing for a while. Maybe the author missed the sixties?? :)
The drug war was lost back in the 1950s with the Beatniks and the 1960s with the Hippies,
and the 1970s with the Counter Culture movement began a systematic destruction of all things we consider normal up until today.
Only jazz musicians and funny foreigners took drugs 40 years ago? This after the hippies. And it’s not as if drugs suddenly became illegal in 1971, though that may be when the war ramped up and got its name. Who could have envisioned a national war on drugs back then? Everyone who was alive during Prohibition or had heard of it, which was everyone.
This is a remarkably poorly written article.
Depends on the intent:
If the purpose was to keep people from taking drugs, yes, we lost it a long time ago.
If it was to create a whole new class of criminals to control (as described in a quote from Atlas Shrugs posted on FR many times), then no. It’s working perfectly.
depends upon your idea of victory...
have we stemmed the flow of and use of illegal drugs...NO..
have we given up our liberties, 4th amendment rights and slowly turned our country into a police state... YES
http://www.cduniverse.com/roy-clark-do-you-believe-this-town-lyrics-1431493.htm
Do you believe they voted this town dry?
Well you won’t believe it when I tell you why
The mayor and his cousin and the chief of police
have the bootlegging all nailed down
Do you believe this town?
In 1948 I was still 4 yrs away from being old enough to join the Corps—had never heard of MJ—but one afternoon I picked up the daily news and there was sleepy-eyed robert mitcum busted!
http://dearoldhollywood.blogspot.com/2011/01/robert-mitchum-and-marijuana-charge.html
The world began changing faster not that long after that...
Semper Watching!
*****
*****
Years ago. Decades.
In a brave new world, soma is needed for control...
(1) How will previously illegal drugs be made available? Certainly not over the counter - you will not be able to just walk in and buy powerful street drugs legally at your local pharmacy or supermarket.
They will be available only by prescription.
(2) In order to get the prescription, a cottage industry of disreputable medical professionals and social workers will fill the gap. And they will not remain nonviolent
(3) Whether he gets his fix from a shady prescription mill and its enforcers rather than from a shady street dealer and his enforcers is immaterial to the employability of junkies.
They are unemployable and they will either be subsidized by taxpayers directly, or they will subsidize themselves through violent crime or, more likely, through both.
(4) Junkies by their nature, need to take doses that are lethal for nonusers and near-lethal for users. The government will not allow such dangerous doses to be dispensed. Therefore, obtaining the desired dose will be illegal in all conceivable circumstances anyway.
(5) Legalization will certainly encourage people who would not otherwise experiment to experiment.
Decriminalization will alleviate nothing and potentially create new problems.
They were lost the nanosecond they started.
I don’t do drugs. I quit drinking years ago. I will never advocate their use. But human nature is what it is. No one will ever stop a person that wants to do drugs as long as they exist. And it is not possible to make every mind altering substance vanish.
All you can do is make people accountable for their actions. Such are the burden of a free society.
It was amazing how quickly drugs appeared on the scene. As the author notes, it seems within a year or two went from nowhere, to everywhere. I saw many lives ruined as a result, and still today, the same old tired “no worse than alcohol” etc. nonchalance about dope. Now we can see where all this “tolerance” “free love” “civil rights” “turn on, tune out” crapola has gotten us. That wonderfully great culture has been corrupted by the left: abortion, divorce, atheism, unpatriotism, drugs, illegitimacy, STDs, quotas, lapdog media . . .what a difference 40+ years made. No wonder we are a nation divided with the brainwashed 47%+
This comment could only be made by someone who thinks "a shot of bourbon" isn't a drug. There was a lot more drinking of alcohol in the 1950s than today, and a much greater societal tolerance for drinking and driving ("one for the road"). The difference between the '50s and '60s wasn't the difference between sobriety and intoxication, but in the choice of intoxicants.