IS THE WAR ON DRUGS WORKING?

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I don't use hard drugs - I don't use any illegal drugs. I don't see a huge difference between alcohol and marijuana - some people handle it ok, others don't. I don't like spending $40,000 a year to lock up someone unless they are a threat to society.

It makes more sense to me to take a public health approach - if people have a problem, they need treatment. It wouldn't bother me if trafficking in some drugs remains criminal. But the 'war on drugs' is expensive, ineffective, and damaging to people who are imperfect but not endangering others.

I have to agree with all of your above points.

I'd take it a step further, weave it all together, and say that all of your arguments above indicate that what we need more of is - instead of a war on drugs - *real* efforts by Washington to deal with our southern border crisis. It would not only take coke and heroin largely out of circulation but it would also keep the 'sanctuary cities' freer of rapists and other violent offenders who seem to come right back after they're deported.

Well, is the market in drugs and illegal immigration a problem of supply, demand, or both?

I personally believe that as long as the rich El Norte will pay what seems like a fortune for pot, coke, and day laborers, then people will take great risk for those profits. Some improvements in border security are in order, but I don't see it as a panacea. As long as people can get on a plane and fly to Disney as a tourist, there is a way into the country.

I would like to really start arresting the people that employ illegals and seize their criminal proceeds. When a few thousand US citizens suddenly lose their bank accounts and houses, that activity will stop. Rich Americans have a lot to lose, while poor Mexicans and Guatemalans do not. Even in an economic slowdown with little change in border security, the number of people trying to get in illegally dropped significantly.

As far as pot goes - again, follow the money. If that stuff was treated like tobacco and merely taxed a few hundred percent, the prices would drop from $500 an ounce to $50 an ounce, and organized crime would lose interest. Legitimate companies and hobbyists would take over. That would not solve the problem of hard drugs, though.

I'm completely on board with that, many conservatives are as well, Glenn Beck even rants and raves about things like this when no one else seems to. There was that case in the northern midwest where over 800 illegals were working at a meat-packing plant, maybe half of which committed identity theft in order to obtain social security numbers. The problem was they kicked the illegals out, prosecuted the identity thieves (prosecuted and jailed while we paid for the lawyers and of course their prison rent), and the company got a slap on the wrist if anything. IMO that company should have been shut down, the corporate veil broken, and the company's assets sold off to pay for the court fees, jail time, the cost of sending the rest back to Mexico - we have to be much more aggressive with things like that.



That's just it, at least with nonsynthetics; coke and heroin, most of it isn't grown here. People can grow weed here easily enough, people can cook up a batch of acid or ecstacy, for those kinds of synthetics the government can track the ingredients and flag things; just like when someone goes to a pharmacy and buys cases of cough syrup they can and will flag that too and bust a lot of meth labs that way. That would, as you suggested, really just leave us with domestic marijuana, mushrooms, and a lot of things that are far less of a dirge to society (marijuana especially which seems to only have illegality purely for reasons stemming from the early 20th century and just the fact that, unlike alcohol, it has not been socially grandfathered).

I don't see the synthetic/nonsynthetic distinction as useful. Heroin and cocaine production are labor intensive and land extensive (and cocaine requires a particular climate). These would be produced in 3rd world countries regardless. But one unintended consequence of tightening and tracking the sale of methamphetamine precursors (ephedrine and pseudoephedrine) in this country was to take production away from bikers and hillbillies, and the various international syndicates have taken over; it is now produced overseas and smuggled in, just like cocaine and heroine.

For the hard drugs, I think some combination of enforcement (here and internationally) needs to be combined with education and treatment. Not a perfect solution, but seems to be better than the current strategy.

The rule with the drug problem as with any other human activity is the old tried and true "Follow the money". The drug trade is hugely rewarding and what makes it pay so well is that it is so forbidden and so habit forming. Just as the hugely financially successful lobbies of oil, armaments, the Israeli Government, the corporate farms, drug manufacturers, Wall Street, etc have seen to it that paying off officials and legislatures to see to it that a profitable status quo remains, it is naive to believe that the multiple billions of dollars of profit in the illegal drug trade has no influence on the way things go. Most of Afghanistan is up to its neck in the business and the added impetus of profitable private prisons where taxes go to pay to keep minor drug users incarcerated at tens of thousands of dollars a year fits very nicely into the scheme. When so many people are making so much money out of it it is unlikely to stop, whatever the human damage and morality involves.

Nope. I don't use any recreational drugs, including alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine. And I normally don't even use medical drugs unless I am seriously ill. (ie after about a week or two of strep throat I will eventually get some antibiotics)

Still opposed to the drug war.

I'm not sure if you caught the schematic of what I was getting at - it looks like you just eloquently stated my point. The reason I talk about nonsynthetic vs. synthetic, the harder drugs which are nonsynthetic - have to cross our boarders for the most part. If tightening of methamphetamine precursors have pushed meth production to be headed by international syndicates - also, that's a welcome replacement (within our boarders) to having any person being able to cook it up easily. That isn't just wishing our problems on other countries either; if they can decide to implement similar policies as well.

The idea is that, if we have solid border inforcement and have it coming almost entirely from outside the country than from within, that the availability will be drastically reduced - maybe 80 to 90%. Return on investment doesn't go up forever either, if it becomes literally too hard to smuggle into the states and assets kept getting lost, the costs of trying will become too high for it to be a worthwhile market.

Sorry haven't read any replies, but there always needs to be a war.... cold war, war on drugs, war on terrorism... it makes money, creates power, it's the system... capitalism/imperialism.... can't survive without some sort of war. I know this way to direct and simple and this reply contains no arguments and is just a statement of some sort, but I voted no in the poll, the war on drugs is bullocks!

you shouldn't accuse others of cynicism when you are very frequently guilty of it yourself.

Don't confuse cynicism with a clear view of reality.

It would be a lot cheaper to legalize and treat than to erect the kind of surveillance and tracking framework necessary for your solution, not to mention the civil liberties nightmare that would create. Legalizing would take all of the profit out of the business virtually overnight, and the overseas cartels would collapse without the massive influx of cash that the trade provides. Meanwhile, the money saved in border interdiction, enforcement, incarceration etc could be poured into treatment and education, or even research to better understand and prevent addiction. Not too mention the huge drop in violence as fighting over control of the drug trade petered out, not just in the US but worldwide. How would Afghan warlords fund their armies without money from heroin? The Farc in Columbia couldn't keep on fighting without protection money from narco-traffickers, border state violence in Mexico, the list goes on. Currently, anyone who really wants to get high can get high, they just have to pay an artificially inflated price for it, and risk legal sanction, no one is actually prevented from using drugs. The drug war destroys lives and wastes money, while enriching criminals and the people who imprison them, it does nothing to help society as a whole.

The war on drugs is literally a bad joke like the end of this song from a comedy show.
ALL THE "DRUGS" CAN EITHER BE HOMEGROWN OR HOMEMADE INSTEAD OF BEING IMPORTED.
Can cocaine be made from potatoes and tomatoes?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cUVi0kCXlY[/youtube]

Well I suppose its a lot less worry for you if your children grow up to be submissive to goverment(and employer) authority and go along with the state propaganda promulgating that "all drugs are bad". Yeah, you're entitled to your opinions but I hope you an distinguish between opinion and fact. For instance, we all know the world isnt "fair" because ultimately people arent "fair", EVEN IF those people are Cops! How people treat you often has very little to do with what you actually did and more to do with how they percieve you; EVEN IF their perceptions are factually inaccurate.

The "war on drugs" is a waste of tax money. Especially against cannabis. Theres no real reason for it to be illegal. Making it legal would replace 20% of current perscription drugs, and would be more healthy than many of them as well. 0 people in the course of human history have died directly from marijuana, and in order to overdose you'd have to take in something like 15 times your body weight in THC in under 15 seconds. Making it legal would allow it to be taxed, making the government more money instead of making them lose a lot, and it would free up a ton of space in prisons. In my personal opinion, and in the opinion of most informed people, alcohol is much more dangerous than cannabis. Cannabis can also be used to replace most wood products, greatly decreasing deforestation, and can also be used as a fuel, lessening our dependance on fossil fuels.

Also, you can't be PHYSICALLY dependant on cannabis, only psychologically dependant.

A good way to combat the "but everybody will be driving high" argument: people drive drunk all the time, why ruin a good thing for EVERYBODY when only a few are causing problems? In my opinion, driving under the influence should have a VERY serious punishment, like this:
Car taken away, drivers license taken away FOR LIFE, and some serious prison time. (and it would be a one strike deal)

The war on drugs is BS! Allthough some of the canabis activists are just as full of BS...