More on the war on drugs.
The war on drugs has failed. By making drugs illegal, this country has:
1) Put half a million people in prison : $10 Billion a year
2) Spent billions annually for expanded law enforcement
3) Fomented violence and death (in gang turf wars, overdoses from uncontrolled drug potency & shared needles/AIDS)
4) Eroded civil rights (property can be confiscated from you BEFORE you are found guilty; search and wiretap authority has expanded.)
5) Enriched criminal organizations.
The street price of a single ounce of pure cocaine is several thousands of dollars, yet the cost to produce the drug is less than $20. The difference is the amount we are willing to pay to criminals for the privilege of keeping the drug illegal. Not only that, but such a high markup is strong incentive for people to enter into the sales and trafficking of these drugs. The stiff penalties we assess against drug dealers only makes the price higher and the criminals more desperate to escape capture, more determined to protect their market from encroachment. If drugs were legalized, the price would drop by to a tiny fraction of their current street values and the incentive to push drugs would vanish.
Recall that during prohibition, bootleggers and police used to shoot it out over black market 'shine. Illegal speakeasies did a booming trade, the profits of which went to organized crime. With the end of prohibition, alcohol has been taxed and provides a revenue stream to the State. Would drug use go up? Maybe. But it might well go down, since there would be no profit in getting new users to try drugs.
Protecting drug users against themselves costs the rest of us too much: in dollars, in safety and in freedom.
read the rest of the excerpt:
http://www.stanford.edu/class/e297c/...dox/htele.html
Logic of War
The War on Drugs has been going on for so long that most people can no longer imagine a world without it. And the rhetoric of war has been effective: there is an unspoken—and unquestioned—assumption that the alternative to fighting this war is defeat.
The unexamined logic goes something like this. Right now,
· we're fighting as hard as we can
· we're spending billions and billions of dollars
· we're locking up drug users as fast as we can build prisons
and still we have drugs, and drug dealers, and drug users. Obviously, if we stop fighting, the country will be overrun with drugs
· everyone will be addicted
· the Mafia will take over the government
· there will be pushers on every street corner
· the United States will turn into one big crack house
Force of Nature
Such is the logic of war.
Of course,
it's not really a war: that's just a metaphor. But metaphors have power. They express implicit assumptions. They frame discussion, and constrain possibilities.
Here's a different metaphor. Drugs are a force of nature, like the tide. The tide comes in; the tide goes out. You can't stop the tide, and if you're smart, you don't try. If you're smart,
· you build bridges to span the water
· you build boats that float on the water
· you teach your children to swim, so that they don't drown if they fall in the water
And if someone declares war on the tide, you don't question their judgement; you question their
sanity. If drugs are a force of nature, then we need to call off the war and start building bridges.
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/future.html