Is The Drug War Worth It?

[Robo]

I take the opportunity about once a year to remind the political forum folks about the unintended consequences of America’s Drug War.

America’s Drug War cost taxpayers billions of dollars every year and the Drug War is a total failure.

What the Drug War really does is provide a huge profit, tax free market for criminals and terrorist.

The Drug War causes violence and murders in our streets and along our borders.

The Drug War overloads our judicial and penal system and incarcerates more of America’s people than any other country incarcerates of their people. “Free country,” right?

The Drug war is a temptation and corruption within law enforcement and politicians.

Politicians like to drink alcohol and many were and still are smokers. Yet alcohol would be classified as a “class A’ narcotic if it were ever classified in the world of narcotics and tobacco kills more people than most other drugs and both are highly addictive. Yet alcohol prohibition was correctly repealed and tobacco is still a free choice in America and it’s usage has been severely lessened simply by truthful educating the people of its negative health effects.

Is America’s Drug War worth it?

[signalmankenneth]

The War on Drugs, is a war this country cannot win and it's time to end it too! This has been America's longest war too!

[Minister of Truth]

Uh, Ken, the underlying cause of terrorism is Islam.

Otherwise I agree with every point you two have made.

[Bill Fishlore]

America, like much of the rest of the world has a drug problem that is too serious to be ignored. Unfortunately, "war is not the answer" and our one-legged policy of interdiction and criminalization has been inadequate to the need. Experience in other advanced democracies points clearly to the importance of including at least some features of the medical model to the mix; alas, politics and conflicting regional cultures have made this strategy largely impossible. Drugs, crime, healthcare and education are all areas where the American political model clashes with the large cultural differences across our huge, heterogeneous country. The system which served us so well in the First Industrial Revolution is inadequate to the demands of our current era of rapid change.