Posted on 01/08/2013 12:22:55 PM PST by Altariel
President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs" in 1971. The expectation then was that drug trafficking in the United States could be greatly reduced in a short time through federal policing—and yet the war on drugs continues to this day. The cost has been large in terms of lives, money and the well-being of many Americans, especially the poor and less educated. By most accounts, the gains from the war have been modest at best.
The direct monetary cost to American taxpayers of the war on drugs includes spending on police, the court personnel used to try drug users and traffickers, and the guards and other resources spent on imprisoning and punishing those convicted of drug offenses. Total current spending is estimated at over $40 billion a year.
These costs don't include many other harmful effects of the war on drugs that are difficult to quantify. For example, over the past 40 years the fraction of students who have dropped out of American high schools has remained large, at about 25%. Dropout rates are not high for middle-class white children, but they are very high for black and Hispanic children living in poor neighborhoods. Many factors explain the high dropout rates, especially bad schools and weak family support. But another important factor in inner-city neighborhoods is the temptation to drop out of school in order to profit from the drug trade.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The WOD have lost us anyway.
It was the War on Freedom; drugs were just the vector. Making it normal for paramilitary police with faulty warrants to storm a house and shoot old ladies and fourteen year old dogs was always the objective. Protecting adults from the consequences of their free choices was pretty far down on the list of “benefits”.
80-90% drop in cocaine price over three decades. The war has been won by the cocaine producers. We need a new strategy. Why not teach morality?
>>Have We Lost the War on Drugs?<<
DUH!
Absolutely. Parents (and citizens in general) should teach morality.
Don’t leave the task to government employees.
exactly
drug use was going down until we get dopey, officials saying drugs were not a problem because they like to become dopes themselves.
Teens getting pregnant was going down until we get dopey officials not pushing no sex and respect yourself
Funny how drug use, dope heads, teens getting pregnant and those who love to poke feces witht heir penis are all getting their agendas passed., one would think we had an admin which were druggies, big into child sex and want to push feces further into a mans anus
oh wait we do.
If parents raised their children the right way instead of ignoring them and letting schools raise them along with the TV then the country would not be in the bad area we are.
I didn't take it. Did we misplace it?..........
Expect the same tactics in their new War On Guns.
Who gets to teach it?
All of us Prosecutors back when I practiced, and almost all of the police, thought the “war on drugs was absurd. It is a waste of time and resources and is like trying to mop up the Atlantic with a roll of paper towels.
Legalize it and educate.
Anytime the Feds declare “War” on something, you know that the ensuing war is not meant to be won, but only fought. “War on Poverty” now has failed miserably but the money is in fighting it. And the control it gives the “fighters” over the lives of others. Same for the War on Drugs. It is hundreds of billions plus a lot of power for the “fighters.” Eventually people will understand the same for the “War on Terror.”
Yes, that is another effect of the War on Drugs—paving the way to encouraging the citizenry to accept the legitimacy of the War on Guns.
There was never a war on drugs, but a strategy to militarize the police and give the politicians a new were doing something for you mantra. It was an easy way to buy the loyalty of state and local cops. It has always been about money not drugs. If it was about drugs the confiscated money would have gone into treatment not new cars and guns for cops. It is the support your local police with drug money. Another federal head fake. See any less drugs on the streets?
It’s nice to see how much attitudes towards the WOD have changed since I started lurking on this site a few years back. You’d have gotten a 10-1 negative response around here 7 years ago. Looks like that ratio has flipped.
WOD was never going to be ‘won’ in any practical sense, and it morphed into a testing lab for totalitarian command-and-control tactics.
We can’t even keep narcotics out of our maximum security prisons, much less off our streets. The harder we fight, the more profitable we make it for drug cartels. There never should have been a ‘war’ on drugs beyond education and treatment. And more to the point, not all social ills should be within the purview of fed.gov.
Considering the fact that we can’t keep drugs out of prisons, I would say yes.
That is the only answer. The legislative battle to do away with drugs has failed completely as Prohibition should have taught us it would.
Just one more of Nixon's bad ideas [oh, how we loved him at the time, though].
In a sense, yes.
Exaggeration. There hasn’t been any war on drugs, yet.
This writer is by definition Brain Dead, The government has been on both sides of the “War on some drugs” since the beginning. there are dozens of documentaries detailing Government Involvement in this War on People FOREVER, why do you think we Armed the Cartels and LAUNDERED their Money through the Fast and Furious Business Administration, or how about Barry Seal and Mena Arkansas, or since this is more recent, Just google “heroin” and see how our cities all over America are now inundated with HEROIN ever since we went to Afghanistan, which produces 95% of the WORLDS OPIUM. How does any of this happen without GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT?? It Can’t.. Anybody that actually believes in the War on Drugs is just plain stupid. Life is Hard, it’s harder when you’re stupid: John Wayne.
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