Posted on 02/13/2013 2:23:16 PM PST by honestabe010
Despite increased efforts, manpower, and resources, the war on drugs has been a resounding failure. W.C. fields once quipped, “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.” Not only does the government continue to fail in its crusade against drugs, it continues to perpetrate a policy of immense immorality. It has been over forty years since President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. What do we have to show for it? The United States has wasted over one trillion dollars, caused incarceration rates to exceed that of the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin, discriminated heavily against African-Americans, propped up the drug cartels, and allowed drug profits to flow into the pockets of al-Qaeda and other such terrorist groups.
The biggest success in the war on drugs has been the protection of drug cartel’s profits. In a standard legalized business, there are countless importers and exporters of a particular good. However, due to drug raids and seizures, the price of maintaining an operation has been driven up, forcing out small time distributors. This allows the only viable distributors to be those with enough money and resources to avoid interdiction efforts. These are the highly violent drug cartels that are flush with cash. By keeping goods out and arresting local distributors, the government keeps the price of these drugs up. What else could a monopolist want?
From 1776 to 1914, drugs were mostly legal on a federal and local level. What was so wrong with that period of time? Alcohol prohibition clearly failed, creating a black market for alcohol, resulting in organized crime fueled by the likes of Al Capone. Drug prohibition in the United States has created the monsters known as drug cartels...
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If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium...
I’ll believe that when libertarians start saying it’s okay to force marijuana smoke into children’s lungs.
who wants to legalize them for kids? There would be a legal age just like alcohol. Studies show that drug use does not markedly increase based on legalization, there is an initial spike but that lasts for a short period of time.
“However, according to analysis put forth by the American Journal of Economics & Sociology in a 2000 article titled “Legalize Drugs Now”, the increase is expected to be minimal. Whether a drug is legal or not plays a small role in whether individuals decide to consume them. The study asserts that it expects an initial spike in use immediately after legalization. However, as with alcohol prohibition, this effect will wane with time. The study shows that “the average per ca pita consumption of alcohol has fallen to its lowest level ever. The legalization of alcohol reversed the potency effect. The legalization of drugs will do the same.”
“You won’t convince me that legalizing cocaine and heroin for the kids is a good idea. ever.”
Rest easy, for almost no one is pushing for that. I think it oughtta be the concern of parents and various in loco parentis agents, and definitely none of fedguv’s business. But I won’t hold rallies for it, or anything.
You are correct-a drug called phenergan was/is used to replace it for a time-also causes sleep/drowsiness, but I heard there was some doubt about the safety of that one, too. In my world, pregnant = no drugs-have some crackers and chamomile or ginger tea.
Didn’t alchohol consumption spike during prohibition, or is that a myth? Seems to me that for those who do risk punishment to shoot, smoke, or pop ilicit substances, they may take more than they otherwise would for it to be worth it. Certainly the Drug War prevents the free market from providing milder doses of the big, bad substances. I imagine that were concaine legal they’d probably have sold a wine cooler version of it by now.
“wine cooler version”
Wasn’t that what the original Coca Cola was?
From The American Economic Review, Vol. 81, No. 2,
“We find that alcohol consumption fell sharply at the beginning of Prohibition, to approximately 30 percent of its pre-Prohibition level. During the next several years, however, alcohol consumption increased sharply, to about 60-70 percent of its pre-Prohibition level.”
http://www.tomfeiling.com/archive/AlcoholConsumptionDuringProhibition.pdf
Morphine was not invented it was isolated.
Now that you mention it, yes. Funny story, back in its infancy FDA busybodies decided to go after Coca Cola for exposing its customers to cocaine. When it was discovered that the coke in Coke had by that time been largely replaced by caffeine they went after them for false advertising instead.
I may have used the wrong word, but the idea is the same. It didn’t exist in purifier form before the hand of man intervened to isolate it. After it was isolated, it existed as it had not before. I don’t see it as a crime against the English language to say whoever first isolated morphine “invented” the product of pure morphine.
I am not arguing pro or con on drug legalization or ending the drug war.
I am pointing out that the argument in this article is claptrap and statements such as Paul’s which you present are historically ignorant and at best is a ludicrous bromide.
purifier = purified
Just like poverty had become such by 1965 that the War on Poverty was put in place as a reaction?
Any other Progressive ideas you'd like to defend - Prohibition? The income tax?
The 1914 date is obviously a reference to the Harrison Act, which was the watershed for federal antidrug crusading. Surely you can’t think it claptrap, ignorant, or ludicrous to ignore the pitiful little progressive gestures made at regulating opioids and cocaine from the Gay 90s to 1914. Because there isn’t more than a trinkle in that era, and none before. They levied taxes in the 90s, passed the PFDA to attack all manner of food and drug business, not just the kinds that are part if the Drug War today, and I think banned the importation of opium for nonmedical purposes a few years before Harrison. Whoopty-doo.
Before the overzealous meddling of the same folks who brought us prohibition, drugs were a state and local issue, if that. As with most things before the progressive era, we were better off.
Some FReepers have the oddest faith in particular kinds of Big Government. To hear them tell it the early years of the Republic don’t count because it wasn’t until federal intervention, conveniently, that they became enough of a problem to justify intervention. Which I might buy had I never heard of government until a couple seconds before I heard that argument.
That’s not how it usually works. Usually they don’t draft laws against things until the problem has almost solved itself, as with child labor and the 8 hour workday. There’s also a perverse tendency to pass more laws the better things get.
Statism is strong among many Conservatives, and the perceived lawlessness of libertarianism is the primary basis for their arguments against it. It’s a difficult mindset to engage.
There are plenty of excellent arguments against the WOD. There are also plenty of sound theories that make the case against decriminalizing narcotics.
Protection of minors is equally important to deconstructing the WOD industry. In my opinion, repeal should be offset by clearly defined capital consequences. Doubtful the Statists nor Libertarians would be comfortable with my solutions.
Few are interested in the factual details, so I’m doubtful much will change.
The war on drugs has reduced the number of hard drug users in the US.
That was the goal.
Unlike drug "crimes," those crimes have actual victims.
Now watch the amazing Drug Warrior moving-goalpost trick - as all talk of gang members, rapists, pedophiles, thieves, white-collar criminals, or murderers is quietly but decisively abandoned:
I deal with the results of people who used illegal drugs every day at work. Try spending time in a school. Or, do you think that the cells of a zygote are unaffected by the parent who uses and abuses drugs? Do you believe that ovum and sperm are unaffected by drugs? No victims, my arse.
It's HEAVY drug use FOLLOWED BY CONCEPTION that creates a victim - so your argument no more supports a drug ban than a conception ban. And birth defects are also linked to alcohol and tobacco; do you favor banning those drugs too, or is your concern for yet-unconceived potential victims selective?
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