If ever there was an example of yellow journalism whipping up public hysteria, the Drug War is it, and these rubes have fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.
-ccm
The Drive By Media shoots from both sides of the car. Here are a few DBM myths in the WOD:
1. Singapore is winning their WOD, while the Dutch experiment has been a disaster.
Fact is, Singapore had a much higher rate of heroin addiction than the Netherlands, according to the last update I could find from the US State Dept:
--http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1651454/posts?page=64#64
2. We may not like Islamic law, but at least they know how to deal with drug addiction.
Iran is faring even worse than Singapore's failed experiment:
--http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1651454/posts?page=76#76
3. Drug addiction was rampant in the US before we embarked on our experiment with prohibition in the early 1900s.
According to the US government, it's gotten worse (my comments bracketed):
"By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict." [That's 0.5%, for those in Rio Linda]
--http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm
100 years later--
"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992." [980,000 is about 0.34% of the population]
--www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm
"The demand for both powdered and crack cocaine in the United States is high. Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year."
--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm
Let's help the WOD's case here and say that every one of the heroin addicts is also a cocaine addict; so the number addicted to either cocaine or heroin is 3.6 million. IOW, were throwing out nearly a million from our total. That still works out to about a 1.2% addiction in 2000 rate vs the 0.5% in 1900.