Comments on: Why has the U.S. continued a "demand-side" war on drugs in light of poor results?

By: WhiteMick

WhiteMick — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:16:59 +0000

The ‘war on drugs’ isn’t a rational fight against a social ill. It’s something that plays well on TV, especially to people who don’t know much about it, but are afraid.

Talking tough makes politicians look good and the scared and uneducated feel safe. Whether the policy works or not has little to do with it.

Witness current policy on, well, just about everything.
References :

By: GRANNY12

GRANNY12 — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:02:59 +0000

Legalization with controls seems to me to be the way to go. Even for the "Hard" drugs. It is the suppliers that really make the money and if you remove the illegal demand..... OK? I believe that our gov't allows the free flow of drugs as a way to "control an entire population. The more criminals there are the less likely they are to protest politically.
References :

By: NC

NC — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:26:59 +0000

The demand-side of the war on drugs wasn’t born in a vacuum; it followed several decades of equally unsuccessful supply-side war on drugs.

There is a strong argument for legalization of drugs (after all, they used to be legal in most countries before 1900; in fact, heroin and aspirin were developed and marketed by the same company, Bayer AG of Germany).

The problem is, cheap and accessible drugs will affect the society unevenly. Poor neighborhoods will probably see a large drop in drug-related crime, while incidence of drug use among middle-class teenagers and young adults may increase, because they will be able to buy drugs with pocket change. Middle-class parents fear the latter (whether this fear is rational or not remains to be seen), so they vote for anything that has even a remote chance of helping keep drugs away from their children…
References :

By: illinois_guy06

illinois_guy06 — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:12:59 +0000

interesting question, but the thing at the bottom of all this is Politics. No elected official is going to have support (read: get re-elected or elected in the first place) with a sensible drug policy like that. The aging, naive, and morally-anal voting base would never hear of such a thing, plus their opponent in an election would have a field day with something like that. Its not that I blame the voters for being naive, because theyve been spoon fed so much nonsence propaganda thru the years like "this is your brain on drugs" ad, and the "xtc puts holes in your brain" biased and false study, etc.
References :

By: Nerdly Stud

Nerdly Stud — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:00:59 +0000

The US is less interested in controlling drugs than it is in propping up the military-industrial complex. The so called "war on drugs" is just welfare for weapons makers and the mercenary social class.
References :