Alternet Article - The Failed Drug War

[whatever4]

I want to share this article, I think it sums up the drug war and why it's so harmful to us all. Keep in mind that, at this time, cannabis is their number one target. Ask yourself why.

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/26030/
The Failed Drug War

By Charles Shaw, AlterNet. Posted September 28, 2005.

An ex-convict says we cannot address poverty and race in America, nor can we talk about needless death and expense, without addressing the drug war.


"Instead of correction and rehabilitation, what we have is what criminal justice Professor Richard Shelden, of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, calls a "criminal justice industrial complex" where "the police, the courts and the prison system have become huge, self-serving and self-perpetuating bureaucracies, which along with corporations have a vested interest in keeping crime at a certain level. They need victims and they need criminals, even if they have to invent them, as they have throughout the 'war on drugs' and 'war on gangs.'"

Thirty years ago Gore Vidal noted that "roughly 80 percent of police work in the United States has to do with the regulation of our private morals…controlling what we drink, eat, smoke, put into our veins ... with whom and how we have sex or gamble."

Then there were roughly 250,000 prisoners in the nation. Today there are more than 2 million, with another million in county jails awaiting trial or sentencing, and another roughly 3 million under "correctional supervision" on probation or parole.

The total national cost of incarceration then was $4 billion annually; today it's $64 billion, with another $20 billion in federal money and $22-24 billion in money from state governments earmarked for waging the so-called "War on Drugs."

Nationally, around 60 percent or more of these prisoners are drug criminals. Yet, throughout all this time and expense there has not been the slightest decrease in either drug use or supply."

read more http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/26030/

[rodeodance]

1. very few politians are willing to even bring this up!

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Thanks and a kick

[pansypoo53219]

3. wait....

you mean we are losing this war too?!?
i'm shocked. shocked i tells ya.