AP IMPACT: US drug war has met none of its goals

[notesdev]

MEXICO CITY (AP) - After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

This week President Obama promised to "reduce drug use and the great damage it causes" with a new national policy that he said treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.

Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget.

Kerlikowske, who coordinates all federal anti-drug policies, says it will take time for the spending to match the rhetoric.

"Nothing happens overnight," he said. "We've never worked the drug problem holistically. We'll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the addiction."

His predecessor, John P. Walters, takes issue with that.

Walters insists society would be far worse today if there had been no War on Drugs. Drug abuse peaked nationally in 1979 and, despite fluctuations, remains below those levels, he says. Judging the drug war is complicated: Records indicate marijuana and prescription drug abuse are climbing, while cocaine use is way down. Seizures are up, but so is availability.

"To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," Walters said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcment, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."

....



http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100513/D9FM3UBO0.html

[Oregone]

1. But someone had to make a fortune printing up all those DARE ribbons

[Echo In Light]

2. American Drug War: The Last White Hope - War on Drugs

http://www.americandrugwar.com/

[SammyWinstonJack]

8. Watching that is enough to make a person go ballistic.

:grr:

[Echo In Light]

9. Yes. Directed by the late Bill Hicks' best friend, Kevin Booth

... so it doesn't exactly tip-toe about

[Warren Stupidity]

3. 40 year war! "Nothing happens overnight," "Far worse without it"

These fucks are fucking faith based fundamentalist drug war fanatics. Fuck the fucking facts! More! More! More!

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. WRONG - they did meet their goals, and surpassed them

.
.
.

The REAL goal I mean.

Think about the USA's War-machine - it's massive - and if there is NO war - what the f*ck they gonna do with it

NO PROBLEM - create another war

When Prohibition ended - what the heck were they gonna do with this massive department

DRUGS

ESPECIALLY marijuana - how the hell are you gonna get kids to go murder and slaughter when all they want is love and peace . .

ponder that

:freak:

[Blue Owl]

5. KICK KICK KICK KICK KICK

Look at your precious "war on drugs."

Look at it.

LOOK AT IT!!!

Not working. Not worth continuing. Just say NO to the imaginary war on drugs.

[krabigirl]

6. And Obama is ramping it up....a joke

[maxsolomon]

10. link?

i haven't seen that info.

[Echo In Light]

13. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8330667&mesg_id=8330667

[Flaneur]

14. Look at the new National Drug Strategy.

It's on the drug czar's web page.

The strategy talks a good game about prevention and treatment, and Kerlikowske doesn't want to say "war on drugs" anymore, but the budget is just like the Bush era drug budgets: 2/3 law enforcement, 1/3 prevention and treatment.

Under the Obama drug budget, law enforcement spending is at an all-time high.

[Bluebear]

16. His timing is always impeccable

[mdmc]

7. Yet we have a neo-con running the drug war

:(

[Newest Reality]

11. Sure, sure.

Of course, these folks have an industry to justify and protect, so let's consider the bias involved. As a note, the correct word is cannabis because the term marijuana is more a product of the "drug war" (on some drugs) itself and can be considered even pejorative by some these days.

"To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," Walters said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcement, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."

It does not destroy everything done. It brings us to a point of more open honesty and revelation concerning using draconian, punitive measures on ordinary people from many walks of life that end-up destroying their lives and their families while enriching the enforcement agencies, lawyers, municipalities and now, private prisons. To automatically equate having a substance on one's person with abuse, criminality, corruption of youth, etc., is to create ruined lives and profitable prison slots, not to enhance any real justice or bring safety to others. The war on some drugs began with hysterical and mythological scare tactics and these people are ignoring the outcome of what that misguided travesty of mass manipulation incited?

This is not a new debate and many intellectuals and deep thinkers have come to the conclusion that it is the illegality that feeds the problems connected with drug use, not the other way around. That is, generally speaking when you don't focus on the worst-case people in various situations. There are other ways to deal with "abuse", (especially by not defining ALL "illicit" drug use as "abuse" first) and having an open, free society that is able to come forward and discuss it without fear of arrest or reprisal would be a good start.

The whole premise behind the initial criminalization of drug use is a good starting point here. Most of it, motivation-wise, had little to do with a deep, altruistic desire to protect people from the demonic scourge of plants and substances. There were economic and even racist issues behind the scenes while one of the most deceptive and manipulative propaganda campaigns ever was foisted upon the people and continued for decades to the present.

Currently, the most dangerous thing about some drugs or plants is primarily that they are illegal. When harmless, otherwise lawful citizens are arrested and convicted for substances, their whole lives can go down the tubes, financially, mentally and physically. Those kinds of "users" far outnumber career criminals, troubled youth and mentally unstable people who coincidentally use various, currently illicit substances.

Just a caveat: I, like many, who speak out like this about plants and drugs are not advocating a free-for-all on every substance or dispensing drugs to those under the age of majority. What comes with getting a grip on this dilemma that prohibition has created is a sense of responsibility and rational use. In other words, thee are ethical issues that are still important to society and the health and happiness of the population. That can be dealt with better with information, help with over use and problems, open discussion, etc. Anything beats putting a docile, intelligent, productive person in prison and giving them a criminal record for what should be, at worst, a minor offense, if anything. And of course, some substances are very controversial even among advocates for legalization. Once we get to a place where this is rational debate rather than a money-making war, then we can surely sort more out.

Sorry for going into depth, but after you do enough research into the history and the current economics of the situation, you tend to get rather fed-up with the ridiculous, self-preserving rhetoric of big dollar agencies, etc. You get tired of seeing some good people go down for never having harmed another person or even themselves. You see a big, hungry machine wanting to be fed with the hearts and souls of everyday people.

[Uncle Joe]

12. I understand Walter's Psychology, the same as Vietnam and other, no win, costly foolish endeavors.

"To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," Walters said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcment, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."

No one wanted to believe so many people died in vain, so that war dragged out far longer than it needed to.

---



As for Nixon, the largest and most vocal group of people opposing Vietnam were the Hippies, that's what got under his skin.

In 1970, hippies were smoking pot and dropping acid. Soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin. Embattled President Richard M. Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win.

"This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people," Nixon said as he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The following year, he said: "Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive."

So how do you pay the hippies back?

You demean, diminish and disenfranchise them from government. Nixon couldn't beat the Vietnamese, so he surreptitiously waged war against the American People. If he truly wanted to wage war against drug abuse, he would have drastically increased funding for education, medical research and treatment. Criminalizing can only lead to disenfranchisement of the people and alienation to-wards their government, along with destruction of the family unit which creates an adverse dynamic influencing the following generations to more drug abuse.

Nixon was a paranoid, powermac suffering from chronic self-victim-hood and he cared no more about true justice for the American People than he did his own subordinates. The so called "War on Drugs" and the Watergate Cover-up sprang from the same poisonous well.

When Ronald Reagan came along and said "Government is the problem" that rang true with many people because Nixon before him helped make it a problem and then Reagan in turn would make it even worse.

Thanks for the thread, notesdev.

[Beam Me Up]

15. Bullshit. It has achieved EXACTLY what was desired.

We do not have a word or phrase that describes policies that, while failing the publicly stated objectives, achieve unstated objectives that are fortuitous to powerful moniedl interests. Prohibition creates black, unregulated markets and high prices for a product in demand. This is a boon to criminal syndicates and money laundering not to mention law enforcement and the prison industry complex. It has allowed the marginalization and disenfranchisement of whole sectors of society, not to mention the militarization of our police forces while simultaneously offering cover for international interventions, especially in Central and South America. It also serves as a significant income source for those who play in the 'deeper' arenas of covert operations. At the street level it offers the allure of 'quick cash' to the common dealer who is the most likely to take the hit. But behind him is a hierarchical network of 'big money' doing the things 'big money' does -- everything from organized crime to government corruption. Lets not forget, too, that the Wo(s)D was the precursor to another 'failed' national and international policy, the War on Terror, which has its own 'unintended consequences' often related to the Wo(s)D. Oil and natural gas pipelines are not the ONLY reasons we're in Afghanistan.

[notesdev]

17. We do have a word for it

That word is "oligarchy"

[Echo In Light]

18. Bump