The "war on drugs" - is as misguided as any war in history - and a bigger failure than any of them.
Will we ever learn? Anyone who's ever studied the history of the prohibition - knows how futile that way of thinking is - at least when it comes to prohibiting people from doing what they want to do.
To start, I think we need to immediately totally legalize cannabis. If anyone wants to - they should be able to grow what ever amount they want to. Every smoker can have his plants. The bottom will fall out of the market - organized crime will loose their biggest source of revenue, and soon afterwards - it will cease to be profitable to grow. It's often the cannabis trade that finances the harder stuff. It gets traded for harder stuff.
With the hard drugs - and this is radical - I think we should stop trying to treat use as a crime - and start treating it's use as a societal problem.
The great majority of hard-drug users are the poorest and most vulnerable and desperate members of society. They need help - not prison time.
In some countries (like Norway) they can go to a medical center - and get their drug - for free. There, professionals, will help them, guide them, monitor them and council them. The only place they can get their free drugs - is to attend the sessions designed to help them get their lives together.
You might still end up with a junkie - but now you have a junkie living within society - instead of having a junkie that needs to expose themselves and others to HIV/AIDS, Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Hepatitis etc. They won't have to prostitute themselves, they won't have to steal hundreds of dollars per day to support their habit and they won't have do do anything illegal to exist. But - at least they'd have hope.
I know this type of thinking doesn't sit well with some conservatives. It's easier to say "kill 'em all" which will never happen anyways, and when the time comes that it's your relative or friend that they're talking about killing - then your views will change - and they change damn fast.
According to most studies - the severity of the sentence - is unrelated to the law's effectiveness in diminishing drug use. Virtually every study on the drug trade shows that. Countries with mandatory death sentences - have as much addiction problems as counties with lax laws.
The only countries that seem to actually be reducing hard drug use - are the ones that treat addiction as an illness, and as a societal problem. The societies with the most people locked up in prisons - are the same societies that presently have the biggest drug problems.
In Vancouver, for example, they now have "shooting galleries" where the heroin addicts can do their drugs. While they are there, they get counseling, guidance and medical care.
But, because they still have to prostitute themselves - or steal - to buy those same drugs - the programs today in Canada aren't as efficient as they could be. But - even as they are designed - it's a start in the right direction. And - interestingly enough - even the beat cops on the downtown east side, see those sites as part of the solution.
Our societies have just about perfected what doesn't work.
It's time we tried some radical new ideas - and tried to find what does work.
What ya presented there is very interesting; it seems to make some sense.
Agreed.
It's not everyday I agree with Charlie and Brian. And for that, dear Lord, I am grateful!
We may know the time Ben Carson lied, but does anyone know the time Hillary Clinton told the truth?
Immersing oneself in progressive lieberalism is no different than bathing in the sewage of Hell.
