How do we end the Drug War?

Question

Too many people in prison, no effect on drugs in the streets. What do we do?

Answer 1

Legalize or at least decriminalize drugs. The examples of other countries who have decriminalized drug use indicates that crime and violence decreases and that alcohol use decreases also.
The real reason drugs are illegal is money....and it will never be legalized in the US as long as organized crime keeps greasing the hands of politicians to keep it illegal.

Answer 2

Anyone who suggest the war on drugs is successful is most likely naive and gullible or a politician with a motive to dupe you into supporting the tens and thousands of beaurocrats pockets who in turn support the politician. The war on drugs employs thousands of people in the US government and reaps in billions in taxation of the working people to fund this conglomerate. The longer the war last the wealthier the drug lords are becoming to the eventual point of amassing so much wealth that no goverment could affordably counter them. Eventual defeat will open avenues for the drug lords to surface thier money into legitimate business ventures. Much like the mob did after prohibition. Many american firms are laced with mob money from a long time ago. Not mom and pop stores but massive corporations that we deal with directly or indirectly daily. In mexico there is hardly anything you can buy produced in that country that some part of that product is not owned by a drug cartel. The way the drug war is done today is a money maker for both sides and the benifactors will battle tooth and nail to prevent anyone from taking that away.

Answer 3

The thing to understand is that it will not end. The drug war is about money. The money trickles to every level from Federal to local. At one time it may have been about prohibition, but that stopped being a factor long ago. Billions are spent yearly in this futile exercise and how many countless people are jailed for the heinous crime of buying a bag on a street corner. In the end all we have accomplished with the drug war is the same we accomplished with alcohol prohibition. We have created a huge and very lucrative criminal enterprise. The only reasonable course is legalization and regulation, but it just isn't going to happen because government has never been reasonable.

Answer 4

The so-called drug war has been with us for perhaps 75 years. The 'war' targets drug growers, sellers, buyers and users. Its chief weapon is the criminal law, vigorously enforced by vast numbers of state and federal agents, police and prosecutors. It has been a very successful war - gradually destroying our courts, our cities, our budgets, our morals, and other countries. It has failed in one respect only: it has had no inhibiting effect upon the traffic in drugs. Indeed, that traffic, as a direct result of our criminal laws, has increased. It is time to consider some form of legalization.

Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the 1920s and 1930s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does. ...Trying to wage war on 23 million Americans who are obviously very committed to certain recreational activities is not going to be any more successful than Prohibition was.

The question George Bush, along with Clinton, Gingrich, Gore and all the other boomer politicians who have admitted to a walk on the wild side but saw the error of their ways and support the drug laws now more than ever should be required to answer is simple. "At what point in your drug-using career would it have been a good thing for you to get arrested and go to prison?

The core point im trying to make is that people engage in illicit trade not because they are fundamentally immoral or wicked, but because there is profit in doing so. Stopping them from doing so must thus involve making the activity less profitable — in many cases by removing the restrictions that create the profits in the first place. A useful message to policymakers would be: you may ignore economics but economics isn't going to ignore you.

"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
- Abraham Lincoln

Answer 5

First, legalize marijuana. We need to let the youth know that yes, you can smoke pot and come out okay in the end, but no, you shouldn't smoke to excess or drive stoned. And no, it's not harmless but far less harmful than alcohol. Legal marijuana would be sold by legitimate retailers instead of sketchy drug dealers. That is one way to remove the "gateway effect" created by putting marijuana in a category with harder drugs.

Second, provide guilt-free treatment for anyone who decides that (s)he has a drug problem. Be positive! Don't dwell on the addiction, dwell on liberation from the addiction!

Third, spend police resources on violent crime and white-collar crime instead of victimless crimes. Law enforcement is so bogged down with the Drug War that it can't do its traditional job of pursuing murder, rape, robbery, fraud, etc. Stress the importance of cops GETTING BACK TO WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO.

Fourth, provide a living income for all citizens through public jobs programs, job training, education, wage supplements, basically anything to help the poor, especially the working poor, so they don't turn to drug dealing.

Answer 6

I was going to say legalize some of them so you can concentrate on getting rid of the harsher drugs. But if folks wanna get high they will.

So make the penalties tougher. I know you've heard it before. But make jail horrible. If their on death row, be dead next year. Two prisoners to a cell, make it 4. Prison is over crowded, don't release them, crowd them in. Make jail uncomfortable as hell. No cable, no weights, no fun. We have homeless people that need the $ we waste taking care of prisoners. And don't think I'm just being mean to strangers either, I have 3 relatives doing or have done time for drug related crimes. And one only quit cause he had a son. The other 2 abandoned their kids. They chose something else.

I don't think the drug war will ever end. New drugs are being created. And I include over the counter/ from your doctor drugs in the drug war too. There's and illegal market for all of it.

Answer 7

Legalize it, except the Drug Lords will go bust, so they don't want that.

Look at the Netherlands. A hash finger that costs thousands or tens of thousands here costs like $50 there.

Answer 8

A good place to start would be to stop prosecuting the Border Patrol for going after the smugglers. Two agent are going to prison for more than 10 years for shooting a smuggler who had brought in over 700 pounds.

Answer 9

I agree. is sensible. Small and helpful reduce. Obama is already liberating illegals in ICE custody as area of the reduce. So, he will end the warfare on unlawful immigration and white flag it? yet, nonetheless needs the warfare on drugs?

Answer 10

Legalize drugs.