Why is the war on drugs such an expensive and ineffective disaster?

Question

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fleming5-2008jul05%2C0%2C3205714.story

Answer 1

Because you are trying to stop human nature.

And, it always wins.

If you shut the borders and no drugs get through, they will be making drugs in labs in the hills.

Or growing their own, or breaking out granddads still.

Tax the stuff, regulate it strength, then maybe we will have a fighting chance at keeping its use under control

Answer 2

because the majority of the people in the country could care less...

and because it makes no sense... the law exists to protect you from others.. not from yourself.. the war on drugs is designed to keep you from having access to drugs so you don't hurt yourself.

Answer 3

Its a racket that perpetuates an incarceration industry.

It also allows police to shake people down.

I don't see any benefit to the war on drugs but it does create an arttificial demand, makes money for drug cartels, and funds local police departments that confiscate money , property and assets.

Its just like prohibition.

Answer 4

Ever heard of Prohibition?

It didn't work either.

Answer 5

It's not.  Ron Paul supporters need new talking points.

Answer 6

There is so much money to be made, that when you wipe out one drug syndicate, another is ready and willing to step into the gap. Legalize it and control it is really the only answer. I hate the idea of drugs and will not indulge myself. But like cigarettes and alcohol, at least it can be controlled.

Answer 7

Yep.

Because of the DEMAND for illegal drugs.

Just like LBJ's War on Poverty.   Poverty won.

Because people Wanted to be on Welfare.

There is a DEMAND for Poverty.

And a DEMAND for Illegal Drugs.

Answer 8

The war on drugs is cheap as it is d**k heads in government and the police force that make it expensive .Red tape everything .The honest local policeman is told to shut his mouth and sit in the office and i have seen this . Cocaine cartels,marijuana cartels,ecstacy cartels and speed cartels all pay off the police to ruin this world for many and i have seen many dishonest police watch innocent kids get addicted then the police sit on there asses drinking a VB beer laughing with pockets fulls of cash and the innocent die in the gutter of australia .I think some police are the garbage of australia .The war on drugs is cheap with honest police but today in 2008 where do you find that honest police who like in the old days would pick that child out of the gutter .The police of today cannot be trusted with children welfare or the government cannot be trusted to wage the war on drugs.

Answer 9

Reading news from one media outlet alone is hardly going to give you the full picture now is it?

Answer 10

Because it has been a stupid plan form the beginning.  A real war on drugs would be death penalties for dealers and suppliers, blowing up crack houses, firing missiles at out of country manufacturing places etc.

Answer 11

Because it was intended to be. If it were meant to be a war that could actually be WON, it would have been won long ago. Just like the "War on Terrorism," its creators designed it to go on indefinitely as long as the public could be fooled into supporting it.

It is fascinating just how many "wars" America has been in since the last time Congress actually declared a state of war. (december 1941, 66 years and counting)

Back before World War 2, people actually took the constitutional prohibition of a standing federal army seriously, and congress didn't try to fund a major military in peacetime. Seems like the Cold War made people willingly forget that part of the constitution, unfortunately when the cold war ended it stayed forgotten.

In the first decades after WW2, the government was careful not to appear to be making war without declaration. The Korean war was officially called a "police action," and the invasion of Viet Nam was called simply a "conflict."

Eventually I guess people got comfortable throwing the word "war" around though. Johnson's war on poverty, Reagan's war on drugs. Didn't Nixon have a war on s**t or something... By the time the gulf war happened (again without any diplomatic or congressional declaration),

war was just a word for a fun month's recreation for the government.  

Every government uses "war" as a means of motivating and manipulating its people into compliance. A call to arms stirs people's patriotic emotions. Since 1944 the US government has had the population in a constant state of "war against this" or "war on that." It is meant to go on forever, as opposed to declared war which has concrete objectives and ends in a few years with diplomatic finality.