In Columbia they sprayed the open, dedicated fields and the crops shifted into mixed crop fields and back brush areas.
The pressure on independent drug lords reduced their clout, but they were replaced with government bribe takers and enforcers.
In Afghanistan they grow more poppies now than ever before. The new buzz phrase is “give up on growers, stress interdiction efforts”.
But it seems clear enough to most critics that if all Columbian and all Afghanistani drugs were off the market that there would still be plenty coming from other sources, old and new.
Don’t we have more drugs around now than before the start of these international drug wars?
What’s up with all the drug threads lately?
My take: one would think the thirteen years of prohibition in the United States would have been a powerful lesson in politics and human psychology that would be heeded by future generations. Yet somehow we always seem to miss the point.
Yes.
Next question.
Ahch. A little more substance, provided by Milton Friedman.
Personally I’d tax and regulate if I was in charge. We could use the revenues.
Don’t worry I have the same feeling, every every every every major attempt to disrupt opium, cocaine or any other drugs trade has failed. What I want to know is why they always fail and we never find ways to eradicate the problem.
Because so many people don’t want it to succeed ( such as all the drug users and sellers ), and because the people involved are willing participants, to one degree or another. It’s much harder to catch people involved in “victimless” crimes. Because the “drug warriors” are so obnoxious and destructive that they lose their moral ascendency. And, finally, because it’s so profitable.
My opinion is the US war on drugs has created so many agencies, employs so many people, and generates so much revenue for the government there’s really no incentive at all to actually win the war. It’s a cash cow that allows us to continue to meddle in the affairs of other nations as well as that of individual citizens right here in America.
The war on drugs is not about the drugs at all, IMO. Do you really think those who oversee the DEA and draft its mandates care one whit about personal narcotic use insofar as its ostensible damage to American society? It’s all political. I believe the unstated policy when it comes to access by US citizens is at best one of containment; allow the drugs to filter into certain areas while managing the perimeter.
The idea of legalizing, regulating and taxing drugs is good on its face, and would generate a quite sizeable, perpetual income for the government, but the main problem with that is the government makes much more with the current system, and it doesn’t have to deal with the myriad controls that would have to be put into place to manage it.
Also, under the current system, the government and its agencies (DEA and ATF) can run their shows with very little, if any, oversight. Agents in the field can be clandestine and run invisible projects the general public never knows about. Money enters the country in huge sums that can be divied-up any way the agencies please. Who’s to say that $30 million siezed isn’t actually $130 million? Under a legislated system of legalized narcotics there’d have to be accounting, and all the free-wheeling enjoyed now would be much harder.
The current system is just hunky-dory for the government. Like everything else, they say they’re fighting a war on drugs and, like lemmings, we, for the most part, simply follow their lead and take them at their word.
Also, what Der Trihs said above 
I agree that the US government can conceal all sorts of projects in drug war expenditure.
But where does the revenue you talk about come from? 
The drugs the Government seizes are destroyed, so they have no value.
And the money the Government spends on the drug war could be better spent elsewhere.
Just like prohibition, US consumers are prepared to pay for drugs, which makes it profitable to import them.
Making them illegal just sends the prices up, prevents quality control and channels the profits to foreign warlords and home-grown criminals.
The revenue come from us the tax payers. Without the war they cannot justify getting the money from us and it goes to some other program. If the war on drugs is canceled at lot of people have to find honest work.
Are you certain about that? No. How could you be?
Better for whom? Oh, us, the citizens. Well that’s not really the point of the drug war, IMO. If the US really wanted to eliminate or significantly curtiail access to illegal narcotics they would, but contrary to whatever’s stated I don’t believe it’s in the government’s best political interests to do so. The government is too much invested in the infrastructure it’s set up and I do believe, again, that it’s insanely profitable.
Exactly. And legalizing drugs diminishes profit and trades an unaccountable bureaucracy for an accountable one, and why would the government want that?
Totally futile.
I don’t use any drugs but it isn’t the government’s business if I do, anyway.
I think Mike Royko made a point some years back that making drugs legal would not suddenly make addicts of those not already inclined, and that current drug wars do not seem to have an impact on those who are already inclined.
Complete waste of time, money and lives. Let 'em grow. Let 'em import–I’m fine with some sort of effort to tax and regulate, if we don’t go overboard. And for the poor souls whose lives are so wretched they gain some satisfaction out of using drugs–well, it’s their life to spend.
Karl Marx, I think, said that “Religion is …the opium of the people.” 25 years of medicine have convinced me that opium is the opium of the people (although religion ranks up there somewhere…).
As prohibition proved, banning widely accepted substances subsidizes criminal activity.
It also criminalizes ordinary people.
If we quit funding interdiction and jailing ,we could fund clinics and research. There are some governments we hate that are subsidized by drugs. Would be fun to watch drug lords go broke. Our police would get cleaned up too. How much political bribery would end? It would only be good.
It is futile because the only way to have a truly effective interdiction on drugs would be to destroy America as we know it. Look at Singapore. It has some of the most draconian drug laws in the world. Police can search and seize without warrants, they can compel ANYONE to undergo testing, they have the death penalty for dealing, and they have a population that’s a tiny fraction of the size of the US’s. And they still have people addicted to illegal drugs. It can’t work.
We will never stamp out theivery, murder or rape either.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d vote to make Weed legal, but just because we will never stamp out the problem forever is no reason to say it’s “futile”.
Not at all the same thing. First, we can make a much larger dent in those, because criminals with unwilling victims are easier to catch. If someone kills me, he has to worry about hiding my body or otherwise avoid getting caught; if I were to buy drugs from someone, I’d be trying to conceal the crime along with him.
Second, stopping even a single murder or rape or to a lesser degree a theft is a victory in itself. Stop the sale of some drugs, and at most the street price goes up a tiny fraction.
Maybe one kid doesn’t get hooked on crack or meth= a victory.
Maybe that kid would stick to good quality dope if it were available
- maybe not, in which case the kid gets hooked provided crack or meth is available
- and empirically we can say that illegality does not inhibit availability
Or the kid gets killed by the violence that always springs up when criminals take over drug distribution. The link between Tommy gun ownership and membership in the alcoholic beverage industry went up rather sharply during Prohibition.
Not that illicit drug users are a huge percentage of the population.
Maybe the enforcers are also willing participants.
Agreed. It’s hard to see a possession crime taking place, since possession is not a concrete act, but only a state of existing conditions.