Well, from an Orwellian standpoint, the War on Drugs makes perfect sense.
What?
Is my tin-foil-hat on crooked, or something?
Hey, when are we going to get a tin-foil-hat smiley for GD?
In a recent development, it’s been confirmed that the human brain naturally produces morphine (the psychoactive metabolite of heroin). Corresponding animal study of neural tissue here. This provides good reason as to why some people really take to heroin, they’re morphine-deficient and just end up self-medicating.
I am coffee deficient and self medicate.
What?
It is for medicinal purposes.
It certainly is useful for those who are making lots of money from it, like attournies, police, prisons, judges, drug dealers, the mafia, etc. Ending the War on Drugs would be a serious problem, putting a lot of policemen and prison employees out of work, and it could even bankrupt the mafia. I dont know what these people, particular the mafia, would do to earn a living if drugs were not illegal.
Probably billions of dollars are being made off of illegal drugs and the war on drugs.
However, if you mean has it reduced drug use? then no. Since drugs have been made illegal, drug usage, and drug related crimes, have greatly increased, not decreased. Prior to the early 1900’s, I doubt that the average citizen, school teacher, or policeman, ever gave drugs, available to anyone at a drug store, a second thought.
I think that the war on drugs is a huge waste and failure. Sure I believe that it has saved some people’s lives and helped to better our society, but I believe that the money could be better spent elsewhere. For instance let’s close up our borders and work even harder at finding a cure for cancer instead of who is smoking some grass or rolling on x. It is my belief that if a person wants to do a specific drug he/she will eventually get their hands on it and try it out. Besides that, I’d rather teach my kids to make their own decisions about drugs and substances, not the government who is clearly only watching out for itself. (i.e. look at all the millions of dollars funding BS companies on the war on drugs). Sorry if this seems cut up and choppy, I am at work so…
Eh… no more replies to my questions above in post #13. Anyone?
I will give you a frontline example of how much of a waste the “war” on drugs is.
Recently a PO I work with made a traffic stop. That traffic stop yielded a small bag (less than 5 grams) of powder cocaine. That traffic stop used 3 officers, usually assigned to patrol, for 2 hours of searching and paperwork. Doing the math on it, making an average of $25 an hour, the PO’s used up $150.00 in taxpayer money to secure a $40.00 bag of powder cocaine. Not a huge waste in comparison to the rest of the government sector, but it gets more interesting.
The PO works the arrestee for information leading to the ‘bigger fish’ who, thinking he’s going to walk on the PCS charge, the arrestee reluctantly gives up.
This sets in motion a chain of events.
3 PO’s turn into 7 (2 on overtime) to do a drug buy to establish a pattern.
2 more 40.00 bags of powder cocaine are collected. This time though, the costs go up a bit. 5 PO’s at $25.00 an hour, 2 PO’s at $37.50 an hour, all for a total of 6 hours. Do the math again: A grand total of $80.00 worth of cocaine, for a total taxpayer contribution of $375.00
Whoops, one of the bags was ground aspirin! Still a felony, (look-a-like substance) but that means that we’ve pissed away $375.00 on $40.00 worth of cocaine and about seven cents worth of aspirin.
OK. The pattern is established. The search warrant is signed, which took another 2 hours of PO time, another $50.00.
The SWAT team is assembled, and pre-raid surveillance starts. These are slightly higher paid PO’s who will spend 2 full 24 hour days watching the house to be raided. So 3 PO’s paid $29.00 an hour spend 48 hours surveilling the property at a cost of $4176.00
With all the surveillance done, and the plan drawn up, the raid begins.
17 PO’s all paid, on average 27.00 an hour, assemble, plan, and execute the raid.
8 hours of planning, searching and paperwork equal $3672.00
And what was found at the raided house?
Nothing.
So let’s analyze it.
First Contact: $150.00
Sting: $375.00
Warrant: $50.00
Surveillance: $4176.00
Actual Raid: $3672.00
The grand total for getting 2 $40.00 bags of powder cocaine off the street?
$8,423.00
And we’ve not even begun to analyze the costs for lockup, holding, and the courts.
You want to know who’s winning the war on drugs?
The drug dealers, that’s who. When your competition can outspend you 8000 to 1, and do no damage to your bottom line, THAT my friend, is supply chain management. THAT is why the dealers are winning the war on waste. If the dealers were as regulated and as taxed and as micro-managed as the people that fight against them, drugs would be no more pandemic than alcohol and tobacco, and within seven years*, there would be no national debt*, every one who wanted it could have health care*, and we’d pay far less taxes every year*
*completely a WAG, but it sounds nice, don’t it?
GYAN,
You’ve read the reasons I think the WoD exists. It’s about the money.
I think in any smart legalization schema would include Marijuana and Hasish, smoking opium, and most, if not all, pills.
Here’s why.
- Marijuana is no more harmful than tobacco, in fact, in some cases less, and it has medicinal value.
- Ditto for Hash.
- Smoking opium was already legal before the 20th century, and has medicinal value.
- Pills would be standardized and have to follow the same rules and regualtions of any other drug, so we’d have safer recreational chemicals.
A note on No. 4.
Prescription medicine has, according to some accounts, killed something like 500,000 people a year (this may be bad data, as it’s off the top of my head) that’s a touch more than street drugs.
I think criminalizing the remainder with outrageous fines would keep people away from it, say $10,000 for heroin possession would probably do it.
This is flat-out wrong. Please, people, for once and for all alcohol is just as much a drug as pot or crack. There were millions of alcohol addicts in the 19th century (cite really necessary?). Thousands of men became addicted to narcotics after receiving treatment with morphine during the Civil War, and opium (smoked) was a major recreational drug.
I have also read that laudanum (tincture of opium) was the drug of choice for housewives, who took it for headaches, backaches, menstrual cramps. Great for calming those noisy babies, too! You could buy it in any drug store.
According to this cite,
[color=blue]By the early 1900s there were an estimated 250,000 [narcotics]addicts in the United States.
[/quote]
According to the [url=http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/popclockest.txt]Census Bureau
[/quote]
, the population in 1900 was 76,094,000. That means that about 1 in 304 persons was a dope addict.
Oh, brilliant coding there.
On the laudanum thing; my grandmother, a very proper sort of old lady, told me about that. A popular habit was to pour some over tobacco and wait for the alcohol to evaporate before smoking it. She didn’t really come out with dosages or anything but evidently 25 cents worth would keep someone stoned for quite a while.
Regards
Testy
I’ve heard/been told that the US has more people per-capita locked up than any other country and that a substantial portion of the difference is due to the WoD. Does anyone have some cites on this?
Thanks
Testy
And a quick google found this. Cannot vouch for accuracy.
Thanks. I should have known to check here first. I wonder how many of those folks doing time are there because of minor drug offenses. I know, “define minor.”
Regards
Testy
As I posted, it’s solely designed to make the US public think politicians are brave and doing something. :smack:
I expect anyone employed at the top is enjoying his fine salary. 
It’s so nice to have absolutely no need to produce any evidence your job matters.
Plus it’s ‘unpatriotic’ to object to such a fine sounding name. :rolleyes:
Well I’m against drugs that kill. So there goes tobacco and alcohol.
Oh dear. No chance of either.
One provides huge contributions to politicians and the other proved impossible to enforce.
Gosh, this ‘War’ is really easy to criticise, isn’t it?
Further points:
-
if the US intercepts a truly massive haul of cocaine, what happens?
The street price goes up, so the dealers still make money. Plus addicts get desperate so you can dilute the drug even further, thus stretching the profits. -
consider wealthy people (like politicians). Do you think they have any trouble getting drugs for themselves? Of course not.
So the US taxpayer pays people to fight a ‘War on drugs’. These people pay the drug dealers for drugs. So the US is funding both sides of the ‘War’.