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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The government persists with the drug war because Americans have a moral opposition to drug use: http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/study-public-fe.... When I was a kid in the 1990's, 70-80% of polled adults wanted to make even marijuana illegal. For drugs aside from marijuana, that's still the case.

Your alternate theories about money and control directly contradict the history of prohibition. Did you know that at the time alcohol prohibition was instituted, fully 1/3 of the federal budget came from liquor taxes? Alcohol producers were incredibly powerful, yet their product was banned because of moral panic. To a significant degree, women's' suffrage happened when it did so they could vote for prohibition.

There is a great PBS series on this: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition. It's a story of a grass-roots national movement of Americans, many of them heretofore politically marginalized, rising up against money and power to effect change.

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You have the moral panic thing backwards. Alcohol is by far the greatest cause of addiction, addiction-related violence, and economic misery due to substance abuse. So much so that hard drug use and addiction is a drop in the bucket. Alcohol prohibition was relatively well-supported in social reform theories compared to the Drug War. There is no functional basis to support legal bans on psychedelics and soft drugs.

The results of the Drug War are so racially biased as to make it effectively a New Jim Crow, and it makes one suspect that a lot of support for the Drug War, especially the part not based in drug-scare propaganda, is based in racism.

And that's not even getting to the employment of police, prison guards, parole officers, court officials, etc. that are highly dependent on the Drug War. And before you claim the prison population are not mostly drug offenders, take a look as the "customers" of the CJ system: a million and a half arrests per year, hundreds of thousands of prison sentences, and 20% of black people having served time for drug arrests, etc. It's highly racist and highly remunerative to the employees and vendors of the CJ system.

Alcohol is by far the greatest cause of addiction, addiction-related violence, and economic misery due to substance abuse.

I don't think it's been established that alcohol causes alcoholism. In fact, research shows that excessive drinking does not correlate with alcoholism[0]. A much stronger predictor of alcoholism is SES. So if we really want to fight alcoholism, we should be fighting poverty.

[0] http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/14_0329.htm

As far as I know, there are two broad types of addiction... physical addiction and psychological addiction. In terms of addiction to substances, people that become physically addicted to a substance will experience physical withdrawl symptoms if that substance is taken away. Psychological addiction is based on repeatedly trying to fix a psychological issue with a substance.

People are much more likely to become psychologically addicted to alcohol than physically addicted. Alcohol provides an escape mechanism for social issues, it is that quality that makes it addictive, it doesn't need to have the same level of physical addictiveness of other drugs in order to be addictive.

I feel you're right that, at the end of the day, prohibition has been based on public opinion. That said, the government does benefit from reasons OP mentioned, and thus politicians may be likely to push an agenda that strongly supports a war on drugs when speaking to constituents, rather than having an open conversation about the pros and cons of decriminalization.

Exactly. The history said, in this case, that money and power did not win the dispute, not that their influence does not exist or should be considered negligible.

So, if in the case of drugs, society moral standards, money and power are all at the same side; what's the chance of grassroot movement changing the laws?

That question was not rethorical, but giving my own answer, I think the path is changing the perception about drug addicts. That they are ill people, not criminals. If the social perception of a drug addict is the same as an alcoholic, then there is a chance of stopping the war on drugs.

You're ignoring a morally significant dimension to the problem. Nobody becomes a drug addict by accident. They choose to do drugs and take the risk not just of bodily harm, but of becoming unable to support their families and becoming a burden on society. And your suggestion is that society should spend money to treat them of an illness that was their fault to begin with.

I happen to agree with you that treatment, not prosecution is the answer for drug addicts. But there's legitimate moral reasons to oppose the idea.

Besides that, drug use is already well on its way to becoming decriminalized. The drug war is aimed not at users, but mainly at importers and purveyors. That poses another moral question: if drugs are harmful and addictive, why can't society ban people from selling them, like it does for all sorts of other harmful products? I understand the cost-benefit justification (bans are ineffective), but voters aren't driven by cost-benefit analysis. There are legitimate moral reasons to oppose the idea that we should just let people defy society and sell harmful products just because we can't effectively prevent them from doing so.

"Nobody becomes a drug addict by accident."

If I choose to take drugs without the intention of becoming addicted, and I become addicted, then yes, I became addicted by accident. Even if I was aware of the risks of becoming addicted.

Much like how if I decide to drive my car without the intention of hitting anyone, then if I hit someone, it is deemed an accident. Even if I was aware of the risks of hitting someone with my car.

The analogy is "I decide to drive my car" while drunk "then I hit someone".

In which case you are responsible. There is no accident.

It's all a question of probabilities and risk. The probability to hit someone while driving normally are pretty weak, and the consequences fairly low in normal circumstances (i.e. while you respect every law). When drunk, the probabilities go through the roof, as well as how damaging the consequences can be.

When you start to take drugs, even considering all the surrounding context, the consequences can be terrible and the probabilities are quite high.

So no, it not an accident, assuming you see yourself as a human being, able to think about these. If you see yourself as a victim who couldn't foresee anything, then good for you.

I agree with your assertments about drinking and driving and the probabilities of harmful outcomes.

I just don't think it is a good analogy for hardcore drug use. Many of us did not choose to start taking drugs. Not with any real sense of context. The consequences are very often "not real" until they become "all too real."

A better analogy, would be "What do you do when you find yourself in a car moving at high speed with no brakes and no control over speed?"

This analogy specifically does not mention how you got into that position. Because its sort of irrelevant how your brakes came to be shot. What is relevant is how you can stop without causing damage to anyone else - in this situation, like with hardcore drug use, everyone involved is a victim. My point here is that recovery and harm reduction are not about casting blame. They are about finding a damn barrier to run into instead of a minivan full of kids.

The whole "drug users are victims" makes absolutely no more sense that "any criminal is a victim". You can't find a single person in the world who doesn't have bad circumstances. Even the people at Goldman-Sachs may have had a bad history of bullying, a difficult childhood because of divorce, a family that induced an unhealthy relation to competition or money, whatever. This example is not even a joke. Many "privileged" people had really bad psychological circumstances. But you won't say that any of the wall street crooks are victims.

I know a guy who spent 8 years of his life in prison, in many visits, mostly for petty theft and drug use/traffic (mostly cannabis). He had a really horrible life, and is a pretty cool guy, although he's obviously still struggling with addiction. He often says "there are only innocent people in prison, at least they all say that".

> "The whole "drug users are victims" makes absolutely no more sense that "any criminal is a victim"."

What about people who become addicted to prescription drugs like painkillers and sleeping tablets? There may have been sound medical reasons for their use at the start.

Why does the word "victim" matter either way? We should treat drug abuse as a health matter; some people can have a few drinks and eventually get addicted and can't stop drinking every night, others are not affected that way. My mom smoked until she died from cancer, me I never smoked so I avoided the biological component of nicotine addition fortunately.

> The analogy is "I decide to drive my car" while drunk "then I hit someone".

That's an analogy, but so is just driving. There is a risk of being presented with a situation in which you cannot avoid hitting someone every time you drive (the risk is significantly greater if you drink, but it is present irrespective.) If knowing that a risk exists with an action is sufficient to make it "not an accident" if the risk materializes when you have chosen to take the action, even when you have no intention for the risk to materialize, and even the contrary intention, then there is no such thing as an "accidental" collision -- whether with a pedestrian or another vehicle -- while driving.

If that principle, OTOH, is invalid and it is possible to have an accidental collision when driving, then the principle cannot be invoked to argue that no one becomes addicted to drugs accidentally.

The probably of hitting someone while drunk driving on a given day are actually fairly low, as in under 1%. The real issue is people get into the habit of driving drunk and some people will drive drunk 3-4 days a week for a decade. It's the aggregate numbers that are a problem, when 10+ million people drive drunk at least once a month it was a huge issue even if most of them never get into an accident.

People like to pretend driving drunk is somehow different from driving tired, but the risks are actually similar. In fact a large chunk of 'drunk driving' accidents have more to do with people driving home late than intoxicated. Speeding, talking even just to passengers, and just flat out not paying attention also present major risks.

PS: 13x low odds are still generally low odds. http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittPorterHo...

> But there's legitimate moral reasons to oppose the idea.

Are those the same "moral reasons" that people opposed the idea of suffrage and civil rights?

Actually, a fairly large number of people do get addicted accidentally. It often starts with a serious injury, leading to prescribed painkillers, and even using as directed by your physician can develop a dependence. Not to mention those with chronic pain who can't just stop taking them. And that dependence can take over and escalate very easily. I've seen and heard of plenty of hardworking upstanding people one would never expect becoming addicts and eventually turning to illegal means to scratch the itch.

And then there's the other end of things, where you've got young teens experimenting and getting hooked while they are young and stupid.

Or those who are being abused or suffering mental health issues with no access to mental health services, and end up self-medicating just to get by. You can say 'they should have just gotten help' but it's hardly that easy, even for an adult, and you can't expect a 14yo kid with apathetic (or worse) parents to figure out how to get help for themselves or even know that they need that sort of help. Never mind the stigma associated with seeking help.

So no, even look at morality and not cost, it's very closed-minded to assume all drug addicts should be held to blame for their own addiction and just left to wallow in their misery.

There is considerable overlap between people who've experienced abuse and people who are addicted to drugs.

In that light your comments about "they chose to do it" are horrible. People are self-medicating to relieve trauma. It might not be an effective way to relieve trauma, but given the piss-poor state of psychological treatment or judicial system for survivors of abuse it's not surprising people end up with sub-optimal solutions.

The comments were horrible? I don't think so. There are also a lot of selfish people using drugs who screw others over at every turn. And you can't ignore that fact. A lot of people need to hit bottom in the process to recovery so you can't just give them the "victim" label either, it's about personal responsibility as well for MANY people. I'm not discounting abuse or whatever happenstance, but some are just bad people and it's not "horrible" to consider the reality of what they've done. Because some perpetrators of violent crime were victims before, but they have responsibility towards awareness and however they learn to come to terms with it is on them, not us.

I'm not saying there are not legitimate moral reasons to oppose decriminalizing drugs (although I disagree with them). I'm just saying that if you want to decriminalize drugs, the most effective way in my opinion is to convince those that oppose it based on moral reasons to change their mind.

The same moral reasons you listed to condemn drug addicts can be applied to alcohol addicts. But those are saw more as ill people by the same society that consider drug addicts criminals. So I think it is a possible path.

I was prescribed Xanax, for anxiety attacks. The doctor verbally said to take it as needed, but did not warn of addictive potential.

The bottle however, states to take 2x daily, no warning about addiction.

Luckily, I am educated and intelligent, so I avoid taking it unless absolutely necessary, and now go months without needing it.

I have friends who were not so lucky - they interpreted "as needed" as to mean "as the bottle says if I feel any tinge of axiety". They got addicted and at best, had to go through expensive rehab programs. At worst, they succumbed to depression and died from it.

Please, do tell more me how a PhD student who follows their doctor's instructions, assuming they are a fellow expert, should be judged as having a moral failure.

touching story... nowhere I ever lived in europe I met people that got hooked on these prescription drugs (and even ended up worse), at least I didn't know. is this just my case? or some laws in US are less prohibitive (but where are the doctor's morals? don't tell me all are rotten)

http://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/pdf/hhs_prescription_drug_ab...

you might find this interesting reading then. here's a quote from the executive summary.

> The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented drug overdose epidemic. Drug overdose death rates have increased five-fold since 1980.1 By 2009, drug overdose deaths outnumbered deaths due to motor vehicle crashes for the first time in the U.S. Prescription drugs, especially opioid analgesics, have been increasingly involved in drug overdose deaths.

Clearly, we need more Drug War.

"Nobody becomes a drug addict by accident" is a remarkably ignorant way to describe the process of addiction.

> Nobody becomes a drug addict by accident.

Not true. Many people reasonably take the pills their doctor gives them and end up with an addiction.

> That poses another moral question: if drugs are harmful and addictive, why can't society ban people from selling them

Because you can't. It failed. It's not a moral question. In fact, that's specifically the problem.

> but voters aren't driven by cost-benefit analysis.

So, what of it? We should keep doing things we know don't work because the uninformed don't understand?

>> but voters aren't driven by cost-benefit analysis. >So, what of it? We should keep doing things we know don't work because the uninformed don't understand?

So we live in a democracy, and so have to pay at least some attention to what the people want.

The alternative is a dictatorship of some sort. Historically, those tend to ignore cost-benefit analysis and whether or not things actually work just as much as any democracy. Main difference is that the opinions of only one or a handful of people matter, and you have no access to influence those opinions, no matter what you think of them.

Sure we care what the people want. If they don't want to die in fires we hire fire-professionals and fund them to prevent and extinguish fires, teach fire-safety, etc.

Somehow people don't consider it a dictatorship that we don't poll the common person for fire-safety law...

And especially in an area (drugs) where we know that hundreds of millions of dollars of propaganda and advertising have been spent on teaching lies, we shouldn't pretend that polling the victims is going to be informative in relation to their natural (untampered) desires.

> "So we live in a democracy, and so have to pay at least some attention to what the people want."

Why isn't marijuana legal across the US then?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/186260/back-legal-marijuana.aspx

We don't live in a democracy for exactly those reasons. We have a Constitution to prevent the will of the people from doing certain things. We have representatives to temper the will of the people even more.

We are very purposefully NOT a democracy, because it is well understood that majority rule for everything is VERY bad for the minority, and EVERYONE is a minority in some aspect of their lives.

> if drugs are harmful and addictive, why can't society ban people from selling them, like it does for all sorts of other harmful products?

That begs the question: should society ban the sale of harmful products? I can buy: a sword; a gun; a packet of cigarettes; arsenic; cyanide; Doritos; Dianetics; Season 1 of Survivor and so forth. All of these things may be argued by some to be harmful (and by others not to be).

Why may I not choose to buy cocaine, LSD or marijuana as well?

The reason is people take it as given if you mess yourself up the rest of us will have to pay for your treatment. If I have to pay for your mistakes, then I want some say in what you're doing.

Personally, I'd rather live in a more libertarian society, where you could do whatever you want (to yourself) and accept the consequences. But that's not the society we live in.

But alcohol and tobacco are just as harmful in the sense of having to pay for the treatments and the damage to others as the rest of the drugs. Why ignore them?

It really makes no sense...

There are all sorts of restrictions on alcohol and tobacco. In the US alcohol would be illegal if the government hadn't tried and failed to make it illegel.

All sorts, except the sort that applies to all the rest of the drugs. It still makes no sense.

Alcohol would be illegal in the US if they hadn't tried and failed already.

I fail to see how that is relevant.

Alcohol is a drug, it is known for certain to be toxic, its abuse, and possibly even use (over years) is harmful.... yet society allows its use and even promotes it (and in Britain, its abuse is encouraged)

Yet alcoholics tend to be regarded as having an illness and are not treated as criminals, as opposed to what heroin addicts go through. Any discussion of the drug war that doesn't involve a discussion of the hypocrisy around alcohol is sorely lacking. And the drug war is about users - the UK government is currently stealthily spreading fear based propaganda around cannabis use through charity type organizations that are not obviously tied to the government.

And morality? Forget it. There really is no such thing as morality in Western societies today, except around the extreme things like pedophilia... and even then, that was hidden under the rug for decades - e.g. Jimmy Savile or the Catholic Church. Trying to bring morality into this sort of discussion is a feint. Morality tends to be an excuse for authoritarian attitudes and positions.

The best solution is to have an informed populace. Harm minimization and a more sophisticated understanding around altered states and psychological/spiritual issues by society. But that sort of thing does not mesh well with the agenda of a lot of politicians and other people.

> The drug war is aimed not at users, but mainly at importers and purveyors.

oh please. go tell that to the black community.

Alcoholism is a disease, but it's the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.

"Dammit Otto, you're an alcoholic!" vs. "Dammit Otto, you have lupus!"

But there's legitimate moral reasons to oppose the idea.

No. First, your assumptions around choice, etc. encode a whole panoply of privileged thinking. That all people have the same information, peer support, life context, apparent access to life paths and choices, etc. But let's just let that go. The other replies re: accidental addiction and a whole host of other information out there contradicts this position well enough.

The real problem with this conclusion is that it is morally illegitimate to allow a social and humanitarian problem to persist, intensify, and spread because of any so-called moral position. "Morality" that creates a set of decisions (punish drug users!) but ignores the ultimate moral fallout of those decisions is itself a position bereft of actual morality.

I think you're conflating the motives of agencies within the Executive branch with members of the legislature.

While it may be possible (for the sake of argument) that the DEA and CIA are extremely self-interested in the status quo, I fail to see the link to a career politician, who answers to corporate and private donors and sometimes constituents.

A congressman and an agency head have orthogonal goals and are accountable to vastly different interests.

The drug prohibition is a direct effect of the lift of alcohol prohibition: officials and LE officers needed something to do after there was no more alcohol smuggling to go after, so a new target was invented.

Public opinion does not drive policy in this case, it is driven by policy. The public has been whipped up into a frenzy about drugs for years using various fear tactics, primarily racism to scare them into having a particular opinion which you now cite as "the majority's moral opposition". The moral opposition is trained as part of a concerted and very successful propaganda campaign.

> The drug prohibition is a direct effect of the lift of alcohol prohibition: officials and LE officers needed something to do after there was no more alcohol smuggling to go after, so a new target was invented.

That's a ridiculous proposition. There was a 40+ year gap between the two.

> The public has been whipped up into a frenzy about drugs for years using various fear tactics

Nixon coined the term "drug war" in 1971. Ever since then, public support for legalizing marijuana has been steadily growing: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1657/illegal-drugs.aspx. I don't think that jives with your theory of causation.

What I see in that graph is that Americans get more pro-marijuana as they see the oppressive effects of the out-of-control drug war, overcoming their deference to authority

Also as people learn about the benefits versus the negative aspects through studies showing that there can be benefits under certain circumstances and that its use can be good for some people and that even abuse, compared to other controlled substances, is not that bad.

In other words people have better understanding of the narcotic, its effect and how it can benefit some people.

Not really. Cannabis and narcotics were banned in a big series of regulations between 1906 and 1937 in the USA. That was the first war on drugs. The 2nd came in the early 1980's. recommend reading Johann Hari's "Chasing the Scream" for a definitive history of the war of drug prohibition, especially Harry Anslinger's campaign against Marijuana from 1930-1937, which indeed stemmed significantly from the lift of alcohol prohibition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger

Anslinger was one of the most serious bureaucratic prohibitionists, immediately after its repeal was appointed to commission the agency associated with drug prohibition, did a 180 on all of his positions on Marijuana, and doctored scientific evidence to push for a new enforcement target, since he was given a large powerful agency with very little to do. Without a witch to hunt the witch hunter fades from relevance, so he manufactured one, and that's why we are where we are today.

The 1936 classic "Reefer Madness" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness ) would like a word with you about how all was hunky dory in the world of drugs between Prohibition and Nixon...

  > Public opinion does not drive policy in this case, it is driven by policy.

If that were true, then marijuana wouldn't have been legalized in various states as soon as public opinion favored it.

Public opinion already favors it in nearly every state. The only states that have even mostly legalized it are Washington and Colorado.

We can just look at the results: "one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_incarcerated_Afr...)

Just apply the standards we'd use for any official enemy nation. The US jails more of its own populace than anyone else. For many people, the US is effectively a police state. Highly effective outcome of the drug war: social control of certain population segments.

We can research who's been targeted historically: Irish (and other) immigrants by alcohol prohibition. Mexican immigrants by marijuana prohibition. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron....)

Is it true that > The government persists with the drug war because Americans have a moral opposition to drug use:

> Americans have a moral opposition to drug use, because the government persists with the drug war ?

Impressionable children are indoctrinated against drug use, by US law enforcement, in US public schools.

> 70-80% of polled adults wanted to make even marijuana illegal.

That's impossible, because marijuana already was illegal. If that number is correct, is measures keeping marijuana illegal (maintaining status quo), not making marijuana illegal. You can't extrapolate that to a choice people would make when not constrained by history, and when not constrained by the persuasive force of current law.

> Impressionable children are indoctrinated against drug use, by US law enforcement, in US public schools.

That's one theory, but it does not jive with the data. Millennials grew up with teachers shrieking "just say no!" at school assemblies. They were the most heavily propagandized generation with regards to the drug war. Much more so than their baby boomer teachers who grew up in the 1960's. Yet they're the ones leading the way on legalization of marijuana. So how can you say that moral opposition to drug use exists because of propaganda, when the more heavily propagandized generation is also the one with the least opposition to drugs?

I have a different theory. Moral opposition to drug usage is based on the need to establish social norms that discourage escapism and dependency. In an industrial society with booming demand for labor, that's an important social norm to instill in people. But in a post-industrial, automated society, with a robust safety net, that becomes much less important. It's not like teenagers sitting in their basement smoking pot today would otherwise be going off to work at busy factories building a solid future for their families.

The propaganda was not particularly effective while aimed at children since its primary vehicle was tying opposition of drug use as a way to signal and support racism which was a particular societal trait the children had not yet learned. Opposition of drug use was a way to express racism without actually expressing it once it became taboo following the civil rights era.

The racism strategy was a much more powerful and effective tool for the older generation. There has been an attempt to continue to artificially associate drugs with other 'bad things' (terrorism, for example) now that associating something with black people isn't a guaranteed way to make people hate it, but success has been limited.

The illegality of drugs means that criminal organisations use the manufacture and supply of drugs as one way to make money.

Terrorist organisations need to smuggle things into and out of their target country (weapons, money, people) and so they have expertise that they can use to smuggle drugs.

This link between terrorist groups and drugs is not new.

Even groups who are strongly anti-drugs end up having connections to drug dealing groups. The Provisional IRA was anti-drug, the Real IRA is so anti-drug that it's joined up with anti drug vigilantes, but there are links as far back as 1990 between pIRA and FARC and Columbian drug money.

To try to deny the links between terrorist groups and drug smuggling is weird in the face of so much evidence. Drugs were used as payment for the Madrid bombings.

There's no intentional link usually. It's just the best illegal source of income. If it dried up they'd be smuggling blood diamonds, etc.

Terrorism is a gateway crime. :D

This reminds me of an article I read where somebody recommended abolishing the $100 note, as it was too associated with crime, and it would inconvenience criminals to have to carry bigger bundles of $20s. I wonder if/how often criminal organizations use drugs as a substitute for money for being easier to transport, verify, etc. I wonder how much that would increase if they did abolish the $100.

It might help, but drug dealers are pretty resourceful.

England has seen people using Fixed Odds Betting machines to launder money.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/08/gambling-mach...

> James, 24, looks like just another lost soul in the high street, shuttling between the six betting shops in an east coast seaside town. It's a weekday morning and if you catch up with him inside a bookmaker, you'll find him peering intently into the green glowing screen of an electronic gambling machine – feeding in £200, "a score at a time".

> But this is not a young gambler blowing his meagre wages. James is a drug dealer and his interest in the bookmakers – and the fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) in each shop – is all about laundering money. "That's what turns dirty money clean," he says. Dealers feed their drug money through the machines, losing a little and then cashing out with the vast majority of their stake, James says. They can then collect a printed ticket showing they have gambled that day – meaning that if stopped by police, they can answer questions about why an apparently unemployed young man carries hundreds of pounds in rolled-up cash.

> Earlier this month the Gambling Commission, the industry regulator, fined Coral bookmakers £90,000 in profits it made from one drug dealer who had laundered almost £1m in its shops.

I don't think the gamblers care. It's unlikely he was feeding £50 notes into the machines, but £20s and £10s.

> So how can you say that moral opposition to drug use exists because of propaganda,

Because most of the opponents of legalization use the same talking points that the DARE and other school drug-abstinence programs use. Gateway drugs, etc. All the things we now know are nonsense. That's what makes it propaganda instead of information.

If these people didn't come to these opinions because of propaganda they'd use different terminology and different arguments.

> Moral opposition to drug usage is based on the need to establish social norms that discourage escapism and dependency.

No, because TV(, etc) is acceptable. Drugs are a problem because of our puritanical background. The issue isn't that you aren't being productive, it's that you're enjoying it.

> Impressionable children are indoctrinated against drug use, by US law enforcement, in US public schools.

If you mean things like DARE, its worth noting that studies of DARE have shown that (despite its name and how it is sold to parents, etc.) it has no effect on participant's attitudes toward (or propensity for) drug use, but does make their attitudes toward law enforcement more positive.

  >t has no effect on participant's attitudes toward (or propensity for) drug use

Which is really crazy, if you think about it. Multiple years of training and indoctrination have no effect. In some ways, that gives me hope for America.

The cynical view is that DARE is pro-law-enforcement training and indoctrination, where the anti-drug focus is simply window-dressing to sell the program to parents and the public.

Even if it doesn't trick kids into thinking police are cool (which, honestly, I don't believe it does), running a DARE course is easier than most other police work, and pulls in federal subsidies too. So it benefits police even if it doesn't convince anyone of anything.

> it has no effect on participant's attitudes toward (or propensity for) drug use, but does make their attitudes toward law enforcement more positive.

I would say that's kind of true. I first believed what DARE said and never wanted to use any drugs. I eventually did try 1 and had a totally different experience that what they said and therefore took everything they said to be lieful propaganda.

I think popular attitudes have changed significantly, particularly with respect to Cannabis. I think we're at a point where more than 50% of Americans will want to see weed legalized, or at the very least decriminalized. When Bernie Sanders said the war on drugs was a failure, there was hardly any comment, and not much public outcry at all. I don't think it's a controversial statement anymore.

> women's' suffrage happened when it did so they could vote for prohibition

Woman's suffrage happened after the prohibition. The prohibition was the 18th amendment (taking effect on January 16, 1920), and woman's suffrage was the 19th amendment (ratified on August 18, 1920).

You're right about the timeline of amendments, but keep in mind that in western states (as well as in Michigan and New York) women had complete voting rights before 1920. In most other states they had partial voting rights. And since divorce was uncommon at the time, voting "dry" was a big priority for women voters.

> Did you know that at the time alcohol prohibition was instituted, fully 1/3 of the federal budget came from liquor taxes?

It's not about general funding (for which the government has many sources, including straight-up printing), but about untraced monies. Money is not all equal, and for certain purposes, taxed money is much, much less valuable than untraceable drug money.

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