The War on Drugs Is Far More Immoral Than Most Drug Use (2013)

Not to mention mandatory minimum sentences which robs the judge of his/her discretion and weighing of circumstances... not to mention crazy disparities in the sentencing guidelines where possession of crack gets you 18X the mandatory sentence as the same weight of powdered cocaine.

This used to be 100X until changes were made to drug sentencing laws under the Obama administration.

Government’s policy: to prevent people from ruining their lives with drugs, we’re going to ruin their lives for them.

Imagine funding corporate food research and imprisoning anyone not eating or distributing the official corporate food.

That is the war on drugs.

If we lowered the barrier to entry for those seeking therapy and medication this problem would largely disappear.

Neither TFA nor any of the comments so far mention what seems to me the single most damning irony of drug-prohibition... that one of the most dangerous and harmful drugs of all remains legal through all the drug-war theater: alcohol.

Scientifically today there is really no doubt that alcohol is nearly as or perhaps even more harmful (considering all forms of harm, such as drug-specific mortality, drug-related mortality, health problems, dependence, economic costs to society, etc.) as the most dangerous illegal drugs, such as heroin and crack cocaine. Not that I think alcohol should be prohibited either, but if you don't prohibit it where is the logic in prohibiting far less harmful drugs such as canabis or psychadelics? The only logic is to use that prohibition as a tool for the arbitrary oppression of selected segments of society. And that's just plain immoral.

Has any work been done to map out where the money lobbying for prohibition is coming from? Private prisons? Pharmaceuticals?

I’m not sure what’s more depressing... that some people are surprised by findings like this or that some people believe laws are moral.

Most cultures assimilates some kind of consciousness altering chemical into the culture. The US would be a healthier place if we could take a measured approach to mind altering substances. For example the US does young people a disservice by banning socially mediated alcohol drinking. The result of our ban on alcohol is that teens and college students drink in dangerous places. You find the worst examples of violence and sexual assault on college campuses in the places where underage students go to get drunk. The fraternities and houses offering underage students alcohol don't care about the people they're getting drunk. The most horrible stuff that happened at Penn State wouldn't have happened if the drinking was organized by responsible caring people.

>imposing more costs on people who never chose to use drugs but suffer from many harms of the black market, we have achieved a morally dubious redistribution.

That point could be expanded into a million more. All of the money flowing into the black market creates intense violence and crime, more violence than drug use creates. Instead of preventing self harm, it creates piles of innocent victims, caught in the collateral damage of war between parties empowered by their respective benefits gained by prohibition.

Why is it only that the US seemingly has this problem? Other developed nations (UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Canada, etc.) don't have the so called "war on drugs" that wasted billions of millions of dollars.

The New Jim Crow is a great book if you want to learn more.