It's never been a public health issue for its major proponents. The war on drugs has always been about racism, corruption, the militarization of police forces, civil forfeiture and the prison-industrial complex.
The point here isn't to argue whether drugs have this affect, or are a symptom rather than a cause, or to argue if the War On Drugs has much success in fighting it.
The point is that this genuinely is the motivation for a lot of people supporting it. Even if you believe they're wrong to do so, you'd be wrong to say that's not why they do.
Incarceration rates are falling now. Legalization has gained a massive amount of momentum, obviously including the first two states, and the Feds are increasingly not willing to step in and interrupt that progress (including Holder recently telling the DEA chief to get in line with the new direction).
The rest of the world is going to relatively rapidly legalize many forms of drug use as well, with the US taking its boot of their throat on the issue. That will make it that much harder for the US to ever fall backwards and regain traction with the global war on drugs concept the government had been using.
That said, the militarization of police will likely continue regardless of the war on drugs ending. I view that as the next great issue to begin focusing on after several more states have legalized pot.
Also, mandatory minimum sentencing has completely lost steam. There is a lot of momentum toward rolling that back, and I think that momentum will continue. It's a failed approach, and a wide spectrum of people increasingly recognize that in my opinion. It will probably go out the window with the war on drugs. It'll be a huge victory if so.
The War on Drugs that happens in many countries is, in fact, a result of that; specifically, its a result of (1) the War on Drugs in the US being a direct result of those things, and (2) the War on Drugs implemented in many other countries being a direct outgrowth of the exportation of the US War on Drugs through US foreign policy. (Ironically, this is true even of international treaties that foreign governments are now accusing the US of violating due to marijuana legalization efforts in some states.)
My point was that a lot of the countries where there may not be direct domestic parallels to the US motivations still have a War on Drugs as a product of the same motivations because they do so as a result of US pressure.
Few European countries have police as militarized or jails as full as yours, but many of them eat up the same war on drugs rhetoric.
This is a reference to a period in Chinese history when the entire nation suffered from a crippling opium addiction. The opium was introduced by the British, in an effort to address trade imbalances.
I think that when arguing for drug liberalization one should acknowledge the validity of the concerns of those who have heartfelt support for drug laws. The point isn't that addiction isn't a problem, it's that criminalization doesn't fix it.
For now, I think the right course of action is to a) decriminalize and dismantle the system, and b) until that happens, don't do drugs at all. It's a corrupt system that you just don't want to be caught up in, ever.
(The most appalling thing to me is the lack of compassion shown to real drug addicts. It's like, "Aha! Your life is a horrible shithole now, but we're gonna make it worse. That'll learn you.")
It's a shame that our founding fathers didn't explicitly spell out a right to the dictate the contents/state of your own mind. Perhaps it is implicit in the other rights: what good is freedom of speech and religion if I'm not allowed to enter a contemplative state of mind in which I could have significant insights about my life and spirituality?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Freedom_Restoration_A...
In the case of religion, you're confusing a transparent and rarely-invoked justification with the actual reasons for the WoD. In the case of politics, you're confusing the mechanism for prohibition with the actual reasons.
I know of no evidence for that proposition, and can offer counterexamples. One would be the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative, made up of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergy, which supports drug law reform: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interfaith_Drug_Policy_Initiati...
You're correct that historically, "anti-vice" austerity linked to Protestantism was a powerful force in American society. But the Prohibition era began nearly a century ago, and society may have changed in one or two teeny tiny ways since then. Like the 1960s? Plus the easy availability of Internet porn should give the lie to the concept that "anti-vice" religious mores are dominant. :)
Congressmen still show a reluctance to reverse already existing laws regulating drugs - it's easier to get them to pass new laws than reverse existing ones unless the existing ones are truly broken.
So, there's nothing about not liking the addicts who hassle people on the street?
What does that have to do with the War on Drugs? There is no evidence that it lowers drug use; quite the contrary.
But in the practical sense, for relevant real-world drugs and populations, I don't think there's any evidence that enforcement has ever had one iota of effect. People switch drugs, switch suppliers, switch habits, switch methods of consumption etc. etc. Not to mention that some drugs are legal (mostly, such as alcohol and nicotine, or partly such as various medicines), so even if "drugs" are less-consumed, the legal variant might still be just as nasty which renders the enforcement pointless despite "success". And even if overall consumption were to drop, you still might find that drug harm has not - some methods of consumption are more dangerous than others.
Given the absurd level of long-term investment there's been, you'd expect some evidence of meaningful success. Where is it?
I believe you are confused about enforcement of sale vs use, and the specifics of any policy beyond the buzzword "drug war", which is typical of this debate.
In any case, I don't want to suggest that the alternative is some kind of anarchic free-for-all - so enforcement wasn't a well chosen word (sorry!). I mean prohibition specifically, not just any kind of regulation.
If anything, I think existing "legal" drugs like nicotine and especially alcohole could use more regulation, not less.
The saying perfect is the enemy of good pretty much sums up my stance here :-) - don't bother aiming for complete abolition despite the fact that that might be a "perfect" solution if achievable.
I think the natural path for anything that is suppressed is to increase after the suppression is lifted, and then slowly decline. I wouldn't be surprised if drug legalization would increase drug use right at the beginning, but it certainly didn't have such a long term effect in Portugal -- quite the opposite.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-af...
It should be noted that we decriminalized them, not legalized them. The results shouldn't be naively extrapolated to an hypothetical legalization.
You still need to enforce against the people who deal addictive drugs, and Portugal still does.
Also, if you are caught with personal use quantities in Portugal it is usually confiscated and you are obligated to some interactions with the state aimed at treatment.
Missing the point. There is a very high addiction rate of alcohol, caffeine, porn, and sugar. Addicts are going to be addicted. Society has not yet collapsed despite these legal addictions running rampant. Closing the oxy loophole would lower oxy use. The same people would move on to different substances. What positive has been accomplished? Some of them would spend decades in jail, despite causing no other harm or threat to society. Think big picture. Are you trying to have a civil society or are you trying to end addiction? The only way to end addiction is the extinction of the human race.
In short, if you want war - it would be a war. And war is not pretty. Especially when the government declares the war on its own citizenry.
How about we try to fix homelessness? It's surely a problem, I don't know if it's a battle, adversary, or fight. A struggle, perhaps, but can one call a struggle a war? I don't personally believe so.
1) police to care about this kind of crime enough to come quickly
2) victims to follow through and testify when an arrest is made
3) the public to be willing to commit resources to arrest and incarcerate perpetrators.
It may (or may not) be the case that targeting the behavior is less costly then banning it. Either way, it's not as simple as just banning the immediately-objectionable behavior.
Also, it's already illegal, but sometimes you have to go after the root causes. In this case, the next root cause would be addiction, and yes, I do think drug use should be seen as a medical issue.
When drugs are legal, holding down a regular job will be compatible with drug use; people will work regular hours to pay for their habit, pick up their drug at the corner market on the way home, and take the equivalent of cigarette breaks.
When heroin was a branded product of the Bayer corporation, one of the founders of Johns Hopkins was a heroin addict; he took pills. (The chief long-term problem associated with regular heroin use is constipation.)
So, no: people stealing to get their fix is an argument for legalization.
(How many people are today "stealing to get their fix" of beer or cigarettes?)
I have worked at a place that did not screen out such (a factory, one of the few places, as I understand it, where you could get employed with a record). We're talking about being unable to show up for work or follow simple directions after a week. I can only imagine how they might've behaved in something customer-facing (i.e. flipping burgers).
Now yes, there is the other side of that. There were also a number of folks struggling to fix up their life. These I commend and I helped where I could along that route.
Crap, our anecdotes paint different pictures. Could it be that neither of our samples is representative of "drug users" as a population?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7287.1998....
Quote: "Using various measures of current and lifetime drug use and accounting for alcohol-use comorbidity, the authors find predominantly insignificant relationships (both direct and indirect) between drug use and both wages and absenteeism, regardless of gender."