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This is one of those weird things about American Democracy where everyone I speak to thinks the Drug War was a terrible thing and should be stopped. And yet, our politicians never substantially do anything to change the status quo.
Created a lot of jobs in the industry of arresting and detaining humans. Being number 1 per capita in prison population isn't a lean operation, a lot of people's lives depend on the system continuing. I think the solution is to rent bulldozers, armor them, and just level a bunch of them. Too many prison beds, too many laws, it's all gotten very dumb.
If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US, I don't know what is. I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing, after all the money wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally.
The most common-sense things don't even have a chance at passing because our government is barely hiding that they're all either corporate stooges or obstructionist trolls anymore.
This is one of those weird things about American Democracy where everyone I speak to thinks the Drug War was a terrible thing and should be stopped. And yet, our politicians never substantially do anything to change the status quo.
Cannabis legalization may recently be popular. But I’d be shocked if more than 5% of Americans supported the legalization hard drugs, and if more than 20% supported by Portuguese style decriminalization. Even soft drug prohibition, like MDMA and LSD, are supported by sizable majorities of voters.
Created a lot of jobs in the industry of arresting and detaining humans. Being number 1 per capita in prison population isn't a lean operation, a lot of people's lives depend on the system continuing. I think the solution is to rent bulldozers, armor them, and just level a bunch of them. Too many prison beds, too many laws, it's all gotten very dumb.
What portion of those arrested + detained are the type of people we want in society/civilization?
This is one of those weird things about American Democracy where everyone I speak to thinks the Drug War was a terrible thing and should be stopped. And yet, our politicians never substantially do anything to change the status quo.
Are you kidding me? The "war" on drugs today is nothing like it was at all in the 90s. For the most obvious example, marijuana is legal to purchase for recreational use in dozens of states, with more coming.
In college, a guy I worked with lost his job because someone he was with possessed marijuana. The guy I knew didn't have anything and wasn't charged with anything, but he lost his job with the university just the same.
As of July 1, none of them would have gotten in any trouble; as of next year, they'd be able to legally buy the substance. This is a massive change.
It's helping law enforcement maintain high budgets. The drug war fuels the violence of the drug trade and that violence requires the police be well equipped to handle it.
> "The war on drugs was an absolute miscalculation of human behavior," said Kassandra Frederique, who heads the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that advocates for total drug decriminalization. For me it would be incredibly interesting to know how much it was a miscalculation or actually it was very well calculated. The "War on Drugs" have failed to make USA safer, healthier or any other positive metric. But, i…
The reasoning is well established at this point. It was started by the Nixon administration to reduce the amount of left and left-leaning voters, particularly black Americans. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the…
I think we can all agree that illicit drugs can cause damage to societies. Even the article mentions it in regards to the opioid crisis, which continues to decimate Americans across the nation. Maybe it would be wiser to call out the failure of the strategy and execution by the US government and not the original premise.
Given what LA/SF/Portland streets look like with this eased-back war on drugs, it is possible the war was doing a lot.