How Long Does Drug Prohibition Need to Continue Before It's Declared a Failure?

via AlterNet:



How Long Does Drug Prohibition Need to Continue Before It's Declared a Failure?

By David Borden, Drug War Chronicle. Posted June 30, 2008.

The day we legalize drugs is the day we can begin to clean up the mess that the drug prohibition experiment has created.



How long does an experiment need to continue before it's declared a failure?

For alcohol prohibition, our US version, it was about 13 years. Between mafia crime, poisonings from adulterated beverages, and the dropping age at which people were becoming alcoholics, Americans decided that the "Noble Experiment" -- whether it should actually be regarded as noble or not -- was a bad idea. And they ended it. New York State did its part 75 years ago today, ratifying the 21st amendment to repeal the 18th amendment, bringing the Constitution one state closer to being restored. It took another half a year, until December 5th, to get the 36 states on the board that were needed at the time to get the job done. But Americans of the '30s recognized the failure of the prohibition experiment, and they took action by enacting legalization of alcohol.

Industrialist John D. Rockefeller described the evolution of his thinking that led to the recognition of prohibition's failure, in a famous 1932 letter:

"When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before."

In the context of today's leading prohibition -- the drug war -- it's important to realize that those other drugs were made illegal even before alcohol was. It was December 17th, 1914, when the Harrison Narcotics Act passed the US Congress -- ostensibly a regulatory law to synchronize America's system with a new one being adopted by countries around the world. But law enforcement interpreted it as prohibiting drugs -- coca and opium, and derivatives of them such as heroin and cocaine, were the ones in question then -- and law enforcement got its way.

Which means that drugs have been illegal for almost a century. And yet despite a century of prohibition -- a century of fighting opium -- the Taliban could somehow make a hundred million off of it last year, that's how much of it is still being used. Our addiction rate in the US is higher today than it is believed to have been at the turn of the 20th century, and while other things that have certainly changed that could affect drug use, if you're fighting a "drug war" to end drug use, if addiction goes in completely the opposite direction, then you have a problem. A recent example of things going in the completely opposite direction as intended is cocaine prices on the streets of our cities, which according to DEA data is about a fifth of what it was in 1980 when adjusting for inflation and purity. The goal of the eradication-interdiction-arrest-incarceration strategy is to raise prices, in order to discourage use. Oh, and the drugs have gotten worse too -- who had ever heard of crack cocaine before 1986 -- 72 years after passage of the Harrison Act? .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/89852/

then it will continue. It's a self perpetuating war when you play both sides, ya know?

Perhap 100 years? :sarcasm:

edited because I can't spell sarcasm.

Years ago I recall talking with a young woman who was about to graduate college, and she wanted to go into the police force specifically to help "get rid of drugs." She didn't have a negative personal experience that prompted her, just had clearly bought into establishment propaganda hook, line and sinker. Hell, there are elementary schools that encourage little children to narc on their parents over weed, for crying out loud...so until the national debate/platform can be removed from the hands of vested interests {who make big $ on America's various phony war$} attitudes won't change enough to apply the necessary pressure on this antiquated, draconian method of dealing with the surplus populace.

The waste of human resources is unimaginable. So much violence could be prevented, yet vested interests will prevail. Lots of winners in upper society with this so called .."war on drugs"..

..I saw a documentary years ago where several police chiefs around the country were interviewed on this. A couple of them said that the quickest, and easiest way to reduce gang and domestic violence was to decriminalize drugs. You can see how far that idea has gone..

So the chiefs are probably conflicted:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91490480

This country has always scrambled from one moral panic to another. But we've been riding this hobby horse of drug bans (around and around and around) for nearly a century. Carrie Nation and the rest of her misguided "Temperance" people (now there's a joke) forced Prohibition down America's throat in the guise of saving souls. And that was an utter disaster. As long as we continue to allow organized religion, and really mean Christianity, to influence the system in the country we ill continue to have failures like the WOD. The basis of law in this country is the Constitution, not the Bible, but unfortunately we have too many people think it's the reverse.

1. Lots of lower-class and middle-class folk are in prison who wouldn't be without it.

2. The DEA has scored millions of dollars worth of houses, cars, boats, not to mention the pillaged bank accounts. Then there's all the hard, spendable cash laying around, and someone's got to count it...

3. The longer the War is pursued, the more opportunity for plunder! It's a resource they can't dry up and they can exploit it for ever!

4. Lots of liberals in prison who wouldn't be without it.

5. Provides an excuse to establish a military presence throughout the world.

6. Slavery is back and the public unwittingly encourages it.



On the downside:

1. THERE IS NO FUCKING DOWNSIDE !!!!!



Fact is, they have always known they are lying every fucking time they talk about it. They know we are stupid, lazy, and can be encouraged to squabble among ourselves, thus leaving them to run their shell game and slip the pea right off the edge of the table. It's a shuck, and anyone that buys into it is a rube and a mark.

They will WAR on drugs they don't have patents on and trick us into buying their patented suicide-cocktails just as long as we let them. Just remember; SSRIs are your friends and "A gram is better than a damn!"

The War on Drugs will continue as long as we allow it, and America is too lazy, drugged and Idol-ized to care.