Will any mainstream candidate have the guts to tackle the folly of the drug war?

The drug war is, to my mind, one of the most damaging and most corrosive undertakings the US has engaged in. There are the obvious costs- increased funding for prisons, increased police state, black ops being funded with the same illegal drugs, addicts winding up having their lives ruined because we went the criminalization route instead of the medical, and of course, a vast criminal underground that at the local level can hold entire neighborhoods hostage.

But there is also something else, and this is what ranks it so high in our national folly scale for me- we have become institutionally incapable of acting on reality, and I think the drug war seriously contributed to this tendency. From every quarter has come the assessment that the drug war is a failure.



http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/plos-ush062608.php



Yet, any politician (save the libertarians) that even talks about it feels they will commit political suicide. That includes Obama, who backpedaled on his view that marijuana should be decriminalized. And this election, it has received no play whatsoever. So we will go another four years of pretending to be moral guardians and locking up more people and spending more money and blackmailing other governments to join us or face our wrath, thus relegating their governments to corruption as well. When is this going to end?

that will need to be chipped away at piece by piece at local and state levels. Medical Marijuana laws are a good first step.

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions...

On edit: You are aware that Joe Biden coined the term "Drug Czar"?

I think Obama's VP selection makes it perfectly clear where he stands on the drug war.

Not that I expect him to campaign on the issue.

everyone's sick of being ripped off/robbed by drug addicts, imagine you're the guy who argues to relax/decriminalize and it's all fucked up by one addict who is set free to go on a well publicized rampage

yeah yeah yeah i'm sure the overwhelming majority of addicts just sit quietly at home and bother no one, the trouble is, we don't see them, we see the guy who (actual case in my area) went on a rampage and robbed 100 veterinary clinics from rural florida to rural louisiana in a couple weeks time for the drugs

there are too many guns floating around to have a lot of druggies floating around free also

most addicts can't recover, what is it? something like 10 percent eventually quit, about the same as for alcohol? so every ten you put back on the street, that's nine who are going to be ripping off their families and friends for everything they have and then ripping off the public

it's a no win

it's too easy to paint the guy who is "soft on drugs" as soft on the gang who broke into your relative's house, stole her stuff, and raped her (which actually happened to one of my relatives)

it plays on emotion and we're not at a point where we are so secure in our power that we can afford to ignore emotion

we would have to do more than simply decriminalize, because otherwise the addict still has to steal to pay for the shit, we would have to actually have doctors/clinics keeping them supplied with drugs to keep them quiet -- and our society is angry when people are supplied with gov't milk and cheese to feed their children, it won't tolerate what will be perceived as a hand out to druggies

i wish we were otherwise but we're not

for alcohol? Hint- it was during prohibition. When prohibition of alcohol was in vogue, alcohol consumption did not stop, it simply moved into the criminal element, and violent crime (Valentine's day massacre ring a bell?) and gangs became prevalent. Once prohibition was repealed, the violent crime rate went back down.

Today, we still live under prohibition, and, surprise! the violent crime rate is quite high, as is the gang problem. For people who rob, put them in prison for ROBBING. For people who commit assault in the pursuit of drugs, put them in prison for ASSAULTING. Not for drugs.

Some of the money we save in keeping people incarcerated could be put toward effective drug rehab programs. Here, we need to keep science on our side as well. Not every rehab program works. We should monitor what works, and what doesn't, and provide that. This doesn't even bring in the topic of full-on legalization, where private companies can manufacture heroin for sale, and where the revenues could be taxed.

I'm sick of rational policy being high jacked by reactionary cultural conservatives. The fact is, their policy doesn't even work!