Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle declares the war on drugs a failure

By Hal Dardick
Clout Street
3:36 p.m. CDT, June 17, 2011

In a step few politicians would take, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle today declared the nation’s decades-old war on drugs a failure.

What’s more, she said, it has resulted in the incarceration of millions of non-violent offenders, the vast majority of whom are African American and Latino. That’s come “at a tremendous social and economic cost to all of us. The cost is too great to continue fighting this war on drugs with so little success.

“Rather than invest in detaining people in the Cook County Jail at almost $150 a day . . . we need to invest in treatment, education and job-skills training. That’s the only way . . . we are going to reduce crime and stabilize our communities,” she said.

Preckwinkle, just six months into her tenure, was addressing a lunchtime rally crowd outside the James R. Thompson Center in the Loop. The group assembled to call for an end to the war on drugs 40 years to the day after it was declared by then-President Richard Nixon.

“We all know that the war on drugs has failed to end drug use. Instead, it’s resulted in the incarceration of millions of people around the country, and 100,000 here in Cook County on an annual basis,” she said. “Drugs and the failed war on the drugs have devastated lives, families and communities. For too long we’ve treated drug use as a criminal justice issue, rather than a public issue, which is what it is.”

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-preckwinkle-says-war-on-drugs-a-failure-20110617,0,1086145.story

It is my opinion that the drug war was never about reducing drug use, it was and is all about instituting a police state mentality in the people of this country.

The war on drugs is a smashing success.