I leave you one last statistic. Cole says that in 1914, when the first federal drug law was enacted, the government estimated 1.3 percent of us were addicted to illegal drugs. In 1970, when the "war on drugs" began, the government estimated that 1.3 percent of us were addicted to illegal drugs. Thirty-nine million arrests later, he says, the government says 1.3 percent of us are addicted to illegal drugs.
Monday, April 06, 2009
War on drugs
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6 comments:
Good find.
War on Drugs, War on Cancer, War on Terror - it's the American way.
When the war on tobacco began 70% of the UK population smoked. Now it's barely a quarter. The difference was that the war was fought against the demand - not the supply.
As long as the demand is there someone will be willing to supply it - especially if it lucrative.
Some may say that you could more effectively fight the demand for drugs if you legalised them. Possibly - but then you'd have to fight a much larger demand then there currently is.
There's another difference, Stan. Tobacco might kill you and will certainly damage your health, make you breathless and so on. There's a strong incentive to quit. Amazingly enough, this is not true of any of the illegal drugs, except perhaps speed - against which drug users campaigned when it first started becoming popular (speed kills was a hippy slogan).
But attack demand strongly enough and you'll reduce consumption - this would also work with sugar and coffee, and TV watching.
"When the war on tobacco began..": but nobody called it a "war", did they?
You only have to consider what happened during alcohol prohibition to understand why drug prohibition creates about 95% of the problems attributed to drugs.
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