More on the war on drugs

This is someone else's words. They said it better than I could.

"The funniest thing is, extremely potent weed, coca, and opium extracts were entirely legal in the United States essentially from its founding. For hundreds of years, anybody could easily acquire the best morphine and cocaine for extremely cheap from any drug store. There was no "drug problem". There were no gangs, or cartels, or turf wars. Cannabis Sativa was either the first, second, or third most prescribed medicine throughout all of the eighteenth century. Fast forward a hundred years, and you have innocent people dying by the thousands in Mexico because of the idiotic self-righteousness of some puritan lawmakers.

That's what happens when you prohibit a product with extremely high demand. The illegality jacks up the price so much that anybody can see how lucrative dealing is. Prohibition does nothing to stop drugs and drug use, it merely makes the drugs more dangerous, dirtier, and places the manufacture and distribution of the substances in the hands of murderous thugs, instead of scientists in lab coats and fancy buildings.

Oh, and the cost? Holy jesus, do you know how much money our government flushes away each year solely on marijuana eradication? Just think about the untold billions spent chopping down all those plants...and yet cannabis remains the #1 cash crop in the United States, and teenagers report they can acquire it far more easily than they can alcohol and cigarettes. That is the DEFINITION of waste.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

We've been doin the same ol' thing for quite some time now, and all we have to show for it are record coca cultivation in South America, massacre of civilians on a truly massive scale in Mexico, and terrorists funding themselves through heroin sales. How anybody can not see that a radical new strategy is needed is fucking beyond me."

Indeed. However, I don't think drug laws are meant to eradicate the drug problem. It's usually "let's see how sadistic we can be towards druggies and make it legal, and whether it actually eradicates the problem... that doesn't matter, as long as we get our jollies off."

There are tried and true methods to lower drug use and drug-related crime, but unfortunately, with those methods you don't get to tell other people what to do with their bodies.