The War on Drugs is Immoral and Ineffective
Despite increased efforts, manpower, and resources, the war on drugs has been a resounding failure. W.C. fields once quipped, “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.” Not only does the government continue to fail in its crusade against drugs, it continues to perpetrate a policy of immense immorality. It has been over forty years since President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. What do we have to show for it? The United States has wasted over one trillion dollars, caused incarceration rates to exceed that of the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin, discriminated heavily against African-Americans, propped up the drug cartels, and allowed drug profits to flow into the pockets of al-Qaeda and other such terrorist groups.
The biggest success in the war on drugs has been the protection of drug cartel’s profits. In a standard legalized business, there are countless importers and exporters of a particular good. However, due to drug raids and seizures, the price of maintaining an operation has been driven up, forcing out small time distributors. This allows the only viable distributors to be those with enough money and resources to avoid interdiction efforts. These are the highly violent drug cartels that are flush with cash. By keeping goods out and arresting local distributors, the government keeps the price of these drugs up. What else could a monopolist want?
According to the international organization Human Rights Watch, over 25.4 million Americans have been detained for drug offenses since 1980; almost one third of those arrested were African-Americans. Furthermore, although African-American men comprise only 12 percent of the U.S. population, they represent 62 percent of drug offenders sent to state prisons. Black men are sentenced to state penitentiaries for drug-related crimes at an astonishing 13 times the rate of Caucasian men. The discrepancies are preposterously amplified in individual states where black men are sentenced to federal incarceration on drug offenses 57 times the rate of white men.
This is blatant racial discrimination of which our government should be ashamed. The United States imprisons people at the highest rate in the world. America contains only five percent of the world’s population, yet holds almost one-fourth of the earth’s inmates. It is despicable to ruin people’s lives for victimless crimes...
[link:
http://www.timessquaregossip.com/2013/02/legalize-all-drugs-is-only-sane-answer.html#more|
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