Obama: 'Drug legalisation not the answer to drug war'

[Zorra]

22. Yeh. Just as the fracking drug war is not the answer to the problem of destructive drug usage.

Last edited Sun Apr 15, 2012, 02:50 PM - Edit history (2)

The drug war is primarily about protecting the 1% and their economic interests.

The 1% needs an excuse to have to present to taxpayers for having the government employ massive numbers of law enforcement personnel to protect them (the 1%) and their economic interests.

(Note: I don't use illegal drugs, and do not promote the use of illegal drugs. I have, however, used some illegal drugs in the distant past)

If there was no drug war, the number of cops of all stripes employed to "protect society" could probably be cut by at least 50%.

Approximate number of people incarcerated for drug related crimes:

108,000 people in federal prisons as of April 2010
280,000 people in state prisons across the country as of June 2007
31,500 people in California state prisons as of December 2008

Let's expand a bit by putting it into perspective, and that means understanding how many total people are incarcerated for all crimes:

211,455 inmates at federal prisons as of April 2010
1,395,916 inmates in state prisons as of June 2007
171,161 inmates in California as of December 2008

http://open.salon.com/blog/stephannie/2010/05/16/how_many_people_are_incarcerated_for_drug_related_offenses

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm

About 50% of federal prison inmates, and 20% of state prison inmates nationwide are in prison due to drug related crimes, and those may be low estimates due to the fact that many inmates are probably in prison because of collateral effects related to drug use that are not available to statistics gatherers.

And many of these inmates are incarcerated for offenses related to the deadly drug (sarcasm) marijuana:

Thursday, 12 October 2006

Washington, DC: Nearly one in eight drug prisoners in America are behind bars for marijuana-related offenses, according to data released this week by the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).

The BJS study, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," reports that 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate US Department of Justice (DOJ) statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners (BJS October 2005 Bulletin: "Prisoners in 2004" -- NCJ 210677) suggests that there are now approximately 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates incarcerated for marijuana offenses.

http://norml.org/news/2006/10/12/nearly-one-in-eight-us-drug-prisoners-are-behind-bars-for-pot-taxpayers-spending-over-1-billion-annually-to-incarcerate-pot-offenders

I don't have the answer to the problem of detrimental drug usage, but one thing is clear - the drug war is not, and never will be, a solution.

The drug war is just another expensive (for taxpayers) non-solution to a problem, just like all the other non-solutions to problems that our government employs in order to serve and protect the 1% and their profits.

Just like the invasion and occupation of Iraq, for example. The pain, suffering and/or death, of peasants, is just another unpleasant side effect of the eternal quest for profit by the 1%.

It doesn't matter if it doesn't work, and will clearly never work. We'll simply continue to employ destructive ineffective methods as long as it serves the profit interests of the 1%.

Occupy