"The War on Drugs" a Bust?

[ScienceAf]

Y'all've heard of the war on drugs.

Maybe you've watched Breaking Bad or started Narcos (yet to watch).

Well there's this thing called the war on drugs in which the government fights against the demand and trade of drugs within it's borders.

However the U.S is very bad at this...

The rehabilitation in America is horrible.

And the way we enforce it does not help.

Giving longer jail sentences out to those who sell drugs or take them does not help in any way.

You might think...

"Well, if I want drugs, but I can't do the time, then why do it at all."

This the first approach I took to this topic.

How ever I was wrong.

Turns out that people'l do what ever to get to their drugs...

Kill, Steal, Mug, Risk disease.

However in country such as Switzerland during the 80s there was a huge spike in heroin use. So they took a risk, and here's what we learned...

They opened up free rehabilitation centres, gave free heroin in those centres except it would be high quality and the needles would be clean.

People who take drugs realize the effects and want to stop, but they can't. The rehabilitation is almost never good.

So Switzerland would give these addicts social workers too and they would eventually help the addicts find homes and guess what?

The use of heroin dropped significantly, stoping this crisis.

However, I wonder, how come the U.S or other countries don't try this method anymore.

Decrease crime rates, less drug use, and heck, if regulated some drugs could be legal too!

But I wonder, why?

Here's a video on the topic that is more in depth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJUXLqNHCaI

[Minimalist]

But I wonder, why?

Stop wondering.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/j...ks-hippie/

Report: Aide says Nixon's war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

I bet they won't be talking about this in your next history class.

[ScienceAf]

But I wonder, why?

Stop wondering.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/j...ks-hippie/

Report: Aide says Nixon's war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

I bet they won't be talking about this in your next history class.

Holy shit, I mean atleast they teach us that Leif Erickson was the first European to visit the Americas.

[AFTT47]

But I wonder, why?

Stop wondering.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/j...ks-hippie/

Report: Aide says Nixon's war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

I bet they won't be talking about this in your next history class.

I'm inherently an optimist and I usually have little use for gloom and doom pessimism but I won't argue with this. My country SUCKS at dealing with this problem. Sometimes you're stupid enough that logic doesn't work and you have to learn from the school of hard knocks - except we already did this! Prohibition was an absolute disaster. It's the only instance in our history of a constitutional amendment being reversed. So what do we do? We repeat the same idiotic mistake over again! It's said that stupidity is doing the same thing tomorrow that you did today and expecting different results.

Like I said, we really suck at dealing with this problem. We REALLY suck at it.

[Losty]

I don't believe the war on drugs was ever about drugs to begin with. Whether the American government is any good at it probably depends on our idea about the intended purpose.

[dyresand]

For the pharmaceutical industry the drug "war" is good for them you have
to keep people on highly addicting pain killers because you know cheaper substances that
made on the streets is bad "business" for them.

[c172]

As a band, it's not a bust:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LmX5c7HoUw

[Thumpalumpacus]

Something that hasn't yet been mentioned is the vested interest police departments have had in maintaining its continuance in order to continue seizure income.

[Rev. Rye]

But I wonder, why?

Stop wondering.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/j...ks-hippie/

Report: Aide says Nixon's war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

I bet they won't be talking about this in your next history class.

Hell, as a matter of fact, when drugs like Heroin, Marijuana, and Cocaine were first made illegal, even before Nixon, they were connected to minorities (hell, why do you think Canniabis Sativa is most commonly known by a Spanish name?). The "success" (measured in terms of popular support, not in actual effectiveness, which is more or less nonexistent in all cases of well-publicised drugs) of a drug criminalization process is directly proportional to how well the culture projects its image onto "The Other." It's why society was so quick to admit Prohibition of alcohol was a failure, but took decades for large sections of society to say the same about other drugs.

[Minimalist]

My country SUCKS at dealing with this problem.

But not at creating it.  That they accomplished with great success.