The War on Drugs

My fellow classmate, Caroline Bassett's, wrote an article titled, "The War On Drugs - Where Tax Dollars Go to Die." I would have to say I agree with her for the most part. She notes that we began the "war on drugs" in '71 and we have little to nothing to show for the 40 years worth of fighting. It got me thinking and if you compare that to the 9 year war we have waged in Iraq, Americans are fed up with the battle and crying out to have our troops returned, yet no one is tired of the 40 years of battle against drugs where we have gained little to nothing.

If we range farther back in history, we can even ask the question, when has prohibiting a specific drug ever ended well? We had the opium wars, alcohol prohibition and now the war on drugs. The sad thing is that the ban on drugs only gives jobs to cartels and mob bosses and propagates killing sprees, terror and fear. If we legalize drugs, then it becomes common place and the drug cartels and mob bosses have actually lost their foothold on the market. At least, so the theory goes.

Personally I am against drug use, but it is evident that to stop the increase in crime over drugs we actually have to allow it. The same holds true with Alcohol. We legalized it because the ban on it caused more problems than the actual substance ever did on it's own. As a citizen, spending $1700 on tuition for one semester of classes gives me pause. It is hard to write that check, and our government should have pause when writing that check basically every second of every day, especially when they have to realize that money goes towards making a bad problem worse.