How America Lost the War on Drugs

[hard@work]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17438347/how_america_lost_the_war_on_drugs

[Wendi]

Great article. The war on drugs isn't in Columbia. It is in the suburbs of America's cities, where children play on manicured lawns and every happy couple has 2.5 kids and a dog. These are the people that are suffering... from a system so pathetically broken it does far more harm than good.

Edit:

From the third page of the article...

What meth proved was that even if the DEA could wipe out every last millionaire cocaine goon in Colombia, burn every coca field in Bolivia and Peru, and build an impenetrable wall along the entire length of the Mexican border - even then, we wouldn't have won the War on Drugs, because there would still be methamphetamine, and after that, something else.So true... so very, tragically, sadly true. Which is why the "war on drugs" can never be won, and shouldn't be fought the way we are fighting it.

Edit #2
I really should just stop reading. This is going to make me physically ill...

"We actually had meetings where we planned for a turf war between the Mexicans and the Hells Angels over methamphetamine," says retired DEA agent Mike Heald, who headed the San Francisco meth task force, "but it turned out they realized they'd make more money by working together."

Edit #3

As they saw it, the problem wasn't pot but the drug-related violence that accompanied cocaine and other hard drugs. The problem *isn't* drugs. It's the crime that goes with them. Decriminalizing them might reduce some of the crime associated with drugs, ya think?

Ugh... (backing away from the keyboard, and hiding the soap-box ;) )