They say there is a war on drugs and 2011 its budget will be $15 billion. But we read the papers and hear the news every day that more and more drugs are getting in the country, it is becoming more and more violent and spilling over our borders as well as in other countries. They call this a War on Drugs". Why is everything made to have a war connotation on it first of all? And why have we not won this war in over 50 yrs of fighting it?
Well first of all many of the drugs in question grow naturally and are always growing somewhere. Are we going to burn nature to make this go away? Impossible! Just like a wild tree or plant or flower may hold the key to healing, they may also give off a high if used in a different context. That is nature my friends and we cannot control nature.
Since we began calling it a war it has become more and more violent and more and more innocent people are being harmed or killed. That tells me we are not winning in the present strategy and need to rethink this war.
Now I do not use drugs and I do not condone using drugs. The truth is the spooks and the military have given some if not all of us drugs at some point in time secretly over the last 40 years to experiment and see what happens. If that is not enough the new pushers (the doctors) have us on every kind of prescription drug there is whether we need it or not. Ad to that they say prescription drugs to a certain degree have now tainted our drinking water. Heck no wonder the world is getting more violent.
I say this "war on drugs" is being used to create many new departments of the government and add more manpower and use more technology and weapons and so on. But the truth is it has become more about that than stopping the drugs.
Now don't get me wrong the people fighting this war are doing a very brave and good job but there is just too many dealers and too many sources and too many drugs and too much money to be made for them to win with this strategy.
Now I read an article today about Portugal's legalization of drugs (Fox News) and how it has brought down crime, disease and the number of addicts as well. Now maybe it is time to look at this strategy.
Now first of all no one doing any mind altering drugs should do them at work or in public where they might jeopardize others or driving, etc,. But if we legalized some of them there could be many benefits.
Number one that always gets people's attention is we could tax them and this would add billions to the tax rolls of federal state and local governments. Next we could regulate where it comes from, the potency (now granted if too weak no one would by it but it could save lives keeping it from being too potent), the price, etc. We could require certain training for the sales people (like cpr, etc), we could require a license or certificate to sell and form a series of regulations regarding that, we could require people to have licenses to possess certain types and regulate that and require training in its safe use, etc.
These things would also do more to put dealers out of business and lower their crimes and violence. Also it would get reasonably decent people out of overcrowded jails and prisons where they made be subjected to hardened criminals and abuse and or criminal training or hate training and given a chance to be contributing citizens.
It would also free up law enforcement and military resources to fight other things.
Now I don't claim to know if it would work here as there is too much money and greedy people. Anyway that is my two cents worth.
