War on Drugs...Success or Failure...

Another "war" that hasn't been much discussed lately is the so-called "War on Drugs". In case some haven't been following the story the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo is where drug smuggling gangs have been conducting a war against the civil government, assassinating city officials.

<A HREF="http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/3297906" target="_new"> Nuevo Laredo story </A>

Connecting this news with another article that I saw in an oil & gas-related trade magazine quoting the figure of 70% as the number of job applicants for US oilfield jobs who fail drug tests, it occurs to me (again) to wonder whether the "War on Drugs" is yet another of those unwinnable efforts as presently conceived.

As long as demand for drugs remains high in the US, efforts to limit illegal importation of drugs simply makes the activity more profitable.

Is anyone willing to concede that the mountains of money spent on the "War on Drugs" would be better spent on addiction research. treatment, and other measures that deal primarily with the demand side right here at home?

Considering the enormous expense of incarcerating non-violent drug offenders and the general ineffectiveness of threat of imprisonment, why isn't it time to reconsider fundamentally altering the economies of drug smuggling by partial legalization?

The question as posed was as to whether to continue with what gives every appearance of being a very expensive losing strategy in dealing with the problem of drug addiction in the US.

While there is a potential downside to partial legalization of drugs, it doesn't appear to be worse than the present situation.

We live in an age when the physiological basis of substance addiction can finally be understood and probably eventually treated by some benign means.


<A HREF="http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html" target="_new"> History of Drug Laws... </A>


<A HREF="http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/reinarman.dutch.html" target="_new"> Liberal Drug Laws can be beneficial... </A>


Substance addiction have a physiological component (this means that the major part of addictions is driven by chemical processes within the brain) that is incompletely understood.

I have reason to believe from researchers working on drugs for cancer treatment that we will see effective pharmaceutical cures for a whole series of classes of cancers within a few years. These drugs are being developed by combining an understanding of the processes by which cancerous cells develop and multiply in the body with a hugely sophisticated ability to design molecules with specific biological activities.

There is simply no reason, given the state of modern pharmaceutical chemistry, to believe that as the chemical mechanisms of the brain that drive addictive behavior are well understood, that likewise benign pharmaceutical treatments won't also be available.

The role of government participation in research efforts cannot be underestimated, however. It is unlikely that pharmaceutical companies will want to divert the sums of money from research on profitable boner pills and hair restoration medicines to basic research on addiction treatment.

Considering that filling up prisons with non-violent drug offenders is obviously not working, the obvious alternative is to lift criminal penalties and even legalize many drugs that are now hugely profitable for criminal enterprises to produce and distribute.

That simple act would take so much profit out of the sale of what are presently controlled substances that the smugglers would be out of business as quickly as happened with the alcohol smugglers after repeal of Prohibition in the 1930's.

Since drugs would no longer cost huge sums, a good bit of the drug-related crimes would also disappear as well.

One needs to understand that the physiological mechanisms behind addictions and other diseases are where effective treatments would be logically directed.

Your approach to the treatment of cancer (or any other disease of the body) would I take it include taking an effective and safe medicine if it were available?


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Yep pretty much. Government not representing its people, which is the whole point of a government in the first place.

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<b>It's a man's obligation to stick his boneration in a women's separation; this sort of penetration will increase the population of the younger generation.</b>

The commonest idea in the US has been that immoral behavior should be punished and abuse of drugs is, in the common conception, immoral.

The other common idea is that threat of punishment is the most effective deterrent to immorality. So, in spite of the demonstration that criminal penalties for drug abuse mainly just fill up prisons, here we are.

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