War on Drugs

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The War on Drugs is a misbegotten attempt to purify American youth (and adults) by putting anyone caught with any^[1] quantity of illegal drugs in jail for a long time.

One of its armaments is setting mandatory sentences for "crack" cocaine possession at roughly 100 times the length of sentences for possession of "powder" cocaine. This is because crack is popular in the poorer neighborhoods and is far more addictive, while the powder version is popular in suburbs and corporate boardrooms, and one cannot have those sorts of people sharing prisons with the great unwashed, lest the horrors of one's prison system become known to anyone who is capable of making serious noise about it.

The result has been that the United States now has a higher percentage of its population in jail than any other country ever has. ^[2]

With the White House insisting that "terrorism" be called "human caused disaster" there is evidence that the Obama Administration is merging the War on Terror with the War on Drugs. This is because the only dope worth shooting is Osama bin Laden.

[edit] Criticism

See drug liberalization for more on whether to make it legal or not.

The "War on Drugs" has been criticized by anarcho-capitalists, libertarians, and liberals as a violation of civil liberties. They argue if a person is taking drugs in the privacy of their own home, it is his/her own choice and denying them the right to consume drugs is a basic violation of human rights. (They do not, however, appear to consider too closely the case where someone gets a little too high and goes crazy and terrifies his/her family. Or they have considered it and have decided that, since going crazy and terrifying your family are not inevitable consequences of drug use, banning drugs on those grounds is like banning cake because someone could eat to much, and then sit on their family, crushing them to death.) Moreover the so-called "war on drugs" has resulted in widespread problem of untreated or under-treated pain. ^[3]

It is also worth noting that since the Taliban receive a large portion of their funding from the illegal trade of opium, the illegality of drugs may be considered a contributing factor in making the "war on terror" more difficult to win.

[edit] See also

• Moral panic

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ Notwithstanding the notion that a lot of stuff is sold as powder, and anyone caught near the consumption or trade may acquire a molecule or two - perhaps all the way up to a couple of grains. And perhps the ones that come with your money (Now you know why people smokes joints rolled with paper money).
2. ↑ Prison Brief - Highest to Lowest Rates, King's College, London
3. ↑ "Drug Cops and Doctors: Is the DEA Hampering the Treatment of Chronic Pain? - Conference". Cato Institute, September 9, 2005. [1]