War on Drugs

In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs". After this declaration was made, our prison populations doubled in size, then, that number doubled, and after that, the number tripled.

We spend, well over, 30 billion dollars a year and arrest over 2 million people per year, many of these people are charged with minor Marijuana possession charges.

But after almost 40 years, millions of arrests and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on this "War against Drugs" we need to ask the question; Are we winning?

the answer to that is a big fat NO!!

Are we not aware that a "War on Drugs" much like a "War on Terrorism" is such an open ended propaganda war that has no end and can be used to justify almost any governmental actions. Our government uses the term "War" to stir up emotion and take away our civil liberties.

We have used the War on Drugs as an excuse to fund military actions in Columbia, but, at the same time, the U.S. Government illegally trained Nicaraguan Contras, while shipping large amounts of cocaine into the South West United States, using U.S. government aircraft and U.S. military facilities, to fund them (See: Iran-Contra).
What is to stop our government from using this War on Drugs as an excuse to invade Syria or Malaysia on charges of Opium production and Heroin smuggling! Or to justify border incursions into Panama or Columbia in order to destroy Coca farms (coca leaves, produce cocaine).
if we think about it, our government can use the ambiguous nature and language of the "War on Drugs" to justify any actions they want.

We need to ask ourselves, how is our government allowed to do all of this? To institute Prohibition, the government needed to add an Amendment to our Constitution to make Alcohol illegal. So, why is the government able to make Cannabis and other drugs illegal without a similar Amendment? The truth is, they do need an Amendment! unfortunately no one (Not even Drug reform lobbyists) use this, particular, argument to make the federal government reform its drug laws. This is just another example of our government trampling on our Constitution.

With Movies and T.V. that give an acceptability to Marijuana use (e.g. Dazed and Confused, Super Troopers, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Grandma's Boy) and movies with plots centered around drug trafficking (e.g. Trainspotting, Requiem for a Dream, Blow and American Gangster) our culture has started growing accepting, or at least apathetic, to drug use.

Instead of realizing that people who abuse drugs need help, not jail, and that our culture is growing more and more accepting of the idea to legalize Marijuana usage, we spend billions of dollars trying to get drugs off of the streets. Unfortunately all this has done is create a dangerous and deadly sub-culture of gangs and dealers who make a very lucrative profit by selling drugs on street corners. All the while, an average high school student can get their hands on a bag of pot without expending a great deal of energy.

Our government has overextended its powers in relation to drug enforcement, it has created more violence and crime than it has stopped, in its endless pursuit of the "War on Drugs".

This "War on Drugs" is costing us over 30 Billion dollars per year, yet, we can't even keep drugs out of our prison systems let alone the streets! So, are we winning this so called War? You tell me!!