After 40 years, U.S. drug war failing to meet any of its goals

Source: AP



After 40 years, U.S. drug war failing to meet any of its goals

By Martha Mendoza
Associated Press
Updated: 05/14/2010 12:05:10 AM CDT



MEXICO CITY — After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told the Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

This week President Barack Obama promised to "reduce drug use and the great damage it causes" with a new national policy that he said treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.

Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget.

Kerlikowske, who coordinates U.S. anti-drug policies, says it will take time for the spending to match the rhetoric. ................

Read more: http://www.twincities.com/newsletter-morning/ci_15083334

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This comes as no surprise at all.

and release non-violent drug offenders, so the healing can begin.

of it's distribution to those who want the stuff. IF..... knowing as we do that the use is detrimental and likely deadly ... folks want to use it, it could prove to be a boon to our gene pool. Only stupids would use it, and stupidity could be severly curbed by them doing themselves in.

If that sounds like a horrific bit of inhumanity, weigh that against what I and every other citizen has had to fork over as recompense for COMPLETE failure!!! Then let's talk about the law enforcement folks who've given the ultimate sacrafice in pursuit of this folly! Then there's the gang violence and the resultant killings of competitors and innocent bystanders as well. What do we tell THEIR loved ones as to why we should continue with this joke of a "war"?????

also helps them in co-opting other sovereign nations --

and corruption of policing and government officials -- judges -- without which

this Drug War crime couln't go forward.

Remember Ollie North was involved/Iran Contra -- and Ollie North was also assigned

what I think was a permanent position in GOP hierarchy to overturn Constitution.

Remember also CIA and drug running -- especially into AA neighborhoods --

Look at the tremendous numbers of AA behind bars.

That was one of Nixon's major motivations in the Drug War, according to Ehrlichman.

And according to what we can see with our own eyes!!

the problem will be resolved.

Everyone who thinks that is going to happen anytime soon please give send me a PM, as I have some nice Gulf-front property I'd like to sell you.

I hope you sell it really soon!! Like, before the black waves start to roll in.

May be too late for the wave, judging by reports.

:)

are doing more harm than good to our society now.

It's been marvelous at removing black males from their families.

The private prison industry is thriving.

According to California Prison Focus, "no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens." The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world's prison population, but only 5% of the world's people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

Heh. Yeah, right.

.................measure, crime stats, seizures, added prison costs, the Mexican border. End this thing now and save 10's of billions of USD's.

we left and let them grow poppies, we had bomb the rocks, there isn't much else. We did similar crap in central america - I think we actually fund the drugs and selling arms - same old crap

Nixon's commission found the same thing back in the 70's. Nothing changed. The reality based community has known this all along, this is really stupid policy pursued precisely because it is politically advantageous.

wealthy and continue to get richer.










Oh, come on, surely NO ONE thought this was about stopping drugs?

Waste a lot of money, create a moral panic, get a bunch of "law and order" types elected, create an excuse for a few invasions (e.g. Panama), create hackneyed plots for a lot of dumb movies, put poor people in jail, confiscate property, kick down doors and shoot people (and pets) by mistake, make cancer patient suffer extra pain, protect big pharma from a natural competitor, protect alcohol's monopoly on legitimate drug use, ensure organized crime has a lucrative product to sell,...

I probably missed a few.

guaranteed by the "Bill of Rights", but you sure summed up the goals up in a concise way.

Let me spell it out for ya.

War is a showcase of violence with weaponry between 2 or more groups.
A more intense version of a fight.

When people label everything "War on Drugs" "War on Poverty" "War on Illiteracy" "War on Joblessness" it indicates a stereotypical "caveman" mentality.
Everything boils down to a fight no matter what the subject. And the approach which comes from that use of words leaves the cause improperly solved.

You gotta "fight" poverty? Why don't you "solve" poverty? That shows a thinking person. One who has ideas & theories to figure out the root of the cause.

War on Drugs is War on Poor. War on Drugs is War on Non-Whites.
They ain't worrying about those Beverly Hills folks who snort cocaine all day long I betcha that.

It's not a punishment issue, it's a health issue. It's a social issue. WHY do people want to escape the world with drugs so much anyhow?
Why put people in prison for using even if they didn't hurt anybody?
Does an all-out ban make any of these situations any better? What can be legalized? What can be regulated?
Better yet what can we do about the problems which make people want to use in the first place?
Is something inherently wrong with this society that needs addressing? What can be fixed & how do you fix it?

But if all you do is WAR then you're just fighting mindlessly & aimlessly. Lots of POWs & War Widows. Lots of MIA & AWOLS.
Your language makes telltale your mindset. It's not about euphemisms but about the correct word to use to deal with the problem.

Maybe the end word is just as bad. Drugs. Maybe it's beyond drugs. Maybe drug use is just a symptom of a larger problem.
John Lucas

Prohibition of alcohol didn't work in the late 20s and 30s so they repealed it and greatly diminished organized crime. Why would they think prohibition of drugs, and really its just pot, would be any different? I believe this is called insanity.

And cut funding for all prevention and addiction programs.

:shrug:

the 4th Amendment has very little real power remaining,

oh, AND the State gets to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in property from it's citizens using the "guilty until proven innocent" credo.

Oh, the phony War on Drugs has accomplished it's REAL goals as much as the phony War on Terror has.

It's just that anyone analyzing the phony STATED GOALS would indeed find a "failure" because the stated goals are just another lie to conceal the REAL GOALS of these phony wars against the American Subject Populace.

in prison, including the government.

The guards and prisoners will have to take rotating shifts reversing their roles; as guards one day and prisoners the next.

The rest of humanity will need to be nuked so they don't sneak drugs in to our national prison here in the land of the free and home of the brave.

The flag will need to drop all those stars but the stripes can remain, I propose a prison rat as the new national symbol replacing the eagle.

I believe that kind of policy will finally allow us to win the War against....Drugs, but nothing short of that will succeed.

Anyone not agreeing with that must be soft on crime and is probably a commie to boot.

Thanks for the thread, robinblue.

on earth--a country where the military itself is responsible for half the murders of union leaders and where the money and the guns provided by U.S. taxpayers filter down to the government-tied paramilitary death squads, who have committed the other half of the murders of union leaders, in addition to massive killings by both the military and its death squads of community organizers of every kind, human rights workers, teachers, journalists, peasant farmers and others who dare to oppose the bloody-handed fascist government that the U.S. government props up with $7 BILLION taken from us!

THIS is what the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" CONTINUES to support!

And, believe me, it has NOTHING TO DO with interdicting drugs and EVERYTHING TO DO with, a) war profiteering, and b) war. The U.S. now has SEVEN U.S. military bases in Colombia, in a deal that gives U.S. soldiers and U.S. military 'contractors' total diplomatic immunity for whatever they do in Colombia; newly refurbished U.S. military bases in Panama, Honduras and on the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's Caribbean oil coast and in the Caribbean with the reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet (mothballed since WW II) in summer 2008. What is all this U.S. militarism FOR? According to a USAF document uncovered by Eva Golinger, the purpose is "full spectrum" military operations in South America, to counter drugs (har-har), terrorism (uh-huh) and "anti-U.S. countries." Guess who that means?

The U.S. "war on drugs" is cover for the next oil war.

I think that the U.S. "war on drugs" is worse than a war on the poor, here and in Latin America. It is worse than a massive military and police boondoggle. And it is worse than corrupt. All of these war assets that the Pentagon has put in place surround Venezuela's oil coast and oil-rich northern provinces, I believe are aimed at the biggest oil reserves on earth (twice Saudi Arabia's) in Venezuela. I don't know--and nobody except Pentagon war planners know--if or when this war will be instigated. All I am saying is the means and motive for such a war are in place, and somebody is very likely working on the opportunity--a Colombia/Venezuela border incident involving U.S. troops or war planes, for instance (such as was rehearsed during the Bush Junta--March 2008--in Ecuador, an ally of Venezuela, also oil rich and adjacent to Colombia to the south), or the ripening of a fascist plot within Venezuela for the oil provinces to secede from the national government (as was rehearsed in Bolivia--another Venezuelan ally--in September 2008).

The U.S. desperately wants to "circle the wagons" in the Caribbean/Central America region against the rising leftist democracy tide in Latin America. Indeed, one of the coup generals in Honduras stated that their coup was intended "to prevent communism in Venezuela from reaching the United States" (--quoted in a report on the coup by the Zelaya government-in-exile). President Zelaya had not only raised the minimum wage (affecting U.S. corporate sweatshops in Honduras) and taken other measures to benefit and empower the poor majority, he proposed converting the U.S. military base in Honduras to a commercial airport. And that is probably why the U.S. commanders at that base sat on their hands, when the Honduran military plane carrying the kidnapped president out of the country at gunpoint, stopped at the U.S. military base for refueling. Honduras is the traditional U.S. stepping-stone for U.S. aggression in Latin America. That is where Reagan's and John Negroponte's death squads mustered for their war against the leftist majorities in Nicaragua and El Salvador. (Note: Hillary Clinton had John Negroponte as one of her advisers on the Honduran coup.)

Maybe this greatly increased U.S. military presence all around Venezuela--using the cover of the U.S. "war on drugs"--is merely to bully and intimidate a government that dares to use the country's oil revenues to bootstrap the poor--anathema to our capitalists--and that holds transparent and internationally certified elections--anathema to our politicians and corporate rulers. But I don't think so. I think its purpose is more than bullying and intimidation, and more than slaughtering poor people and their advocates in Colombia (and now in Honduras), and more than jailing African-American men here, and more than nazifying our own society, and more than a boondoggle. I think there is a war plan to grab Venezuela's oil, as the linchpin of the "circle the wagons" strategy, in the Caribbean/Central America, to impose "free trade for the rich" on that region, backed by the U.S. military, fueled by Venezuela's oil (and possibly netting in Ecuador's oil as well).

I think this plan was designed by the Bushwhacks--as a failsafe against their failure to grab Iran's oil--but I have seen no sign thus far that the Obama administration doesn't also support it and many signs that they do. Obama may be powerless to prevent a second oil war. (That's what Chavez thinks. He said that Obama "is the prisoner of the Pentagon.") I really don't know. But he supports the U.S. military occupation of Colombia, and all of this militarism in the region, as well as the on-going psyops and disinformation campaign against Chavez and his strongest allies (the presidents of Bolivia and Ecuador, in particular, but with the most vitriol aimed at Chavez), and Obama permitted Hillary Clinton to engineer (and use our tax dollars to pay for) a "martial law" election in Honduras, even while more than a hundred anti-coup activists were being murdered with impunity.

And there are almost no signs in the direction of peace and democracy, except the probable dumping of the blood-soaked Uribe regime in Colombia by the CIA, and the rise of a more "centrist' candidate for president (than Uribe's blood-soaked successor, former Defense minister Manuel Santos) who seems to have the blessing of our corpo-fascist press. This could be Obama/Clinton/Panetta maneuvering to get the "free trade for the rich" Colombia/U.S. trade agreement through Congress--not really a turn for the better in U.S. Latin American policy. Uribe and his death squads and big drug lords get immunity, like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld--and the rich get richer, with a facade of democratic consent. That, so far, is the ONLY sign that Obama and our political establishment may prefer means short of war in Latin America to serve our corporate masters and war profiteers. Everything else points to war--which probably wouldn't be an outright invasion, a la Iraq, but more like Vietnam, using a bought and paid for proxy military and corrupt local fascists as cover.

Latin America, as a whole, is going through a struggle for independence from the U.S. and its corporate rulers. This struggle has many leaders, but Chavez in Venezuela and Lula da Silva in Brazil are probably its strongest leaders, and they are strongly allied with each other on this and other issues. Lulu has resisted every effort by the U.S. to split up this alliance. It is clearly the will of the majority in Latin America for Latin American countries to form their own economic block, to serve their own interests including social justice and to wield their rightful power in the world, based on their rich natural resources, their numbers and their long hard work on democracy and human rights. We must not underestimate our corporate rulers' desperation to stop this vast political/economic/social movement in Latin America, by any means necessary--even a war they cannot win, but which might serve purposes of destabilization, chaos, division, fear and partial gains for them. If nothing else, the Iraq War taught us the unreasonableness of these desperate and greed-based forces, and their identification of us--we, the people of the United States--as one of the "enemies" they must defeat, one way or another (through 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines?), to achieve their aim of controlling other peoples' resources and dominating the world. We should be aware that they very likely have another scheme in train to further these goals. And all that oil flowing into the waters off Louisiana and Florida--into the fisheries and onto the beaches--may well motivate them further as to the vast reserve of oil not that far away, in what they call "their backyard."

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(Edits of typos.)

It's no secret that the BFEE is a big drug lord, highly profiting as long as coke and crack are illegal. I have no doubt that it was their hand that put crack in the inner cities in the 1980s--an allegation they have managed to dodge because they can pay off anybody they want--or, if people don't want to play, make them disappear. Our own lovely crime family, hooking the youth.

And without illegal heroin, where would "al Qaeda" be? It is absolutely essential to the U.S. economy that al Qaeda not go bankrupt, to keep a major excuse for war alive.

We're not sitting this out. We had a LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibiton http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php) speaker at our county fair booth last August & will again this August, but I'm proud to share that we invited a speaker to talk on our one hour (yes, ONE HOUR) of local liberal radio per week am talk radio this Monday. We hope to continue the conversation about the results of the war on drugs over the next few Mondays.
I don't expect change anytime soon, but I know I must do what I can while I can.
My son has been in prison for non-violent, non-stealing strictly substance abuse 'crimes' for over three years. No one should be locked in a cage like a dangerous animal. These prisons are cauldrons of hate and racism. Please do what you can to speak up against this unjust, expensive in human and && terms policy. Let's treat substance abuse as a health issue and let adult users buy taxed & regulated drugs of their choice.

and there but for the grace of god, go I. That is truly horrendous.

Lucky to have a liberal radio station in your area. I don't listen to radio at all, but have to assume here in central Maine that all that's available is the usual drek.

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War on drugs has been a huge success

it employed all them peeps that WOULD have been unemployed after prohibition ended

Check your calendars

WHEN DID THE WAR ON DRUGS START?

And what agency took over that "war"??

and where do many enforcement agencies get extra funding?

DRUG MONEY!!

Imagine - coppers doing a bust - a few pounds/kilos of this or that, and lots of CASH!!

but they turn all that cash in as evidence, right??

right.

Time for everyone who wants to go to college to go to college.

:eyes: