Let's deal a devastating blow to the illegal drug industry?

Let's deal a devastating blow to the illegal drug industry... With thousands being killed annually in a lost drug war lets try a new tactic, legalize marijuana. Legalize it, control it, and tax it just like alcohol and cigarettes. As a former police officer I've yet to see marijuana have as strong and negative effects as from alcohol and see the "war" as one of ideology and not common sense.

What do you think? Asked by ronin 37 months ago Similar questions: deal devastating blow illegal drug industry Politics & Law > Law.

Similar questions: deal devastating blow illegal drug industry.

That's an excellant idea, one which has been proposed for at least 30 years that I know of - but the government and big business don’t want it to happen - they are much happier making money trying to fight it than coming up with a common sense approach to resolving the issue intelligently. After all, a "war" that goes on forever keeps paychecks rolling. It’s the same stupidity as the government still having a hard-on for Cuba and continuing the embargo.

There is no sense in it. But, as with anything that defies logic, follow the money, and you'll see why things are the way they are. Schelli's Recommendations Opposing Viewpoints Series - The War on Drugs (hardcover edition) (Opposing Viewpoints Series) Amazon List Price: $34.95 Used from: $6.75 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 1 reviews) US Foreign Policy and the War on Drugs: Displacing the Cocaine and Heroin Industry (Css Studies in Security and International Relations) Amazon List Price: $150.00 Used from: $127.72 The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret story of America's War on Drugs Amazon List Price: $17.95 Used from: $11.12 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 (based on 2 reviews) War on Drugs IV: The Continuing Saga of the Mysteries and Miseries of Intoxication, Addiction, Crime and Public Policy (4th Edition) Amazon List Price: $53.33 Used from: $30.18 Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed: A Judicial Indictment Of War On Drugs Amazon List Price: $23.95 Used from: $14.94 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 23 reviews) Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure Amazon List Price: $19.99 Used from: $0.48 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 22 reviews) .

I'm with you on this one--100%. We have a lot of company in realizing that the "War on Drugs" is a colossal waste of money. The late, great William F.

Buckley was one. Click on this link nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html and you can read his comments to the New York City Bar Association calling for legalizing drugs. Here is the introduction to a great paper written on the subject by the late Milton Friedman.

The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and comcribs.

Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent. " That is how Billy Sunday, the noted evangelist and leading crusader against Demon Rum, greeted the onset of Prohibition in early 1920.

We know now how tragically his hopes were doomed. New prisons and jails had to be built to house the criminals spawned by converting the drinking of spirits into a crime against the state. Prohibition undermined respect for the law, corrupted the minions of the law, created a decadent moral climate-but did not stop the consumption of alcohol.

Despite this tragic object lesson, we seem bent on repeating precisely the same mistake in the handling of drugs. http://www.druglibrary.org/special/friedman/prohibition_and_drugs.htm Perhaps the best support for changing our foolish ways with respect to marijuana can be found in a paper written and approved by more than 500 economists who advocate a change to our foolish policies. They called for in ta letter to the president what you have suggested--legalization, taxation and regulation rather than outright banning.

http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/ Why should the policy be changed? One, it ain’t workin’. If we assume that Einstein was correct in stating that doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is insanity, http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26032.html the policy is insane.

Two, it is very expensive. It costs a lot of money to hire police to arrest drug users, more money to convict them and a lot more money to lock them up and house and feed them. Further, people behind bars aren’t contributing to the overall economy, so their missed time working perhaps is the mos expensive thing about locking them up.

Three, it makes drug traffickers rich. Simply put, marijuana is a commodity like any other agricultural product. So, if it were legal, supply and demand would determine its price.

But, since it is illegal, the supply is artificially reduced and the costs of production and distribution are increased significantly, giving drug dealers a nice premium or "economic rent" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent over what a true market price would allow them to charge. As a caveat, I have never, ever used illegal drugs, even though it they were all over college campuses when I was in school. If marijuana were legalized, I doubt that I would even be tempted to try them.

But, whether I would or not is not the issue. The issue is are we wasting scarce communal resources pursuing an inefficient strategy? I believe that we are.

Sources: personal opinion and cited above Snow_Leopard's Recommendations Marijuana Myths Marijuana Facts: A Review Of The Scientific Evidence Amazon List Price: $13.95 Used from: $2.99 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 42 reviews) Reefer Madness: A story of Marijuana Amazon List Price: $17.95 Used from: $8.95 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 3 reviews) Legalizing Marijuana: Drug Policy Reform and Prohibition Politics Amazon List Price: $38.95 Used from: $30.00 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 (based on 1 reviews) Marijuana Law Amazon List Price: $17.95 Used from: $3.959 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 4 reviews) Marijuana: Time for a Closer Look: Some Straight Answers about Pot... Amazon List Price: $8.95 Used from: $8.95 Pot Politics: Marijuana and the Costs of Prohibition Amazon List Price: $48.95 Used from: $38.95 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 (based on 1 reviews) .

I totally agree with you I believe it should be taxed and regulated. Only, I don't think it will happen because it will reduce prison populations so much - and too may people are directly employed from the basic fact that marijuana is illegal. By the way- I haven't smoke marijuana in 15 years and wouldn't if it just became legal..

1 But then there would be much less reason to have so many lawyers, police officers, prison officers, courts, prisons and so on. And no doubt at least some of those fine fellows receive kickbacks from the drug barons and dealers. Oh, and how would the police etc obtain *their* free drugs?

Then there's also the civil liberties issue, it would mean allowing adults to make their own choices, run their own lives and sunk or swim as they choose. We know what happened with Prohibition, why does society not see the same things are happening with these other drugs? Or do the pol.

S just not care because its not their 'class' that is incommoded by this prohibition, unlike with alcohol? .

But then there would be much less reason to have so many lawyers, police officers, prison officers, courts, prisons and so on. And no doubt at least some of those fine fellows receive kickbacks from the drug barons and dealers. Oh, and how would the police etc obtain *their* free drugs?

Then there's also the civil liberties issue, it would mean allowing adults to make their own choices, run their own lives and sunk or swim as they choose. We know what happened with Prohibition, why does society not see the same things are happening with these other drugs? Or do the pol.

S just not care because its not their 'class' that is incommoded by this prohibition, unlike with alcohol?

2 ILLEGAL DRUGS is the invisable glue that is the employer of choice for the untrainables in the inner cities..Legalize MJ, and you will upset the order of things and high profile crime will spill over into the burbs..Besides with "soft drugs" such as MJ legalized, the demand for harder stuff, with a greater kick will increase..If you can wall off the inner cities, and make them a no man's land for the useless, then legalizing MJ will work just fine...

ILLEGAL DRUGS is the invisable glue that is the employer of choice for the untrainables in the inner cities..Legalize MJ, and you will upset the order of things and high profile crime will spill over into the burbs..Besides with "soft drugs" such as MJ legalized, the demand for harder stuff, with a greater kick will increase..If you can wall off the inner cities, and make them a no man's land for the useless, then legalizing MJ will work just fine...

" "A universal law requires all to take daily doses of a drug that measured the blood stream for illegal drugs. Enforcable?" "We all know that Arizona has a really bad drug and illegal immigrant problem - so maybe" (12 answers) "What are the federal government's employment requirements regarding prior illegal drug use? " "Is is illegal for a sworn officer of the law to date a convicted felon?

" "What is the most dangerous illegal drug?" "how are illegal immigrannts breakingteh law.

A universal law requires all to take daily doses of a drug that measured the blood stream for illegal drugs. Enforcable?

We all know that Arizona has a really bad drug and illegal immigrant problem - so maybe" (12 answers).

How are illegal immigrannts breakingteh law.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.