Hansel: Drug War

http://www.leftycartoons.com/

There is very little that I can say regarding the war on drugs that has not already been stomped into the ground repeatedly by anyone with the proper ability to observe and analyze national occurrences.  Despite the fortune being dumped into the drug war, no improvement has been made.  (Sounds kind of like public education, but that's a whole other  issue.)  There are also other costs of the drug war, including broken up families, loss of constitutional rights, and spots in America's already severely overcrowded prisons.  Personally, I do not think that any sort of unity between Mexico and the United States, nor any sort of improvements in the policies will benefit the Drug War. Call me a pessimist, but drug policies have been tested and failed for entirely too long in America.  One would think that the government would pick up on this sort of consistent failure in policy, but what can you say?  Our friend Mario claimed that marijuana legalization would help the drug problem in the United States, and I strongly agree with him.  Often, in the legalization arguments, I hear that government regulation of the product will help prevent from unsafe condition of marijuana.  This, on the other hand, I do not even agree with.  What parents often worry about with pot is that some teenager is going to wind up with a bag of shitty Mexican dirt weed that is laced with cocaine and is going to kill their little  white Rastafarian poser son. This is a problem that is not only highly uncommon, but is also a problem that could be solved almost entirely by legalization of marijuana. Said white Rastafarian poser son is not very apt to visit the hospital when he starts feeling a little too funny from this tainted bag of herb, due to the regulations on his previous activities.  If companies were able to compete with marijuana sales on the terms of quality of the product, it will result in safer bags.  Said "shitty Mexican dirt weed" will become extinct, not to say that we would no longer import the product from Mexico, especially given how much America loves to consume other nations' goods. This will result in legal, less dangerous methods of crossing the border.  Let's say, for the sake of continuing the suburb boy narrative, pot is legalized, and this boy, for whatever reason, still buys pot from his friend down at the alley by Piggly Wiggly.  If this bag is tainted, he is much more apt to go to the hospital and get treatment.  This situation would be practically extinct in the days of legalization.  The previously mentioned point, in my opinion, would not only apply to marijuana, but to cocaine.  Obviously, the still existing laws regarding cocaine would be much more harsh as to refraining from driving, how much is legal to own, the age limit.  The points I hear against cocaine are often regarding the quality and the quantity.  People are afraid that the product will have other harmful, deadly contents, which is a problem eradicated by legalization.  Also, people worry that they will overdose.  Of course, this would still exist in the days of legalization, but treatment centers and regulations would help those in need of such just as treatment for smokers and alcoholics already exist.  I know several other points that support legalization, but I do not want to ramble on.  If you would like to hear more points regarding legalization, you should follow the link I put at the bottom regarding such.

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/  

Government using ENRON-esque accounting technique to lie about Drug War costs?  Fancy that!

If you really really care about prohibition, particularly regarding marijuana, this presentation by Loyola's own Dr. D'Amico, will capture your fancy.

Thank you for reading, please enjoy the links I put up.  Most of them are from a website run by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a "think tank" of sorts for Austrian economics and libertarian theory. I spend a lot of my day on this site.