Do you think America is winning the war on drugs?

Not at all.

What she said.

No.

try driving down Boulder Hwy. in Vegas without being asked if you want crack about 6 or 7 times. That should answer your question…

@TaoSan Hey you want any crack?

I feel like I should expand a little; I’ll give a single example.

Just put it this way:

Mexican drug cartels would not be as powerful as they are today if it wasn’t for the United States. Their entire business is structured and supported by sales in America. Theoretically, if we were to cut ties with Mexico, erecting a fence or something, the gangs would be financially murdered.

Our market is that huge. We buy so much drugs that we are supporting (combining the individual gangs, of course) an army that is able to nearly overthrow a emerging 3rd world/2nd world country’s government.

Do you really think we’re winning this?

I think it is completely unrealistic to believe that the flow of drugs will ever be stopped or moderated to any significant degree. As long as there is a steady demand for them, and I believe there is here in the United States, those criminal elements involved in the drug trade will always find a way to smuggle, transport, buy, sell, and manufacture drugs. It’s an unfortunate but very realistic fact of life and it’s not going away.

It’s another one of those wars that can never be won. Might as well just legalize and control like alcohol.

I think the Moral Majority is financed by drug cartels because it is in their best financial interests to keep it illegal.

Nope. And they never will.

Ha… Wars on ideas usually fail.

Tax it and use the cash for prevention and rehab. Tossing folks in jail is the wrong thing to do. And it doesn’t work. Interesting

Pfft. No.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities

they found me! Not again!!!

No, we are losing yet another one.

@Grisaille Cutting all ties to Mexico would bring a drug free America?

@oratio No way in hell! Haha.

There’s always a way to smuggle illegal stuffs into the States; as restrictions get placed, criminals will always find ways around them. I’m merely showing how large the drug market is in America.

The war on drugs is a loser. The money would be better spent on education, regulation and rehabilitation.

No.

Absolutely not. In fact, I would go ahead and say it’s losing the war on drugs. Drugs are more easily found nowadays and more kids are trying them while in school, plus the amount of resources poured into the war are simply not worth the return.

On this one, the white flag should go up. There’s no way it will ever win this war.

To be fair, we did think the drugs had WMD’s.

I am pondering about alternatives.

What should be done instead?
How should the policy and legislation change?
Should all drugs be legalized? Only some?

Any thoughts on that?

The first step is decriminalization, not going straight to legalization. We can learn from what others have done in terms of decriminalization such as looking at Portugal’s results. This should help calm down the baseless panic that everyone will be high all the time (amazingly enough, most of the squabbling is the same rhetoric that was used to support alcohol prohibition).

Well the wars been going on for some 20 or so years, with billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of peoples man hours the whole time…. And I could get pot, cocain, crack, X, other pills, acid… by tonight…... give me a week and I could have heroin.

So in short…. no, it’s not working at all. y

No.

And as an aside, why does everything have to be a war? War is obviously not a very effective strategy for dealing with problems.

Unfortunately, no.

what war on drugs? HAHA

We aren’t even winning any important battles.

Marijuana can be the bail out crop to America’s problems. It can create a lot of jobs. It can also give money back to the states by creating schools to teach you how to farm, grow, and run a business. I’m sure most of you who are on this question have heard of Oaksterdam University in California. They teach you how to grow, cure, treat, farm and open your own dispensary for marijuana. I watched a documentary and it showed this one guy who owned a dispensary, grew his own bud, and made over $250,000 profit every year. He only had 2 harvests a year and he grew indoors at his home, and then put his strains up in a showcase in his dispensary. Of course, he had a degree and certifications from oaksterdam university in order to open his own place and was very well educated. More and more people are starting to use it. Everyday homes are raided and millions of dollars are spent to stop home growing, and not to mention outdoor growing. They focus, and spend more money on stopping a medicinal plant, rather than figuring out who is bringing in the cocaine, meth, crack, and heroin into the United States. Tell me that makes sense?

This war is often being fought in the wrong places. Your friendly family physician may be prescribing more addictive pills, drugs, pain killers and the like creating a nation hooked on a cure for no reason. The drug companies, the most profitable firms on the planet, are lovin’ every minute of it, and contriibuting to a lot of campaigns. They will never need a bailout.

“The War On Drugs” was started as political propaganda and is still such. So we cannot win it.

Not even close. It’s such a waste of money and resources.

Thinking about the War on Drugs, whatever happened with the War on Poverty? SHouldn’t we finish one war before we start another?

Drugs? Poverty? Terrorism? Cancer? Maybe we should stop making war, and settle down to the hard, slogging work of dealing with large, intractable problems.

“War” is the wrong metaphor.

Yes, the concept of a ‘war’ in this context is seriously flawed.

What might be a “war” for one, makes plenty of others LOTS of cabbage.
War on Drugs is like a broadway musical. All the drama, and excitement. But back stage the producers pockets are stuffed with money.

assolutely not. they should save there money and collect taxes on drugs that are never gonna go away

not at all, they never have and probably never will. It’s all govt. propoganda. They spend billions of dollars every year and the crime rate has stayed the same and has even gotten worse