FIGHTING AN UNWINNABLE WAR IS EXACERBATING … NOT FIXING OUR PROBLEMS
|| By FITSNEWS || Mexican gangster Joaquín Guzmán Loera (a.k.a. El Chapo)’s escape from prison and subsequent war of words with GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has further elevated the issue of illegal immigration.
But it should also spark a conversation on another important front: The unmitigated failure of America’s “War on Drugs.”
This conflict has deprived U.S. taxpayers of more than $1.3 trillion over the last four decades – while utterly failing to stem the tide of drug use in our country. It’s also unnecessarily incarcerated millions of our citizens and clogged our judicial system – all in the name of enforcing a hypocritical prohibition that should have never been imposed upon a free society in the first place.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: The “War on Drugs” is a war on liberty, prosperity and security.
It restricts our freedom, harms our economy and makes us less safe.
Exhibit A? The Mexican drug trade run by El Chapo and other kingpins.
Mexican cartels exist because of America’s prohibition.
Consider this piece published late last month by Don Winslow – who has covered the “War on Drugs” for the last fifteen years.
“Cocaine, heroin and meth pour across (the U.S.-Mexican border) – mostly carried in trucks, but also hidden in cars, lugged on foot by human ‘mules,’ walked across taped to people’s bodies, hidden inside corpses, packed across on actual mules or horses (two of which, abandoned in the desert, lived out their lives on our place), run through tunnels, launched by catapults – any method that human ingenuity can devise,” Winslow wrote.
What doesn’t cross the border so much anymore, though? Pot.
According to The Washington Post, “the amount of cannabis seized by U.S. federal, state and local officers along the boundary with Mexico has fallen 37?percent since 2011, a period during which American marijuana consumers have increasingly turned to the more potent, higher-grade domestic varieties cultivated under legal and quasi-legal protections in more than two dozen U.S. states.”
Winslow says these developments have made the marijuana trade “not worth it” to the drug cartels, prompting them to import “more coke, meth and especially heroin.”
And the leading heroin importer? El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel – which reaps massive profit margins off of the drug (much bigger margins than it makes off of cocaine).
So what should America do?
Simple: Stop the drug war.
“In essence, when we stop fighting, we win. When we keep fighting, the cartels win,” Winslow wrote. “When the drug bosses look at the border, they don’t see fences or walls – they see money. The border is siempre verde – always green – to drug traffickers.”
People are always going to use drugs – and if they do so in a manner that doesn’t impose on the liberty of others, we’ve got no problem with that (nor should government).
So why? Why do we keep fighting a war that saps our freedom, stunts our economic growth, siphons tax dollars and spawns all sorts of totally unnecessary violence?
Our government’s attempt to criminalize drug use has done nothing but create a host of pernicious problems … while utterly failing in its only stated objective. It’s also succeeded in sending two types of Mexican immigrants across our borders – the criminals (or slaves) who carry the drugs and the honest, hard-working people who are desperate to escape the cartels.
The best thing America can do to solve its illegal immigration problem? End the failed “War on Drugs.”
80 comments
Nancy Reagan’s astrologer said it would be a good idea.
Marilyn Monroe, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger, Whitney Houston.Ike Turner,Anna Nicole Smith,Chris Farley, River Phoenix, John Belushi, and many others who died of a drug overdose would agree with you.
There are many reasons for opposing the sale and distribution of drugs other than disagreeing with someone’s political/ moral/religious beliefs.
Every case you list, if the drugs were not in the picture, might have easily been some other form of suicide than ingesting poison.
I wonder why they did not just go ahead and eliminate themselves by other means, it would have been much cheaper and could have been made a much better statement than dying in your own puke.
Mm mm … Ask them. Ask an attempted OD suicide.
Females generally commit suicide in a manner that won’t disturb their looks. (Drug OD, Slit Wrists, Drowning, etc). Males will usual hang themselves or GSW to the head, intentional vehicle crash . I’ve read a few studies on this.
Sometimes they will buy new outfits so they look nice.
I’ve also seen women who cake on clownish makeup, cover themselves with macabre death-themed tattoos, wear hair-caught-in-a-wood-chipper coifs, sport cruel shoes with steel spiked heels, silicone caulked butt, unnaturally stretched breasts without cleavage, faces pulled into horrific, stretched masks with slits for eyes, who pick their noses – from a book, and starve themselves into slightly skinnier versions of recently deceased results of Nazi death camps
Life affirming stuff, that.
All of that is fine, but call me a traditionalist. I like a woman that instead of doing all that easy stuff, bravely faces the emotions of a sensitive life, wears comfortable clothes, appears clean, healthy, cheerful, intelligent, curious and without jealousy or concern of being judged or evaluated by others.
but, that’s just me.
max, I’m replying to you using DISQUS. The fitsnews site is giving me a syntax error.and will not open. What gives?
Apparently, there’s either a bad disqus upgrade, or someone at Fits messed up their template.
It’s been like this since last night.
Yes, it started last night, are you replying on disqus?
Yes
It must be fits other sites are up and running.
Yeah, he probably fat-fingered it, and doesn’t know how to fix it.
Either he’s still in bed, or he’s calling his go-to-guy to drag his ass up to the office and fix it.
He was probably trying to do something fancy.
Well he’s got one thing right, *imbalanced*, have a good day.
Max, that’s a very artistic post and I’m going to save it — but the ‘dressing nice’ is a reference to women who are going to commit suicide….
I was also describing women who are committing suicide. I suppose they think they’re dressing nice too… I guess in comparison to the Walking Dead, they’re dressed nice.
I was only pointing out that my preference is a girl that doesn’t put so much effort into it.
I understand you completely — thanks for the explanation.
meth doesn’t make women prettier.. at least not in the classic sense.
I’ve heard Alcohol makes men think women are prettier.
Abstinence works too.
So drunk or sober basically men only need two things to live happily, a Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Sex.
The enlightened man realizes that a Grilled Cheese Sandwich never has a headache or expects you to read its mind – it never talks back, lets you eat it while you’re watching tv, the stomach doesn’t have to be erect for you to enjoy it, and you can eat three of them without having to explain what the other two are for.
It’s the perfect life. I would love not having to worry about things that don’t affect me in any way.
Maybe you should look into serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. Worked for me.
I already do. The wonderful thing about taking anti-depressants is the problems still exist, you just don’t care anymore.
That’s what it’s like to be a man.
There is a restaurant in SF that features several different Grilled Cheese Sandwiches … and soups, too!
Mmmmm … I had no idea.
fast cars.
parachute jump
spelunking
mountain climbing
racing
war.
You left out belly shots on somebody else’s wife.
…saving it for the denouement.
How do you know dying in your own puke isn’t the height of expression?
Mmmmm … “Truth is one, paths are many.” – The Dalai Lama
There may be dozens of answers. It might just simply be peer pressure … Booze and drugs are “in”?
Marilyn Monroe, Heath Ledger, and Anna Nicole Smith all died from ingesting prescription medication. One of the common factors in almost all of the mass murders in the United States over the past 30 years is the presence of psychotropic drugs. If we are going to oppose the sale and distribution of drugs, we need to take a long hard look at those deemed “legal” by the government.
You are right, but most people dying of drug overdoses are doing it with illegal drugs.
You might be right, but there is a very good reason…
The over-prescribing of painkillers is fuelling nearly 17,000 annual deaths from overdoses in the United States as well as a rise in heroin use, according to a study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday.
The CDC reviewed 2010-2012 mortality data from 28 states to measure rising fatal heroin overdose rates and determine how the increases were tied to prescription painkillers.
The study found that the death rate from heroin overdoses doubled during that two-year span to from 1 to 2.1 deaths per 100,000 people, while deaths from prescription opioid drugs overdoses declined from 6 to 5.6 deaths per 100,000.
Despite the slight drop in prescription painkiller-related deaths, the Atlanta-based CDC said years of over-prescription of painkillers has led to the recent surge in heroin deaths.
“The rapid rise in heroin overdose deaths follows nearly two decades of increasing drug overdose deaths in the United States, primarily driven by (prescription painkiller) drug overdoses,” the study found.
In a sample of heroin users in treatment programs, 75 percent who started using heroin after 2000 said they first abused prescription opioids. They said heroin was easier to get, cheaper and more potent than prescription drugs.
“In contrast, among those who began use in the 1960s, more than 80 percent indicated that they initiated their abuse with heroin,” the study said.
The study also showed there has been a 74 percent increase in heroin use between 2009 and 2012, and that prescription painkiller overdose mortality declined among males, people under age 45, residents of Southern states and non-Hispanic whites.
A look at regions of the United States from 2010 to 2012 showed states in the Northeast recorded a 211 percent increase in heroin overdose deaths. Southern states were next with a 181 percent jump, while the West and Midwest reported rises of 62 and 91 percent, respectively.
Prescription painkiller death rates rose everywhere except for the South.
The switch from prescription painkillers to heroin poses a public health concern, in part because it indicates an increase in intravenous drug use, which can spread diseases.
To combat the rise of opioid deaths, the CDC suggested measures including drug screenings and the increased availability of naloxone, a drug that can rapidly halt an overdose.
impure illegal drugs… and on purpose.
Maybe if they had easier access to drugs their deaths could have been averted. Countries with much laxer drug laws have much lower overdose death rates.
But if you make something illegal people will stop doing it and nothing bad ever happens. Worked for prohibition on alcohol!
Except for the Tommy Gun bits. … Just like the subject at hand.
How about a holiday every year where people can volunteer to use automatic weapons and live ammo in a closed theater team death match? The game isn’t over until all the members of one of the teams is dead.
HBO would underwrite it and Bryant Gumble could host.
…it would have to be wheel chair accessible.
Naturally.
And if you sell it in gas stations they will refuse to buy it?
Funny how democrats want to ban cigarettes over health concerns but endorse legalizing PCP, GHB, Crack, and Meth.
If making something illegal only causes mare people to do it then why do liberals insist on outlawing cigarettes?
Please provide example of one of these laws to make cigarettes illegal. Would like to see it.
Attempts to ban it in municipalities. To regulate it through the DEA.
Why? Because it causes cancer?
Just because a drug has harmful side effects is no reason to make it illegal.
I was giving examples of how the government was trying to ban or regulate it to someone who seemed oblivious to the governments interference with the tobacco industry.
How long after legalization will you wait before running out and buying a bag of heroin?
I won’t buy it. How long will you wait?
Point and match!
Not hardly. Anytime you make things readily accessible then more people will buy it. Not all people but more people. I notice that you avoided my question. Do you really think that usage would go down if it were legalized?
If so maybe we should do the same with guns and stop regulating who can purchase them. Let’s legalize murder so we can bring those numbers down. Do away with speed limits? Make more people environmentally conscious by eliminating environmental laws and regulations?
How far toward anarchy do you want to go?
How far toward anarchy do you want to go?
——–
I’d like to limit anarchy as much as possible. Unfortunately being Republican isn’t a felony, so that limits my choices.
Do you really believe that making something legal will cause less people to do it?
Let’s run a thought experiment – for starters, let’s make suicide legal, and set the speed limit on all freeways and by-ways to 20mph.
Which one do you think will save more lives?
One measure would seek to end life while the other would be designed to save it. Your experiment fails because you use to models with polar opposite objectives.
If the thought experiment failed it was between your ears.
Tobacco is assisted suicide, and prohibition is a 20 mph speed limit.
How do you propose outlawing/ further regulating cigarettes while wanting to legalize drugs?
hypocrisy is fine with me… in my heart of hearts, I’m a Republican – only by the grace of God am I a liberal.
Marijuana giveth life, tobacco taketh it away.
The number of overdoses did falk, of course the number of people in “junkie programs” more than doubled…
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html&ved=0CBwQFjAAahUKEwi3g8iS8trGAhVBOogKHTDdCAg&usg=AFQjCNG8jHoB5EKHvXmZkJo25hdQgwhZMw&sig2=4xVYiaWmywDZJEsR3kyDtg
If people made good choices, we wouldn’t have to read about them.
while it harms us, it is killing thousands of mexicans who don’t even buy or sell drugs. america is completely responsible for thousands of deaths in mexico. if you believe in the free market then you believe nothing can stop a billion dollar business. the mexican government has zero chance of controlling it. even the US government has no chance of controlling it.
How is America “…completely responsible…” for Mexico’s corruption and inability to control the drug trade? I’ll give you the 200 people killed in Obama/Holder’s Fast and Furious gun running scheme but the other 50,000 or so killed in Mexico’s drug wars are Mexico’s problem.
“How is America “…completely responsible…” for Mexico’s corruption and inability to control the drug trade? ”
Just a guess, but I’m thinking he’s referring to the fact that said drugs have been made illegal in the US and created this black market with it’s according violence.
If they weren’t illegal, there would be no black market and it’s associated problems.
Yeah, I got that but your dog barking in your fenced back yard because of the leash laws isn’t my problem. If it was, I’d shoot it and fix the problem.
“your dog barking incessantly in your fenced back yard because of the leash laws isn’t my problem.”
It’s not the same. Not even close. There’s a direct correlation between drug laws and the drug gangs & violence(in both countries).
See Prohibition.
So to solve the problem – shoot the dealers…
See how easy that was?
Why isn’t it being solved then? Also, why wasn’t it solved that way during Prohibition?
Not enough dead dealers?
I’m sure by now you’ve figured out that I am being somewhat factious but I don’t think Mexico is my problem.If legalizing drugs were the answer, why hasn’t Mexico’s problem been solved – they decriminalized drugs six years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/americas/21mexico.html
Has it ever occurred to you that both wars are/were unwinnable? For every dead dealer, and the huge amount of money it take to kill or imprison him, another simply fills the void.
That’s why the drug war has been going on so long with no real progress….
The only reason the Feds finally legalized liquor is because it was popular, they weren’t ever “winning” the war on alcohol.
You’ve hit on one of the reasons I support legalizing pot. The rest of it is too dangerous in my never to be humble opinion.
“The rest of it is too dangerous in my never to be humble opinion.”
Well, I think you should reconsider so that you have reason not to be humble.
:)
You’re on the right track…all you have to do is acknowledge that the gov’t spending in not effective(which you’ve already done) and swap your fears for logic.
In a democrats view everything that they perceive negative is America’s fault (Except the civil war,slavery, and racial inequality). They caused it but blame Republicans for that). For Anything positive that happens they either credit their party for it or say that it is something that we unintentionally and blindly stumbled in to.
When totally unfettered, uncontrolled Gruberment meets a freedom seeking, thrill seeking society with a “moral impairitive” to “do something” … Well, the “progressive” Fascists always will.
Back when alcohol prohibition was repealed (1930’s) the fascists in g’ment had no real “enemy”, no crisis to overcome … So g’ment picked most of the “happy face” drugs to demonize in order to maintain the bloated “law enforcement” mechanism.
In more recent times the U.S. DEA captures a revenue stream greater than the fed budgetary allowances … The DEA is cash flow positive … Just like the IRS.
To feed T-Rav’s habit?
War on Drugs?The drugs won.
What is the difference between legalization and decriminalization? About 40,000 Federal jobs.