WSJ: "Drug War" has cost taxpayers $1 trillion

Why do people who are concerned with the price of the War on Drugs never have the same concern with the price of the War on Poverty, which has been $8 trillion and made things much worse?

 

Because with poverty, in theory, the money is being spent to try to help poor people. With the war on drugs, the money is seen as being spent to stop people from doing something that should just be legalized, taxed, and regulated.

 

So the fact that it's a complete failure at a cost of $8 trillion should just be ignored?

I guess in Liberal Land intentions matter much more than disastrous results.

 

Poverty has declined significantly since the introduction of the War On Poverty. Drug use has not declined since the War On Drugs began, and the impacts have grown because of the nature of the drugs and the costs in the health care system.

 

Poverty has not declined. In fact, the War on Poverty and its ridiculous policies have greatly increased the No. 1 cause of poverty -- single motherhood.

A child is far more likely to be brought up in poverty if he or she is an out-of-wedlock birth, and a woman is far more likely to live in poverty if she's having kids without a husband. Have you ever bothered to look around?

 

According to the statistics kept on such things, poverty declined immediately upon passage of legislation, and dropped roughly in half over the first 10-year span. It stayed at that level until the 1980s, a time that coincided with the overall growth in income inequality, and has grown since then but is still well below where it was before the War On Poverty began.

 

Each entity is a different war. The War on Drugs can be prevented more so than a war on poverty, just in terms of money and class warfare. There will always be people struggling to live in this world, and that is the sorry truth. But in regards to the War on Drugs, the U.S. government has stuck its nose into something and can't get it out. The Drug War only makes matters worse because drug use has not decreased, but more people are being arrested and more people are getting killed. The Drug War has more of a chain reaction associated with it.

 

I love the way that drug use in this country is rationalized by the hackneyed phrases I read in this thread. Fuck it, if the War on Drugs were a big enough deal to people (the wasted money, the ruined lives, the people shot in Mexico), all but the biggest addicts would stop. And people wouldn't start.

But all of the collateral damage doesn't mean shit to people. They'd rather have their drugs. The people have spoken loud and clear.

 

Not every drug user is an addict. Do you drink alcohol? If so, do you drink every day? I think the issue people have is that people's tax dollars go to something that can be treated in a different matter via legalization or decriminalization, and the way drugs are handled in Mexico and South America are more extreme than in the United States. In the U.S. people are imprisoned for marijuana possession (more than any other country) and you pay for that as a taxpayer, where as in Mexico or Columbia or whatever, people are attacked and killed.

And if people "want their drugs," why can't they have them without anyone bothering them? I'm all for that if it means not spending money on efforts like the War on Drugs when it obviously isn't working, and it prevents the government from infringing on people's personal rights. You can drink a fifth of Jack Daniels in your home, so why can't you smoke a joint? It just doesn't make any sense overall.

 

I didn't say every drug user was an addict. I laughed at the talking points I read that "deeper societal issues" cause drug demand.

 

Oh, alright. Personal issues, maybe, but societal? Meh.