Prohibition was once instituted in the United States, as a result Canadians made a killing selling Liquor illicitly to their American neighbors; and then Al-capone started killing some police and eventually the violence in the urban areas forced the public to realize that maybe drinking isin`t too bad.
The modern "War on Drugs" is another arm of the military industrial complex with wholly political aims to prevent countries like coloumbia from propping up dictators. Ronald Regan had some good ideas, but his own Intellegence agencies was caught trafficking cocciane during the 80's. However I am not an american, I am a Canadian so therefore I will concentrate on that which I may have some power to change.
Harper's government is very pro-war on drugs, they aimed to increase policing aginst gangs and gang warfare; they wish to reduce the minimum age that a child can be tried as an adult and during his "Throne Speech" he stated that they will "Get tough on crime".
Canada has this nasty habbit of not voting! And when we do vote we are in a minority; this minority government was elected by less than half of the Canadian population, but that's a whole other issue.
Recently a 14 year old girl died as the result of an "Extacy" overdose;
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Students%20mourn%20Edmonton%20girl%20after%20ecstasy%20overdose/1538627/story.html
It's a tragic and sad story, youth culture typically rebels in any way shape or form and this girl had told her parents that not even a week earlier "She would never do drugs".
I could go on for hours about the Drug wars in the southern united states and Mexico but; again that's American.
My point is this; as a country we are all hypocrites that don't vote.
Tobbacco and Alcohol kill and maim more people every year than illicit drugs, yet illicit drugs account for a multi-billion dollar underground economy. This black market allows gangs to arm themselfs; it's the source of the ability for criminals to fight the police and it's at the core of the opposition of the "War on Drugs".
Any General will tell you that during WWII we started bombing ball bearing factories; since without ball bearings the germans could not fix thier trucks which were essential to the blitz-kreig style of fighting. We also bobmed civilian populaces, and commited horrors that remain the worst in human history.
Milton Friedman once stated;
"If coccciane was legal, crack would not exist."
Remove the economics behind the industry and tax & regulate it, by no means is it ok to consume things like Meth, Heroin, Cocciane, "Extacy" for any duration of time due to the damages incurred but addiction is a medical issue and should be treated as such. Instead we turn addicts into criminals or they themselfs become criminals to support their habbits. The medical industry can produce these at a fraction of the price; hell Cocciane Hydrocloride was invented by Merk, Meth-Amphetamine was developed by the Germans during WWII and the various party drugs have been around since thier development in the 50's and 60's, under government and privately funded psycedelic resarch programs which were the precursors to the science behind SSRI's.
The only sure path to harm reduction is to prevent the psychosis and neruological damage before it becomes a socitotial and or ciminal issue. There are now a pelthora of SSRI's, NSSRI's, MAOI's and others that act upon the same potentials to block the limbic reward path of most illicit chemicals, Methadone programs have improved the situtations in many cities; and programs could be designed for a fraction of the current costs of enforcement.
In short:
We may build schools and hospitals or we can build armies and graveyards, it's your choice.
You may support the military industrial complex or you can support your people.
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