The War On Drugs; Keeping UP

[Bikewer]

Working in campus law enforcement, we don't see much of the War On Drugs. Our kids seem to favor alcohol as their drug of choice, with occasional forays into grass, "shrooms", and LSD.

Nonetheless, we get our weekly information bulletins from an area-wide law-enforcement information sharing service. This usually includes officer safety items, wanted persons, alerts about new crimes of interest, and smuggling methods.

Week after week after week, we get pictures of the latest smuggling methods, usually discovered by drug dogs or informants. Virtually anything you can think of, and likely a few you can't have been pressed into service to smuggle drugs.
Shipping pallets. Logs. Every nook and cranny possible in cars and trucks. Foodstuffs. Animal carcasses. Living humans. Statuettes, electronic components..... Week after week.

And this is just the stuff that gets caught. By most estimates, only a small percentage of the total amount of drugs smuggled in.
The point of this post? I don't know, maybe just the depressing futility of what we're doing....

 

[rissablue]

I don't know, maybe just the depressing futility of what we're doing....

Are you upset because,, working in law enforcement you realize you aren't making a dent in the drug world, or because you think there is really no point to the war on drugs at all?

 

[rissablue]

I don't know, maybe just the depressing futility of what we're doing....

Are you upset because,, working in law enforcement you realize you aren't making a dent in the drug world, or because you think there is really no point to the war on drugs at all?

Sorry bout this second post....lost control of my keyboard for a second there....

 

[Darth Rotor]

Are you upset because,, working in law enforcement you realize you aren't making a dent in the drug world, or because you think there is really no point to the war on drugs at all?

Sorry bout this second post....lost control of my keyboard for a second there....

The first sign of being hooked on speed.

DR

 

[rissablue]

The first sign of being hooked on speed.

DR

That's why I'm against the war on drugs!!!

 

[Overman]

The main reason why the war on Drugs is so upsetting is because people are fighting a symptom in stead of the root of the problem. If you want to end drugs, you don't end drugs, you end people wanting drugs.

 

[LawnOven]

The main reason why the war on Drugs is so upsetting is because people are fighting a symptom in stead of the root of the problem. If you want to end drugs, you don't end drugs, you end people wanting drugs.

How do you see that happening?

 

[Skibum]

The main reason why the war on Drugs is so upsetting is because people are fighting a symptom in stead of the root of the problem. If you want to end drugs, you don't end drugs, you end people wanting drugs.

Human nature is a tough thing to change.

 

[egslim]

Human nature is a tough thing to change.

But even harder to fight.

 

[King of the Americas]

'I' wouldn't want drugs anymore, if I had a house full of swedish bikini models, who all 'needed' to have sex with me repeatedly and often.

Okay, maybe I'd still need viagra, but that isn't really a drug, is it?

---

Through the War on Drugs, Medicade gets to spend $30,000 every year on my Marinol. I could grow 1 or 2 cannibas plants for the cost of a bucket of rainwater, that would supply my THC needs just fine.

While watching "The Waltons" the other day, I saw John Boy helping to stoke the fire under a still. I wondered if this would be the same as the "Men at Work" kid to help his uncle Charlie to make meth?

It is said that the Kennedys made their money running booz.

I wonder which family will have the billions tomorrow all made possible through the illegal drug trade?

 

[LawnOven]

'I' wouldn't want drugs anymore, if I had a house full of swedish bikini models, who all 'needed' to have sex with me repeatedly and often.

Your body is releasing a drug to you when you orgasm.

A large part internal reward system is like, based on body made drugs. We would have as much luck, outlawing food. People wouldn't take drugs if they didn't work.

 

[Bikewer]

Overman's reply is to the point. I see the entire "war on drugs" to be an expensive exercise in futility, and one that has societal costs far beyond it's up-front outlay.
We are creating a large underclass of citizens who are essentially "lost" due to drug-related arrest records.
Little hope of decent employment after release, no job training.....

We know large numbers of people want drugs; else no market. Why? Why do human beings need to intoxicate themselves? Is it just, as one forumite said, that they have such rotten lives they need whatever escape they can manage?

Might it be that depression (and related syndromes) is more common in the population than we think, and that people are self-medicating?

Or is it more a physiological/psychological situation that just causes humans to desire mind-altering substances?

And where is the research into all that?

 

[LawnOven]

Might it be that depression (and related syndromes) is more common in the population than we think,

I think its more like "depression (and related syndromes) is more common in the population than" ever gets treated and reported. People in the know, psychiatrists, psychologists seem to be well aware of the magnitude of that problem.


People consume recreational drugs for many reasons they make you feel better, they are fun, they can allow you to be more productive. They enhance the users life in some way.

Then for some drugs and some people, eventually there comes addiction. Thats almost a whole separate issue all together.

And where is the research into all that?

I just took a look at wikipedia; it looks like this might be the book you want, for the types of questions you are asking.



Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances
by Ronald K. Siegel

 

[torporchair]

"We are creating a large underclass of citizens who are essentially "lost" due to drug-related arrest records.
Little hope of decent employment after release, no job training....." -Bikewer

This is the crime. The war on drugs is a political scare tactic and now the politicians are afraid to back off this horrible mistake they've made which is ruining the lives of millions.

If someone sells pot sprayed with embalming fluid and doesn't tell the buyer it's sprayed with embalming fluid, that person is, in my opinion, a criminal. But people busted for posession who have to cop a plea are being ill-served by the InJustice system.