Why It's Stupid: The Drug War

I was reading around and found a Newsweek article about the new War on Drugs the U.S. is fighting is Central and South America.

We all know the basics, there are a few select Tony Montana's in the world who operate huge scale coca plantations for producing cocaine, the number one grossing illegal drug in the world.

But the problem we have had since the eighties is that money that could be going towards education, infrastructure, alternative energy research and the like is being dumped into a hole that is the war on drugs. In this country we over fund police agencies to make arrests that in the big picture do nothing but waste DEA time. Abroad we try to enforce our drug policies and continually try to keep up with illegal cartels who traffic drugs.

According to the Drug Policy Alliance however, "Despite the exponential growth in spending on the drug war, illicit drugs are cheaper and purer than they were two decades ago, and continue to be readily available. In addition, according to White House estimates, 57% of Americans in need of drug treatment do not receive it, in spite of its proven cost effectiveness in reducing drug use."

So there you go, we spend about 40 BILLION DOLLARS every year to combat drugs, but what is suffering from lack of funding? Rehab centers and programs across the country. That makes no fucking sense, why should we worry about policing the world when what we should be doing is securing illegal drug traffic from the U.S./Mexican border and rehabilitating our drug addicted citizens.

And still across the country police incarcerate for possession of marijuana. Our tax dollars never seemed more useless.