What war is the greatest failure for the U. S.? (hint: not Vietnam or Iraq)

[hivoltage]

It's the catastrophic failure known as the "war on drugs".

We arrest, intercede, imprison, punish, test, and fail abysmally in every sense of the word. Are we not still the number one buyer of illegal drugs (by far) despite the fact that we have the highest imprisonment rate in the world?

Well at least we have one "victory":

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/14/med.marijuana.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

[Redmage]

The War on Some Drugs (it's not a general "war on drugs," and never has been) will certainly go down in history as one of our greatest policy failures. It wasn't the mistake of one or even two Presidents or Congresses, but a continuously flawed policy stretching over a good 50 years and counting so far. I can't think of anything except slavery about which we've been so egregiously wrong for so long.

I remember soon after 9/11 we started seeing those overdone commercials claiming that "Drugs fund terrorists." And every time I saw one of them I would think, "Would a farmer who could legally grow coca or hemp, or a shop owner who could legally sell them funnel their money to terrorists?" Probably not. Criminals deal with other criminals. So it's not drugs that enable terrorists to fill their bank accounts. It's idiotic drug laws.

So it is with almost all drug laws: they aren't the cure. They're the disease.

[Strider]

It should be called the war on supply and demand.

[storm7400]

The war on drugs is a farce. The rage now a days is pharmaceuticals and they are legal with prescriptions yet anyone can get a script with complaints of back and neck pain. I realize that my rationalization is a bit vague but so is this so-called war. It mainly focuses on drugs that are produced outside the borders in countries deemed unfriendly by the government. There has never been a death from marijuana and its illegal yet a drug like Viagra gets rush approval from the FDA and causes blindness, heart attacks and death! But hey Viagra get get an 80 year old Congress man hard so he can bang his secretary and pot can't so I guess I see the connection............NOT!!!!!!!! This is a bogus war and will always will be.

[MrMacphisto]

It should be called the war on supply and demand.

Amen... or as Timothy Leary put it... "The War on Personal Freedom"

[Iggy pop]

My girlfriend is Colombian and she will attest, that our war on drugs has done terrible things to Colombia. It is time to declare a drug peace.

[Mastertank1]

because I get so angry about it, but the hell with it.

In all 50 states, in the US congress and in every major municipality in this country, courageous politicians have tried to get druges decriminalized at least once. In some jurisdictions, many times. In some they have suceeded, only to have their new laws overturned by right wing activist judges in federal courts (!).

All such attempts are instantly opposed by extraordinarily well funded campaigns. These campaigns are always, without exception, led by local and regional church organizations.
It's amazing; going along in the normal course of events, these same churches are tearfully begging for contributions because they don't have enough money to keep up their shelter for victims of domestic violence, their free kitchen for the homeless, to repair the leaking roof on their church. Horror of horrors, they can't even afford to pay the pastor his full salary plus benefits!
Then some legislator proposes legalizing one or more recreational drugs, and suddenly the churches have tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on opposing the new law.
Where does it come from? From organized crime. Legalization could kill off one of their cash cows! I'm not just talking Mafia; the Columbian mob, the Mexican mob, the Jamaicans, the Chinese tongs, the Vietnamese mob, the Russian mob, the Yakuza, the Albanian mob, the Corsicans, every organized crime group that operates in the USA funnels cash through churches to make sure that drugs, gambling and prostitution stay illegal so the profits remain high.
The churches know where that money comes from. Contributions that big are never anonymous. Depending on location and circumstances, they skim anywhere from 10 to 50 percent for 'other uses'. Like the new mansion where the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Suffolk County lives in New York State. A mansion with an airconditioned 12 car garage, including an air conditioned fully enclosed passageway to the garage from the house. While in the next diocese over, in Queens, programs for the poor have been cut in half and churches closed due to lack of funds.
The same thing happens with attempts to legalize gambling and prostitution, but in the case of gambling the spate of casinos on Native American lands where the churches have little or no influence have induced envious state and municipal governments to disregard church led opposition to casinos.
It's blatant hypocrisy; the churches know where the money is from, the criminal gangs know the churches will skim part of it into their own coffers. The criminals are buying the self-righteous indignation of the religious as a tool to protect their profits.
While I'm at it; it's no accident that the efforts of the 'war on drugs' have been mainly aimed at the supply of drugs. Money has been spent lavishly on either curtailing production or interdicting importation. Niether has worked worth a damn, because there are such a multiplicity of sources and routes.
Burn a poppy field in Afghanistan, they plant one in Myanmar. Blow up a lab in Columbia, they build one in Panama. Intercept boats coming in from the Carribbean, more boats come in at Long Island Sound.
But these efforts to destroy supply sources and stop smuggling are not without their effect; every sucess they have raises the street price, with the net result being that the profits reaped by organized crime increase. Which is why the huge amounts of money deployed as bribes by organized drug gangs are used to direct anti-drug enforcement efforts into destroying sources and interrupting transportation instead of trying to decrease demand, which might actually work if they did something besides the 'just say no' approach that every user laughs at!
The government agencies that conduct the war on drugs have become their own vested interest. They don't want to definitively win any more than the criminals want them to win; they would be out of a job.
PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT talking about the rank and file enforcement officers on the street. I'm talking about the politically appointed asswipes who run the so called war on drugs.It has been an utter failure as far as achieving it's STATED purpose; but it has suceeded perfectly at what I think is it's real purpose; to give the illusion that government is 'doing something' about a percieved problem while making certain that the something only increases the profitability of the illegal trade.
It's deeply and completely disgusting, and the Republicans and Democrats are equally guilty. A plague on both their houses.