Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Why Ron Paul is right about the war on drugs

Constantly I see post saying things like "why would you want to legalize drugs?".   Dr. Paul is 100% accurate on that fighting drugs with laws don't work.  It has been proven that if you treat people with addiction it helps more than throwing them in to prison.  In fact minor offenders tend to be violent when they get out of prison..

So to understand this lets look back on the history of trying to outlaw drugs.  From the 1600s people were trying to ban smoking due to its risk.  There wasn't a lot of restrictions on drugs though until the early 1900s.  This was due to a large opium use in common life of people and fear drove people to regulate these drugs.  It didn't all together ban them, but it made you need a prescription to get some heavy drugs like heroin etc.  The use almost dropped to 0 until after world war 2.  During this time laws were created requiring companies to put labels on products defining what their products contained, and I think this is important for people to make informed decisions.  An important fact to note was there was a huge uproar over Coke putting caffeine in their beverage and the growing coffee industry.  Most people don't realize the damage caffeine does to your body.

During the 60s and early 70s drugs became big again among society, so the US government they needed to step in and create laws (some started in the 50s, but mainly in 60s).  President Nixon coined the phrase "war on drugs".  SO since then the battle has continued with more laws at a federal level created.  Before now there were some laws and regulations, but they were city or state level, so it followed constitutional rules.

I do agree with the need to label products so people can make informed system, but lets look at the cost of this "war on drugs".  Since the war on drugs has begun and 2009 the United States has spent over 2.5 Trillion dollars of tax payers money.  34,000 people died in Mexico alone in a little over 4 years...  This doesn't include all the other countries or the 40 years this "war" has been going on.  It also doesn't take in to account killers that were made in the rough prison system they're thrown into rough prisons for selling marijuana.  I ask you is it really worth it?  How many starving families could of been saved?

Please leave comments below.  I would like this topic to be debated so the people who think drugs should be battled can explain why.  I want to note I don't do drugs and wouldn't if they were legal.(excluding caffeine)

References:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/06/mexico-war-dead-update-figures-40000.html

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1887488,00.html

http://www.deamuseum.org/museum_idaendl.html

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