The Lost War

By

Mitchell Gray

It is time for Americans to accept the fact that the “Drug War” is over, we lost, it’s time to bring the troops home and call a cease fire. With an escalating drug war in Mexico, the Taliban funding the insurgency in Afghanistan with the opium trade and the largest prison population in the world the cost in terms of dollars and lives has reached a point where this war on drugs is no longer sustainable.

We should have learned something from the alcohol prohibition of the 1920’s and 1930’s. When you deny someone something they only want more of it. When alcohol was prohibited speakeasies, smugglers and dangerous gangs sprang up everywhere. Alcohol consumption increased as did murders and other violent crimes. And we have the same situation today. If you go to any high school in America you can get just about any drug you want. Marijuana is extremely easy to find and other harder drugs take little more effort to locate. Drug prohibition also creates other problems that are more deadly and dangerous than the wars cartels are fighting now. Because of the illegality of drugs ruthless street gangs have risen up and plague American cities. The Cripes, the Bloods, MS13, Mexican Mafia, Latin Kings, 18th Street Gang and dozens of other street gangs as well as your tradition mafias ranging from the Italian to the Russian are all fighting for a part of this lucrative business. The purity of drugs have gone down as well. Various drugs are cut with other substances and poisons that decrease the purity and increase the lethality of these narcotics.

If we were to end the drug prohibition and allow market forces to manufacture and distribute these substances you would see violence drop and the purity increase. You would see non-profit organizations spring up all over the country were people could go and use these drugs under the supervision of a medical doctor. The wars currently being fought in Mexico would stop, the street gangs here at home would lose their source of revenue and would become fewer in number, and we’d cease spending billions of dollars every year fighting something that is nothing more than a choice made by individuals. Regulating individual choice is never a good idea.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. The war is over. We lost. It’s time to end the prohibition on drugs.