War on Drugs Fail!!!

Howard Colvin (The Wire):
I mean, you call something a war and pretty soon everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors. They gonna be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs, racking up body counts. And when you at war, you need a -Snip- enemy. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your -Snip- enemy. And soon the neighborhood that you're supposed to be policing, that's just occupied territory.

David Simon:
The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It's the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. And we don't, as we said before, economically, we don't need those people. The American economy doesn't need them. So, as long as they stay in their ghettos, and they only kill each other, we're willing to pay a police presence to keep them out of our America. And to let them fight over scraps, which is what the drug war, effectively, is. The war on drugs is a war on the underclass, that's all it is. It has no other meaning.

If you could be Draconian and reduce drug use by locking people up, you might have an argument. But we are the jailing-est country on the planet right now. Two million people in prison. When I started as a police reporter, 33, 34 percent of the federal inmate population was violent offenders. Now it's like, seven to eight percent. So, we're locking up less violent people. More of them. The drugs are purer. They've not-- they haven't closed down a single drug corner that I know of in Baltimore for any length of time. It's not working.

Source

A video highlighting the social, political, and economic failures of America's War on Drugs.



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[edit on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:55:46 -0500 by MemoryShock]

Hey your from youtube arent you im subscribed to you and got some good videos ...

The only thing that the war on drugs does, is keep the price of "illegal" drugs at a relatively high price.

If drugs were legal, they would be cheap.
There would be no glamor in drugs.
There would be no money to be made hustling drugs.

It would break the financial backs of the drug kingpins and also the Taliban.

The war on drugs is and always has been a money laundering scheme. Nothing more. Many prominent people have gained much power and much wealth merely because of it.

This type of stuff makes me laugh. If i stood up anywhere and said blacks and mexicans are drug using criminals then i would probably be shot. But if I say it in such a way that they appear to be victims of something than it is okay.

racism- We do not need blacks, mexicans and poor people we don't need them they should stay in their ghettos because all they do is kill eachother and use drugs.

Not Racism - The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor... The American economy doesn't need them. So, as long as they stay in their ghettos, and they only kill each other...

But do not get me wrong if drugs were legal there would be no crime and no deaths caused by drugs ever again. Right now we have crack heads on the street that would kill a person for 5 dollars or rob a liquor store to get money to buy crack. If drugs were legal the crack head would magically no longer need to steal for drug money because he could buy it at a store and nobody would ever rob the store because they magically would not need to because it was legal.

reply to post by zaiger


Watch the show The Wire and then tell me David Simon is a racist. He is the exact opposite of racist and is just bringing up a subject that people don't want to hear. With shows like The Wire, Homicide, and now Treme, Simon has the most prominent black characters in any American drama.

No one is saying to legalize crack or that there will be no crime if you legalize drugs. The point is that we are arresting over 800,000 people a year for marijuana possession. 1 out of 15 black males will spend some of their lives behind bars, mostly because of drug laws. Our prisons are overcrowded and filled with 57% non violent drug offenders. How can you possibly stick up for this system or so blindly avoid an alternative?

reply to post by aenfroy87


My point was that people think it is perfectly okay to stereotype blacks and mexicans as being drug useres as long as you make it out like they are the victim of some oppresive system.

[edit on 3-6-2010 by zaiger]

The war on drugs hasn't failed, it has succeeded in doing exactly what it was designed to do.

I think the whole thing is a lot more complex and sinister than people realise. This isn't a drug war and it isn't race war, it's not americas war and it isn't a winnable war. It's a WORLDWIDE CLASS WAR, and as long as we ignore that we're just spitting into the wind.

There are an awful lot more poor people than there are rich people, and the rich look down at this swarming mass from their ivory towers and feel fear. They're afraid of a guillotine or a noose or just the fact that the poor people might someday say "f*** you, gimme that bread" so, to protect themselves, they pressure the politicians and police to "do something" to keep the scum in check.

The police go out and randomly stop and search anyone they think is poor and the politicians have given them "drugs" to use as a handy all purpose excuse for this harassment and arrest.

They use it to stop you working, they use it to stop you traveling, they use it to deny you an education, they use it to deny you medical treatment, they use it to deny you legal protection and the right to vote or hold a position on a jury and they use it to justify sub-standard housing.

Drug prohibition is just a way to make sure the rich have a protected position of power and drugs are used as a catylist because they're a basic human need. The easiest way to make people subjects is to tell them that their basic needs are wrong, just ask any religion, they've all been doing it for years.

[edit on 4/6/10 by pieman]

reply to post by zaiger


It's funny you should mention that "oppressive system" that you apparently don't think exists, because I have a quote by the guy who started that oppressive system, and I gotta tell you: dude sounds like a racist to me.

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US,
and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers.
Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage.
This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations
with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

- Harry Anslinger, testimony to US Congress supporting Marihuana Tax Act, 1937

And congress cheered after he said it. Sure, no one has been victimized as a result of their race and legislation designed to incarcerate the poor and minorities. Good thing it's geniuses like you who keep eating up all the BS the government is feeding you about how dangerous drugs when they really aren't. Ask yourself how many people die every year as the result of automobile accidents , and then go look up how many people die every year from cannabis(here's a hint: it's 0)

[edit on 6-6-2010 by Conqueror of Seth]

Originally posted by Conqueror of Seth
It's funny you should mention that "oppressive system" that you apparently don't think exists, because I have a quote by the guy who started that oppressive system, and I gotta tell you: dude sounds like a racist to me.

The guy was playing to the crowd, it's not so much that he was a racist it's more that congress was racist and he used this racism to pass a law that was mostly economic in nature.

It was called the marijuana tax act to obscure the fact that it was about hemp and the concentration was firmly placed on dope and the lustfulness of white women to emotionally charge the vote, yet the stated purpose of the act was to place barriers to the production of hemp and to increase the cost using punishing federal taxes to the benefit of Anslingers paymasters, Dupont.

The guy might well have been a racist, most people were at the time, but the bill was all about making sure that the wealthy elite profited at the expense of small farmers who lost the ability to grow a hardy and lucrative crop. Money was the motive, race was just a handy soap box.

You have a similar situation going on at the moment, when the economy collapsed the previously small advantage companies in southern US states had due to their use of cheap migrant labour became a significant advantage and there was suddenly talk of the dangers of those drug cartel illegal immigrants.

Racial fear linked to drugs is being used as a handy soap box to emotionally charge an economic dispute.

[edit on 7/6/10 by pieman]