The least one can say is that these last decades have failed to assure Americans’ health or safety. There’s irony, too, as even the regulation-favoring Richard Nixon would not have imagined nor supported the course the war on drugs has taken.
We’ve wasted money, enriching only agencies and vendors quick to slop at a trough filled with over a trillion we didn’t have.
The war has made us poorer, no healthier, and has led to a civilian militarization that’s killed thousands of innocent people, and threatened far more. I’ll write at greater length on these topics next week.
WASHINGTON — Forty years after President Richard Nixon first declared a war on drugs, the officers who fought in it are calling for a truce.
Former law enforcement officials gathered in the District of Columbia on Tuesday to announce their new report. It details the failures of the government’s long battle against illegal drugs and denounces the Obama administration’s current drug policies.
“Since President Nixon declared ‘war on drugs’ four decades ago, this failed policy has led to millions of arrests, a trillion dollars spent and countless lives lost, yet drugs today are more available than ever,” said Norm Stamper, former chief of police in Seattle and a speaker for legalization-advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Via Huffington Post.