War on Drugs a Complete Failure

The decades old War on Drugs has been an unbridled flop from its inception, wasting untold amounts of taxpayer money and attempting to control private activities that don't need to be interfered with by an over-arching federal government.

So it comes as no surprise that a recent study shows that drug use continues to increase, despite (or perhaps because of) the efforts of the federal government.

"The rate of illegal drug use rose last year to the highest level in nearly a decade, fueled by a sharp increase in marijuana use and a surge in ecstasy and methamphetamine abuse, the government reported Wednesday.

Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, called the 9 percent increase in drug use disappointing but said he was not surprised given "eroding attitudes" about the perception of harm from illegal drugs and the growing number of states approving medicinal marijuana.

"I think all of the attention and the focus of calling marijuana medicine has sent the absolute wrong message to our young people," Kerlikowske said in an interview.

The annual report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found marijuana use rose by 8 percent and remained the most commonly used drug.

Mike Meno, a spokesman for the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project, said the survey is more proof that the government's war on marijuana has failed in spite of decades of enforcement efforts and arrests.

"It's time we stop this charade and implement sensible laws that would tax and regulate marijuana the same way we do more harmful — but legal — drugs like alcohol and tobacco," Meno said."

Let's be clear: the federal government should have no role in trying to prevent individuals from undertaking an activity that harms only themselves, let alone spending hundreds of billions of dollars and needlessly putting foreign governments at risk of being toppled as they strive to meet the US-imposed mandates of this War on Drugs.

Of course, the fact that a person believes that the consumption of most drugs should be legal does not mean that same person actually believes that everyone should use drugs.

The US should immediately cease the pointless War on Drugs, continue to encourage education on the harmful effects of drugs, and prohibit their use by anyone before they reach the age of majority. Any other approach will keep us mired in an unwinnable war, whose vast and undocumented costs are paid for not just by Americans but by other countries that are fighting the war for us.

Russia's War on Drugs

It's not just the US that fights a War on Drugs. Russia too feels the need to mobilize its military and police forces to prevent the use of certain narcotics by its residents.

Like the US, it feels that neighboring countries aren't quite doing enough to prevent its residents from acquiring and using their drug of choice.

"On the international stage, Russia's Afghan heroin issue has become the country's favorite crusade, and has allowed Russia to enter a global debate about Afghanistan that had previously left it on the sidelines. Its basic point is a reasonable one: NATO has fueled drug production by refusing to destroy Afghan poppy fields, which it stopped doing last year in the hope of winning the support of opium farmers. Perhaps less reasonable is Russia's belief that its heroin problem is caused not by its porous borders or its abysmal treatment of addiction (methadone therapy is illegal in Russia) but by NATO's policy on drugs in Afghanistan. Yet that is what Russian officials contend, and this week they embarked on a campaign of coordinated fuming over the issue."

What Russian (and US) officials often fail to take into account is that people denied the use of one foreign-grown drug (heroin) will often turn to another home-grown drug (marijuana, etc.). In fact, attempting to stop people from harming themselves is generally an exercise in futility.

By forcing neighboring countries whose own citizens don't use drugs to fight their war for them, Russian (and US) officials often destabilize local politics and creates a narco-military ruling elite that unsurprisingly makes life much worse for all residents.

The efforts of Russian and US politicians would be much better directed at legalizing and taxing drugs that are used in their country, and directly allocating the new-found tax revenue towards prevention and addiction treatment. In addition, scaling back the military and policy powers from their current futile task of circumventing drug smuggling will also free up a lot of other resources that can be used to pay down debt or reduce the current deficit.