No offense because I'm sure you offered it in good faith. The American people are by far the world's biggest consumers of drugs. We are basically funding the Mexican drug cartels.

We are also locking up an incredible number of people, particularly the poor, black and brown. Do you realize the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate and highest prison population in the world?

The war on drugs has been an enormous failure. Any person can get any drug in any city at any time. That's failure. Why not try something new?

by dclawyer06 on 03/06/2009 10:20:50 AM EST

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my comment had nothing to do with the "war on drugs" or whatever else it is called.

my comment was responding to a notion, made by the person i was responding to, that (paraphrasing here for your easy comprehension) "legalizing drugs would stop the gang warfare and murders in mexico".

none of this has anything to do with the use or prevalence of drugs in the u.s.---drug legalization has not (so far, to my knowledge) been offered as a way of _reducing_ drug usage. common sense dictates that legalization will either not change or will _increase_ drug usage as the commodity becomes easily available and destigmatized. but then, you never know with drug legalization advocates---they will be prepared to make some kind of a "forbidden fruit" argument that legalization and over-the-counter grocery-store availability of hard drugs will magically make people want them less. if so, perhaps women should drop their skirts and bend over on demand to stop rape.

in any case, my point was that drug legalization will not do anything to stop gang warfare because a lot of money is at stake---whenever a lot of money is at stake, you either have extreme political corruption or extreme violence. anyone expecting peace on earth and goodwill to men in these circumstances is just a moron.

by neo on 03/07/2009 04:33:46 AM EST

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"none of this has anything to do with the use or prevalence of drugs in the u.s."

You can't be that ignorant.  It's just not possible, or is it?

by bfaul on 03/09/2009 01:49:48 PM EST

[ Parent ]