Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: WAR ON DRUGS (Re: SOMEBODY'S GOT TO SAY IT (Re: Clinton by default))
From: borden@head-cfa.harvard.edu (Dave Borden)
Date: 10 Nov 92 17:15:30 GMT
Reply-To: borden@m5.harvard.edu
Organization: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA,  USA

In article <1992Nov5.221627.24180@dbsun.uucp> harbison@dbsun.uucp (harbison) writes:

...deleted text...

>The solution is to legalize and tax drugs.  Use the money we've been
>spending on the war on drugs, plus the drug tax revenue, to fund more
>education, advertisement, and rehabilitation programs.  We could also
>spend more money addressing problems that lead to drug abuse such as
>poverty and unemployment.

>Ask yourself why you abstain from using drugs.  Is it because they are
>illegal, or because you know it is harmful to your mind and body?  I
>abstain because, thanks to education, I am aware of the harmful side
>effects of drug usage.  If crack were made legal tomorrow, I would not
>suddenly start smoking large amounts of crack.  Education is effective
>in reducing the demand for drugs.

Without necessarily supporting legalization, I agree completely that
education is the only way to tackle the drug problem.  About interdiction,
though, I've read articles that have shown that it actually hasn't reduced
the supply, and has been a true failure in every sense of the word.  You
can destroy a peasant's coca field, but more new fields will spring up.
You can subdue the violent Medellin cartel, but then their competitors just
step up production (and after awhile, the Medellin start producing again).
You can make it difficult to grow coca in some countries, and then people
in other countries where it hadn't been grown previously start to grow it.
You can try to pay farmers not to grow coca, by subsidizing other crops for
them, but you just can't compete with the kind of money they can get from
the drug trade.  You might be able to get the police of a country on your
side, but the army might have a different agenda.  And a few bribes here
and there - it's small money in the drug trade, and it makes a few officials
and guards who look the other the equivalent of multi-millionaires in
their own countries.

The list of fallacies goes on and on.  The Bush drug policy is a truly vile
deception, the purpose of which is to get people pumped up for a "war"
against the evil drug people, and to justify continued high military
spending.  George Bush would never admit that the drug problem is a domestic
problem, a problem with the American people, a problem with _ordinary_
people, a problem that can only be solved through education.

I hope that Clinton gets the DEA out of Latin America, and takes the huge
amount of money that's being thrown away, and puts it into educating our
people.  This insane interdiction policy is undermining us socially,
economically, and morally.

(If you're interested in reading about this in more detail, check out the
article "Dead-End Drug Wars", in the winter 91-92 issue of Foreign Policy.
Foreign Policy is published by the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace; it is one of the two leading journals of the subject of foreign
policy, along with Foreign Affairs.)

   - Dave Borden
     borden@m5.harvard.edu
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton