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War Against Some Drugs
War on drugs can't be won, says U.S. lawman But he had a change of heart a few years ago when he made a trip to the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia, for help in a grisly murder case. There were no shortage of bright young recruits on the campus. But most were being trained as drug agents, not murder investigators.
"We care more about catching pot-smokers than child murderers," said Sheriff Masters, whose book, Drug War Addiction, Notes From the Frontlines of America's #1 Policy Disaster, was published recently. "We spend $50 billion a year on drug enforcement," said Sheriff Masters. "Maybe we should be going after terrorists and child abusers. Or spending it on cancer treatment." thanks to Unknown News Noam Chomsky on the Drug-Terror Link US domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn't about reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control. The economic policies of the last 20 years are a rich man's version of structural adjustment. You create a superfluous population, which in the US context is largely poor, black, and Hispanic, and a much wider population that is economically dissatisfied. You read all the headlines about the great economy, but the facts are quite different. For the vast majority, these neoliberal policies have had a negative effect. With regard to wages, we have only now regained the wage levels of 30 years ago. Incomes are maintained only by working longer and harder, or with both adults in a family working. Even the rate of growth in the economy has not been that high, and what growth there is has been highly concentrated in certain sectors.
If most people are dissatisfied and others are useless, you want to get rid of the useless and frighten the dissatisfied. The drug war does this. The US incarceration rate has risen dramatically, largely because of victimless crimes, such as drug offenses, and the sentences are extremely punitive. The drug war not only gets rid of the superfluous population, it frightens everybody else. Drugs play a role similar to communism or terrorism, people huddle beneath the umbrella of authority for protection from the menace. It is hard to believe that these consequences aren't understood. They are there for anyone to see. Back when the current era of the drug war began, Senator Moynihan paid attention to the social science, and he said if we pass this law we are deciding to create a crime wave among minorities. thanks to wood s lot |