Americans seem to be A-OK with the huge amount of money they waste each and every year to fight this so-called "war on drugs". It's wasted because the war on drugs doesn't really accomplish ANYTHING, other than creating an entitlement program for persons with sufficient intellectual limitation to believe marijuana is more dangerous than pretty much anything else in existence.We give them a gun and a badge and turn them loose.
While pretty much EVERYBODY knows the "War on Drugs" is more than 80% focused on marijuana, the drug warriors will try to play that down. They'll talk about that goddamned stupid gateway theory and how by arresting 850000 Americans each year for essentially NOTHING helps prevent children from ending up heroin addicts.
Well, then: have a huge cup of FAIL: Heroin’s coming back in a big way –in affluent suburbs, small cities and rural towns
According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, heroin use in the United States rose 66 percent between 2007 and 2011. The US Drug Enforcement Administration says seizures of heroin have doubled since 2008, and arrests have risen by a third. Most heroin comes from Asia, but more and more is arriving from South America and Mexico.
Although heroin use has been expanding for a decade or more, many communities are just beginning to understand the extent of their own heroin problem. The Dane County Narcotics and Gangs Task Force, which includes personnel in Madison, Wis., reported last year that drug overdoses had risen from 31 in 2007 to 175 in 2011, most due to heroin. In Will County, Ill., just outside Chicago, heroin-related deaths rose from five in 2000 to 53 last year. In Missouri, heroin deaths increased from 69 in 2007 to 244 in 2011 – more than half of them in the age group 15 to 35.
The article focuses on a physician who lost her 16 year-old son to a heroin overdose. She has gone on to create a group mdoing outreach to try and prevent this from spreading and getting worse.
Heroin use is still relatively modest. According to the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 8.7 percent of Americans had recently taken illicit drugs, mostly marijuana and cocaine. Only a quarter of 1 percent over the age of 12 said they had used heroin. But heroin raises additional concerns because, like other opiates, it is considered powerfully addictive and difficult to give up.
It is a good read and I encourage you to review the entire article.
So the FACT is that heroin, which has been a root issue in the historical war on drugs, is still here and spreading. That is drugwar FAIL.
Why, exactly is that, though?
If the war on drugs is so goddamned effective, why are we seeing MORE heroin than less?
Quite simply, it is because of the tactics of the war on drugs. Trhe INCESSANT and RELENTLESS focus on lying about marijuana.
it works just like this: chilren are besieged by anti-marijuana propaganda and D.A.R.E bullshit. DARE has been shown to INCREASE children's interest in drugs.
The demonization of marijana has made it 'glamorous' and attractive, particularly to teens as there is this whole subculture value of skirting the law, being about have 'connection's and so on and so forth.
The problem begins when kids smoke pot and find out, firsthand, for themseves, that marijuana is not the demon weed they have been lied to about all their lives.
Then they generalize, more or less appropriately enough: if the US Federal Government lied to me about pot, they probably lied to me about all those other drugs.
Lo and behold, other drugs - or what I call "real drugs" - ARE addictive, are dangerous, do kill people, and will have you prostituting yourself or robbing people to pay for your brand new disease.
So, in the end - this isn't really all that over-simplifed - the US federal government ensures that children/teens distrust their message and end up trying other drugs so that some get hooked and support the illegal trafficking that makes HUGE money for whomever can get it from point of production (Afghanistan, Myanmar) to the streets.
This is a massive failure of the war on drugs. Worse than a failure, really: it has ACTIVELY helped create more heroin addiction while selling you this bullshit that it will reduce it.
In the Netherlands, even though marijuana is not technically 'legal', the police there turn a blind eye to it allowing the semblance of a common sense approach to occur. The GOAL, as stated by the US War on Drugs, would be to reduce the number of people getting hooked on heroin. They have accomplished this: Holland has the lowest rate of new heroin addicts and an aging addict population which mjeans fewer young people are being sucked into the process.
The process is protected and nurtured by the US approach to drugs: By keeping marijuana so ridiculously illegal anybody that wants some is FORCED to deal with criminal elements. Deal with criminal elements and god-only knows what you will be offered: crack, heroin, illegal guns, prostitutes. Everything we want kids being offers, all of them infinitely worse then weed.
Now, I think another huge component of the problem is shitty drug education.
There is no reason under the sun for heroin to be a problem - as it is - in the 21st goddammned century.
How can people NOT KNOW how addictive heroin is? How do you miss this information?
I think there is no reason and therefore no excuse for people to still be fucking around with heroin. Failures of US policies aside, if you are even thinking about using, trying, experienting with heroin, you;re a dumb son of a bitch. Straight up plain and simple.
You do not have one leg to stand on in rationalizing fucking around with something that is guaran-damn-teed to give you an illness you might not - probably won't - beat.
You're a dumbass.
It doesn't take $5 billion dollars a year in ONDCP lies to give a straight message to people about heroin.
The problem is the $5 billion is spent LYING about marijuana and ENCOURAGING children to not trust real drug warnings and then helping those kids find criminal networks whioch will offer them things you or I don't want them to be offered.
The War on Drugs provides economic and price supports for traffickers and cartels. The more we 'fight the war on drugs' the better the profits for those who can move product.
Efforts to re-legalize marijuana and end the massive propaganda and lying about marijuana are some of the front-line efforts that WILL spur a decrease in new incidents of young people - stupidly - thinking heroin might be ok to mess around with.
There is no good excuse for heroin to still be a problem.
This is your war on drugs.