I asked about the War on Terror™, so why shouldn’t I ask about this one?  Just askin’.  Anyway…

I only bring it up because Mexico appears set to legalize “small amounts of cocaine, heroin and other drugs for personal use.”  Essentially, this law removes the original “addict” requirement necessary for dismissal of these cases and states it only requires you to be anyone carrying an amount small enough to qualify as being only for personal use.  This is a simple law to imagine: stop cramming the jails full of people arrested for having a joint or two in their pocket, for carrying an eight-ball and a straw, for having a rock in their pocket, for being caught with a crack pipe in their car even if drugs are not found, and so on, and start focusing on more important tasks.  It stops prohibition of drugs against the individual user where this effort has obviously failed (were it not to have failed, this would be a moot point as supply only addresses demand).  Sounds like common sense in action, although it’s only one step in the right direction.

Like prohibition of alcohol, the War on Drugs™ is highly unsuccessful, wrongly focused, unnecessarily and overly expensive, and otherwise a completely disastrous failure.  All drugs, like alcohol and cigarettes, should be at least decriminalized; most drugs, like alcohol and cigarettes, should be legalized and regulated.  Imagine the tax income for all governments should you be able to go to the corner store to buy a pack of marijuana cigarettes.  Already known to have broad medicinal applications, statistically proven to be categorically less dangerous than alcohol and cigarettes, and posing no definable or significant risk to the public at large, what harm comes from allowing its use, taxing the hell out of it like all other sin-taxed items, and regulating it?  Blow may be more dangerous given its physical effects, but should it remain criminal for someone to possess a small amount undoubtedly for personal use?  The same can be said of heroin, meth/crystal, G, H, ice, X/E, cheese, and all the other currently illicit drugs.  There simply is no reason to wage a losing battle against the individual user.  It accomplishes nothing, yet it spends tremendous amounts of money akin to the battle during America’s alcohol prohibition.  It’s senseless waste and nothing more.

If you have ever smoked a tobacco cigarette or consumed some alcoholic beverage, you need not speak up; your opinion already has been noted by action rather than words.  You see, consuming any of those items or illegal drugs is action of the same caliber: meaningless and non-criminal.  It’s time to learn from the error of past decades, statistics and studies discounting every argument our government makes in regard to drugs, the historic financial waste inherent in the lack of progress on this front, and the undeniable prohibition-proved truth that says any attempt by government to deny the people of something they want will inherently and unilaterally fail no matter what you do.

Tell me I’m wrong: alcohol prohibition, cigarettes, America being the biggest consumer of most illicit drugs, elephant ivory, canned hunts, oil, and the list goes on.  You can cry “Global warming!” and will remain secondary to consumer demand for filling up at the corner gas station.  You can yell from the rooftops the statistical proof that alcohol kills, but people will keep on drinkin’.  It won’t matter even if by DUI, involuntary manslaughter, alcohol poisoning, cirrhosis of the liver, general liver damage, kidney damage, or anything on a large list of related maladies and causes; you will not stop alcohol consumption, and the federal government learned that the hard way when they tried.  Tobacco is the same: cigarette companies would be out of business if the government was serious about curbing related health problems, yet I see all brands available in my local convenience store.  Showing pictures of toothless, emaciated, horribly ill people addicted to heroin does not seem to have stopped them from using the drug.  Shall I go on?

The point is simple: the War on Drugs™ is a miserable failure.  It accomplishes nothing save growing financial expenditures paid for by taxpayers.  Drop it already.  I can either bash you with scientific findings that it has failed and beat you senseless with irrefutable and inarguable proof that there is a better way, that these things do not pose the threat our government would like us to imagine they do, or we can start making money from this and stop filling the jails with people who are at all not criminal.  Oh, and remember that we pay for those people, supporting them in every way, and that includes people caught smoking a bowl of weed, hitting one line of coke, punctured by a single heroin needle, or otherwise in possession of the most limited amount of drugs or paraphernalia.

Mexico has the right idea.  Canada had the right idea when it legalized marijuana.  The Netherlands had the right idea in doing the same.  The list goes on, and I assure you it will continue to grow.  Why does America refuse to acknowledge its policies have failed and that a fundamentally different approach is necessary regardless of how unorthodox it is?  Can we take action and move on, or will we continue dwelling on such a mundane and silly topic that consumes far too much of our time and money?  Who’s in charge of this endeavor anyway?  Are they paying attention?