Wednesday
Nixon’s war on drugs, begun in 1971, has been an abject failure. Worse than the failure of policy, has been the hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed by government intrusion into an area in which it should have no business.
Are psychotropic drugs bad? Undoubtedly. I speak from the experience of fifteen years of heavy drug use. I know of what I write.
There is no doubt that lives would be improved without drugs, but can government force achieve that end? Obviously not. After the expenditure of a trillion dollars and with bulging prison cells, drugs are now cheaper and more available than they were in 1971.
The war on drugs has glorified drug use and made it a rite of passage for young people.
It has been a waste of money and lives. It has also destroyed the formerly high social standing of the police.
It has been an unmitigated disaster and it is time to stop.
If it is true that Jeff Sessions, the new Attorney General, has declared in favour of intensifying the war on drugs, then he is in a category below being just a bloody idiot.