maybe, maybe not but the fact is that drugs are a huge problem and lots of people want it to change by implementing the same policies. prohibition was a miserable failure that did nothing but eat up tons of money at a time when the country desperatly needed the money spent elsewhere while at the same time causing the power and influence of oc to expand greatly. sounds very similar to the current situation. to expand , another problem during prohibition was dangerous products like "bathtub gin" that killed people because of a lack of quality control. again, very similar to the problems today with street dealers cutting thier product with god knows what. imo what we need is something similar to what they have in holland where if you are dead set on shooting up heroin, go somewhere safe where you can get your fix and do it out of public view. no need to steal and rob people when your fix is guaranteed.
There's a way to vastly reduce, if not eliminate, the drug trade. Just go the China route and start executing drug traffickers; from the top kingpins to the local dealers. People just aren't willing to do it.
The Chinese approach sounds tough, effective and uncompromising but in reality works little better than the US approach and as China opens up its border ever more, arguably less so. The estimated amount of users is around 4 million, which although proportionately low is increasing every year. Whatever the arguments, it obviously doesn't represent a particularly effective strategy. Besides, most Chinese workers smoke and drink so much they don't need 'harder' drugs.
As someone else in this thread pointed out, the Portugal approach is the most sane in the context of 2012. Of course, Portugal is a small country so perhaps the USA should adopt state-level policy, but decriminilazing (not even declaring a legal open season) on most drugs means that the few drug addicts (of course most people don't shoot up and wouldn't begin to if it was legal)pay for their hits and don't put money in the pockets of crime.
Either way, bottom line, where's your good old-fashioned American liberalism. Who's the government to tell you what to do with yourself. I certainly never signed the social contract.
What's more, because junkies in Portugal are now in the national system, the state helps them to quit the junk. As a result, Portugal went from experiencing something of an HIV epidemic to having one of the lowest levels of European drug abuse.
