A war on drugs? We'd be better off paying for a war on hunger

A war on drugs? We'd be better off paying for a war on hunger
Natasha Horsfield
Thursday 21 January 2016

Global drug control policies, much like tax or climate change, impact heavily on many areas of development and inevitably on efforts to meet many of the sustainable development goals that were launched by the UN last year and came into force on 1 January.

Since the mid-20th century, global drug policy has been dominated by strict prohibition and the criminalisation of drug cultivation, production, trade, possession and use, with the intention of creating a drug-free world.

However, far from achieving its goals, drugs trade and use is growing, while the war on drugs undermines efforts to tackle poverty (pdf), improve access to health and protect the rights of some of the world’s most marginalised communities and fragile environments.

Involvement in drugs is frequently a sign of poverty rather than wealth. Small-scale farmers who grow drug crops such as opium poppy or coca leaf often do so because they lack other opportunities to earn a living and are unable to grow alternative crops – they either don’t own their land, or it is too small or unproductive.

Prohibition has serious consequences for these farmers. Forced crop eradication programmes by aerial or manual spraying with chemicals kill both the drug crops that families and communities rely on, plus any food crops growing alongside, while polluting land and water.

Continued with many links here http://www.theguardian.com/global-d...rugs-hunger-deforestation-pain-relief-poverty

The money could easily be spent better elsewhere. More lives would be saved if all the money that went towards prosecuting illegal drugs went instead towards removing fake medicines from the market, esp. fake malaria drugs, as these result in more deaths than drug OD's, which IIRC usually amount to somewhere around 250,000 a year worldwide.

Also money dedicated to the drug war means less money gets dedicated to other more beneficial efforts, like stopping the illegal harvest of timber etc.

Seems to me that we are living in an increasingly morally bankrupt world where it is more important to waste untold $millions on futile " drug wars " , rather than do something really tangible about poverty , hunger , and the rest of the real problems of this world .
As it is , all we are doing is continuing to perpetuate inequality and poverty . The money could indeed be much better used elsewhere .

But this is the way they want it. Finally people are waking up, but how long will it take to actually change it?

StudebakerHawk said:

Seems to me that we are living in an increasingly morally bankrupt world where it is more important to waste untold $millions on futile " drug wars " , rather than do something really tangible about poverty , hunger , and the rest of the real problems of this world .
As it is , all we are doing is continuing to perpetuate inequality and poverty . The money could indeed be much better used elsewhere .

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But to conservative politicians across the globe, addicts and alcoholics are the morally bankrupt degenerates who deserve punishment rather than treatment. Treatment? How about forced abstinence in prison as treatment? Because that works so well. I heard an alcoholic convicted felon say at an AA meeting after spending 18 years in prison, the first thing he did on his first morning of freedom was to go and get shitfaced. Yeah, the American prison system works wonders for addicts and alcoholics.

aihfl said:

But to conservative politicians across the globe, addicts and alcoholics are the morally bankrupt degenerates who deserve punishment rather than treatment. Treatment? How about forced abstinence in prison as treatment? Because that works so well. I heard an alcoholic convicted felon say at an AA meeting after spending 18 years in prison, the first thing he did on his first morning of freedom was to go and get shitfaced. Yeah, the American prison system works wonders for addicts and alcoholics.

Click to expand...

Prohibition and the " Drug War " is a god - send to criminal enterprise , whereupon virtually worthless commodities can be resold multiple times at enormous profit until reaching the consumer at a vastly inflated artificial price . Regretably , it is the the user or those towards the end of the distribution chain that are the easiest for LE to bust , while the real crooks are those who are organizing the rackets and making the huge profits but are virtually impossible to stop ...

Yes , money wasted on the drug war , prosecutions , prisons , and making the already difficult life of addict - victims even more miserable , could and should be spent in other ways .....
The wasted $ billions [ $ trilllions ?? ] would be better used in combatting poverty and inequality ; and also in funding treatment for those addicted to drugs .
However , this is not the case at all and most of wasted money is used for persecuting and punishing those who least deserve it - the unfortunate addicts . We should also bear in mind that consuming a drug really is a victimless crime - nobody is harmed except perhaps the user .

The drug war is a pathetic failure ; and can only continue to remain a failure , and benefit only criminal enterprise . This futile war is an obscene waste of money - our taxes - that victimizes those who least deserve it . The sooner it ends the better for all those concerned , except the crooks and LE ....

Shit we'd be better off just burning the fucking money and letting people live there lives.