Top White House Drug Official: War on Drugs is a Failure

The nation's top drug official went on CBS' "60 Minutes" Sunday night and proclaimed the old War on Drugs a failure. Michael Botticelli, who serves as the director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, also said he wants to reform and refocus U.S. drug policy.

When asked by "60 Minutes" host Scott Pelley if the costly drug war that has been in place for more than 40 years had been wrong, Botticelli had blunt words for what he called the "failed policies and failed practices" of the past, noting that those policies were largely responsible for the nation's mass incarceration epidemic.

"It has been all wrong," he said, noting that locking up drug offenders had not only contributed to a costly, bloated prison system, but had also failed to curtail Americans' drug habit.

"We can't arrest and incarcerate addiction out of people. Not only do I think it's really inhumane, but it's ineffective, and it cost us billions upon billions of dollars to keep doing this."

cont at
http://www.attn.com/stories/4686/wh...medium=viralvideoposttext&utm_campaign=videos

I was sceptical at first, but this man clearly seems to get it. He also has the balls to say it. Maybe he is the man for the job.

Please release the prisoners of war from the cells and the utterly counterproductive criminal records as soon as possible.

^ yes, and as soon as possible.
Not another day of human life should be wasted on this nonsense.

Wow...can't believe this guy is serious.

I was excited at first but he is not calling for legalization nor even decriminalization. He supports drug courts and mandatory rehab for all drug users. He is still advocating for the arrest and imprisonment of even small time dealers. So yeah while this is a step in the right direction it really doesn't signal the end of the drug war.

crimsonjunk said:

I was excited at first but he is not calling for legalization nor even decriminalization. He supports drug courts and mandatory rehab for all drug users. He is still advocating for the arrest and imprisonment of even small time dealers. So yeah while this is a step in the right direction it really doesn't signal the end of the drug war.

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Yeah that's what turned me off. Doing a half-assed job of reforming drug laws will still allow for the demand to be supplied by organized crime/the black market. And drug impurities are a huge problem in general, especially when it comes to synthetic substances such as MDMA.

Then again, some progress certainly feels a lot better than the stagnation of none.

You both are correct, I am afraid, that this is too little, too late.
But with even this low-level of change being called for from within the drug war, I think it is a good sign for us, who want to end the sham war entirely.

He can't call for the complete abolition of this failure of a system because it would mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide. If there's one thing that we've learned from U.S. law enforcement policy in the past 40 years it's that once they scale up, they never scale down. It's partially because law enforcement and corrections are usually unionized with tenure so they're resistant to down scaling; but also, there are entire communities in the U.S. whose sole form of employment is in the prison system (like the super max prisons in the middle of nowhere).

The U.S. will likely eventually transition to other forms of mandatory programs for "offenders" but it won't just can the whole system. There's too much money involved and in the U.S. money is god.

Foreigner said:

He can't call for the complete abolition of this failure of a system because it would mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide. If there's one thing that we've learned from U.S. law enforcement policy in the past 40 years it's that once they scale up, they never scale down. It's partially because law enforcement and corrections are usually unionized with tenure so they're resistant to down scaling; but also, there are entire communities in the U.S. whose sole form of employment is in the prison system (like the super max prisons in the middle of nowhere).

The U.S. will likely eventually transition to other forms of mandatory programs for "offenders" but it won't just can the whole system. There's too much money involved and in the U.S. money is god.

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qft

Foreigner said:

He can't call for the complete abolition of this failure of a system because it would mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide. If there's one thing that we've learned from U.S. law enforcement policy in the past 40 years it's that once they scale up, they never scale down.

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Oh you are so right, unfortunately :-(

Foreigner said:

The U.S. will likely eventually transition to other forms of mandatory programs for "offenders" but it won't just can the whole system. There's too much money involved and in the U.S. money is god.

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Ya know, I'm well-reminded of an answer Hilary Clinton gave to someone who asked her a couple of years ago if she thought that the War on Drugs would soon end, to which she responded: "No, there's too much money in it." Well, at least she's being honest about that, because the amount of money spent wasted over the past 4 decades is preposterously enormous.

Still, several months back I stated that I'm confident that we will, for the very first time, begin to see some significant/unprecedented progress internationally in 2016, and I really do believe that this time it will happen. For example, it may seem crazy for me to postulate the (albeit unlikely) possibility that Cannabis Sativa will be rescheduled in the U.S. at the federal level next year, but stranger things have occurred, no?

Of things noteworthy: I'm cautiously optimistic that Justin Trudeau - who was elected to a majority federal government back in the 19th of October - will be making good on his campaign promises to federally legalize the recreational sale and consumption of marijuana, and to also ensure that safe injection clinics are established in every major city throughout the country. And other than more bitching and moaning like the incompetent twit she seems to be, Rona Ambrose (the Conservative opposition interim leader) can't muzzle her political party's way out of this one. And so, assuming Justin keeps his word (which I believe he will /keepin' fingers tightly crossed), I'd imagine that such changes in Canada would at least encourage Obama to consider tying to have marijuana at the very least placed in Schedule II or III.

Ideally, I contend that most of us here would prefer to see such matters taken care of at least as quickly as they have been when the DEA bans yet another substance by way of invoking their emergency scheduling authority - if for nothing else other than because of the continuing number of people being arrested for simple possession of a freakin' plant, of which many inevitably end up being slapped with a felony criminal record (and all the baggage that's automatically included).

ro4eva, considering the fact that US has already lifted the ban on medical cannabis on federal level (or am I mistaken?) and the possibility that Canada legalizes recreational cannabis soon, I think it is not crazy to believe that 2016 may see the legalization of cannabis in US on federal level as well. In any case, I really do hope you're right.

The DEA is pretty much a bloated monstrosity that in order to justify its own existence it keeps feeding itself more victims.

They wage a war on drugs? Drugs are inanimate objects...thats like saying I am waging a war on concrete, or waging a war on water. It is actually a war on people that has an overbloated budget, that keeps getting bigger, and in order to justify that budget and its growth they need to keep feeding it innocent victims. I hate the way our government handles things.

foreigner said it best "Too many jobs to lose in order to set the war on drugs right." Personally, I don't care if a cop loses his job...more power too him that he should have to deal with consequences of being part of one of the biggest organized crime rackets.....see civil asset forfeiture. The families they have ruined, the children growing up without parents, the many people who can no longer work because they happened to be unlucky to cross paths with these jackbooted thugs....they should be made to feel even a small amount of that hopelessness and despair. They should be the ones wondering if they can feed their family today...not the fellow that got busted with a small amount of pot and ended up being forced to be a CI and getting killed. They should be the one to look down at a gun in their hand and think "if I don't rob this store I will be homeless because someone has taken away my ability to provide..."

Putting soapbox away now. thanks for listening.

manboychef said:

Personally, I don't care if a cop loses his job...more power too him that he should have to deal with consequences of being part of one of the biggest organized crime rackets.....see civil asset forfeiture. The families they have ruined, the children growing up without parents, the many people who can no longer work because they happened to be unlucky to cross paths with these jackbooted thugs....they should be made to feel even a small amount of that hopelessness and despair. They should be the ones wondering if they can feed their family today...not the fellow that got busted with a small amount of pot and ended up being forced to be a CI and getting killed. They should be the one to look down at a gun in their hand and think "if I don't rob this store I will be homeless because someone has taken away my ability to provide..."

Putting soapbox away now. thanks for listening.

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I agree... completely... and well said

Edit - I never really thought of 'it' that way, but again, the feeling is mutual.

slimvictor said:

"We can't arrest and incarcerate addiction out of people. Not only do I think it's really inhumane, but it's ineffective, and it cost us billions upon billions of dollars to keep doing this."

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The war is against families and ordinary people much more than cartels IMO.