After 80 years of modern day drug prohibition, starting in 1930 with the formation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the USA, we’ve seen no appreciable reduction in overall drug addiction rates. In many cases it has become clear that the prohibition of narcotics has actually led to an increase in drug consumption, purity and availability. While at the same time the black market price for those substances has dropped significantly compared to other high demand commodities over the same time period.
And that’s a pattern that is repeated the world over. In fact, Countries that have fewer resources to apply to drug treatment and rehabilitation find themselves more worse off than ever. Becoming transit routes for large scale drug shipments, corruption throughout their military and political structures, higher drug availability to their citizens and extreme violence on their streets. All you have to do is look at Afghanistan, Mexico and Columbia for 3 easy to spot examples. And their neighbor Countries are facing skyrocketing addiction rates despite some of them having death penalties for drug trafficking.
Diseases like AIDs, that can thrive in unsanitary drug use conditions, have exploded. Governments resist offering their citizens access to life saving and disease reducing harm reduction alternatives. Needle exchanges and safe injection sites are scorned by policy makers while at the same time medical professionals the world over hail them as being examples of where our drug policies need to go. Drug addiction is a medical condition that has been criminalized. We all know the use of the justice system to address a medical condition is bound to fail, and has.
Police forces have become less trustworthy as organized crime and the lure of drug money corrupt officers. Dog and pony show drug bust media events are shown on the evening news. Police have made media events where you see a table full of drugs, guns and money a staple of their police-media relations strategy. Yet they fail to reveal that they’re only barely scratching the surface of what is really going on in the black market drug trade. They also fail to mention how many millions of dollars are being spent on these investigations. Investigations that may or may not result in a conviction. Investigations that again only represent a small portion of what is really going on.
In the middle of a harsh global recession, when Organized crime is making 350 Billion dollars a year selling drugs while we spending Billions trying to stop them, we can no longer afford to ignore the obvious. Drug prohibition has failed us immensely and we need to have a scientific and medical re-inspection of our drug policies. At a time when our financial resources are extremely strained, we can no longer afford to stay the course in the war on drugs. Prohibition has failed again and we need to accept that and move on. The longer we wait the deeper the hole we dig for ourselves.
Reeferlogic is a site that hopes to illustrate all of the above through commentary on current events and in so doing help make what should be obvious to everyone, obvious to everyone.
