Americans are Top Drug Users in the World
As has been known to Libertarians for quite sometime, the War on Drugs has been a complete and utter failure that has cost the United States government billions of dollars while achieving nothing except overcrowding our prisons with casual drug users further adding to the national debt.
A new worldwide study conducted by the World Health Organization finds that Americans are the top drug users in the world with around 16% of Americans having tried cocaine and 42% trying marijuana at least once.The study, released Monday, revealed that 16.2 percent of Americans had tried cocaine at least once, and 42.4 percent had used marijuana.
Tough Drug Policy does not Correlate to Lower Drug Use
The study also found that the use of drugs in countries is not impacted by their drug policy. The United States has among the strictest punishments in the world with the highest drug use. Compare that to the "Netherlands, where drug policy is more liberal than the United States, 1.9 percent of survey participants said they had used cocaine and 19.8 percent marijuana. "
The War on Drugs has tried to focus on solving drug use by limiting supply instead of solving the underlying problems of the drug use which is curbing the demand for these substances. But this effort has largely been a failure as the US Drug enforcement agency reports:
The US Drug Enforcement Agency has observed ever larger quantities of illegal drugs pouring into the country. "We are seizing greater quantities of illegal drugs than ever before," said a DEA statement last week. In 2007, agents seized 41 metric tons of cocaine in just two raids, and denied drug traffickers record-breaking revenue of 3.5 billion dollars for the year, it said.Solution
The War on Drugs is a futile effort to change the idiocy of humans. Instead of focusing on the supply side the US should immediately change course and apply money to treating the demand side of the problem. This solution would cost far less and is not like putting a band aid over a gaping chest wound in hopes that it will solve the problem. The Libertarian Party correctly points this out in their support of such a policy.
SourcesDrug prohibition does more to make Americans unsafe than any other factor. Just as alcohol prohibition gave us Al Capone and the mafia, drug prohibition has given us the Crips, the Bloods and drive-by shootings. Consider the historical evidence: America's murder rate rose nearly 70% during alcohol prohibition, but returned to its previous levels after prohibition ended. Now, since the War on Drugs began, America's murder rates have doubled. The cause/effect relationship is clear. Prohibition is putting innocent lives at risk.
What's more, drug prohibition also inflates the cost of drugs, leading users to steal to support their high priced habits. It is estimated that drug addicts commit 25% of all auto thefts, 40% of robberies and assaults, and 50% of burglaries and larcenies. Prohibition puts your property at risk. Finally, nearly one half of all police resources are devoted to stopping drug trafficking, instead of preventing violent crime. The bottom line? By ending drug prohibition Libertarians would double the resources available for crime prevention, and significantly reduce the number of violent criminals at work in your neighborhood.
To read the article on the study: Americans are world's top drug users: study
Libertarian Party Crime and Violence Policy: Step 2- End Prohibition
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