Opposition to the war on drugs, for decades......

[nancylebov]

There's been progress, but it's very slow.

Back in the 70s, when I said I was against the war on drugs, people laughed at me.

A decade or so later, people got angry. I believe that's progress -- they were then seeing the end of the war on drugs as a possibility rather than an absurdity.

Twenty-five years later, Ron Paul is a candidate, of sorts, for President. People are disgusted with a number of his views, but I haven't seen his opposition to the war on drugs showing up on the lists of what they hate or find bizarre about him.

What's weird about this is that we aren't talking about something deep in the culture. We got by without drug laws for something like a century and a half, and I don't get the impression there was a long period of people wanting those laws before they happened.

I wouldn't be surprised if gay marriage is made legal much faster (using some vague measure for when it became a public issue) much faster than the war on drugs is ended. Presumably, this is a side effect of there not being huge amounts of money in enforcing the laws against gay marriage.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

The medical marijuana stuff makes me especially angry. Most of the members of Congress want people to suffer and die so they can get re-elected. And they have the gall to act righteous about their murderous actions.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

How about dividing up the war on drugs into specific drugs? The war on marijuana has been seen as particularly vicious; the war on alcohol was lost in the 20s; but I don't know many folks who objected to the (successful) war on crack or the current (slowly losing, it seems to me) war on heroin. Let alone the upcoming war on ritalin or the like...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

The war on meth has resulted in me being treated like a criminal whenever I go to get allergy drugs.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That's actually an improvement over Oregon, where pseudoephedrine is now illegal to sell w/o a prescription. Utter madness.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

In Maryland, you must show an ID, can only buy 2 boxes in 30 days, and must sign a paper list. So, that's 2 boxes per each pharmacy - not chain, but each one - per 30 days, IFF the person at the counter goes through the 30 days of records.

In Virginia, you go to the pharmacy counter, and ask for what you want, they hand it to you, you pay, you go. It's stupid that it's different in every state. I haven't tried buying any in DC, so don't know what it's like there.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

How are you defining "end the war on drugs"? I wouldn't be surprised if it's not long before we admit that there's no useful distinction between recreational drugs and pharmaceuticals.

[lightningb.livejournal.com]

Easy! If it's made by a big industrial corporation, it's a "pharmaceutical".
If it's made by impoverished third- world folks, it's a "drug".

Pharmaceutical companies and drug dealers don't want to compete with each other.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Ending the war on drugs would mean that there's no legal penalty for using chemicals to manipulate your nervous system.

[lightningb.livejournal.com]

The thing about gay marriage is that it hasn't been a political/law enforcement/racist hobby horse for over 70 years. Cops and politicians haven't been building careers on fighting gay marriage.

To "stop the drug wars", cops and politicians would have to admit that they were wrong. (Actually, they deliberately lied, but they could kick dirt over that inconvenient little fact.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Some non-trivial number of cops and judges have said that they regret their involvement in the war on drugs, and want the war (or at least some parts of it) ended.

I expect part of it is people who don't want to admit they were wrong, but there's such incredible stubbornness about every atrocious detail of the war on drugs that I'm inclined to suspect that organized crime is part of why the war on drugs doesn't end.

[cellio]

The War on Some Drugs has been a mess for decades, and I'd be thrilled to see it collapse. I'm not so optimistic about that, though. :-(