To make drug policies more humane and more effective, the U.S. should rehabilitate non-violent, casual drug users, and undermine the power of organized crime. Full Story »
Posted by Lynn Caporale - via NewsRack (U.S.), New York Times (Opinion), NewsRack (Business), New York Times (Most Emailed), AllTop, Randy Benson (t), Seth Roberts Farber (t), Kristi Hancock (t), Jeremy Caplan (t), Megan Taylor (t), Willie Bido (t), Gianni D'Anna (t)
An important issue to add to the discussion in a year when states are struggling with difficult choices to balance their budgets, and drug-related violence has escalated to a dangerous extent in Mexico and is spreading in Central America.
in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries. This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces ….. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence….
…the single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980. Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families (disproportionately minorities), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in 1980, 10 percent of his state’s budget went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and only 7.5 percent to higher education.
