Fixing Mistakes: The failing war on drugs
By 
Shan-ul-Hai •
May 27, 2008
“Fixing Mistakes” will be a new series where I talk about how our society can learn from its mistakes and correct its own problems… but we can only do it if we’re willing to think outside the box.
We have spent countless amounts of money, manpower, and resources in an attempt to fight the drug trade… but it seems like all we really do is foster it. Suddenly, the government becomes the “bad guy” and every rapper is glorifying the industry to a point where I actually think the Geto Boys lyric “Damn it feels good to be a gangster” might be true. Although I have read countless times that drug dealing is actually much less glorious than we are often made to believe, experts still say that the “war on drugs” has, as of yet, been a failure (does that remind you of another war?).
I would think that after 30 years of failure, we’d have a team of economists working on an innovative new technique. Our biggest problem is the fact that innovative new techniques are often met with resistance because, by definition, they stray away from the common wisdom (case in point: Galileo, Einstein, Planck, etc.). In this particular case, it seems that a myriad of economists agree that in order to best combat the illegal drug trade, we should legalize marijuana; we can see the obvious problem with that issue.
I’ll skip all of the reasons in favor of legalization for now (that’s a topic for a future post, and plenty of other people have covered it before). What I think is more interesting is the fact that this idea, despite the fact that it is endorsed by many experts, is automatically dismissed by many people just because our society has placed a stigma on non-medicinal use of the plant. Whether or not it fits your “moral” values, don’t we all owe it to the world to at least consider the fact that legalization would (according to most experts) be a breakthrough in our attempts to curb the drug trade? Don’t we at least owe it to the world to read about it and make an educated decision?
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Wow, I can’t believe no one has commented on this one! We talked a little about this one the other night and I agree that we should let the people decide on this. If everyone would get more educated on marijuana in general, then I would think that (dismissing “popular” notions and social stigma) they would realize that the pro’s outweigh the con’s as you stated the other night. I have never smoked marijuana or ever plan to, but I still feel that it would be a positive if properly regulated.