Top Ten Reasons to End the War on Drugs

"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

A top Nixon aide who helped start the war on drugs said this. The main two groups that were against the Vietnam War were the radical left and blacks. These two groups used more drugs than any other group, so by criminalizing drugs, Nixon had an excuse to arrest people who simply protested the war.

Kind of screwed up, if you ask me...

The war had little or no effect on drug usage. Some actually claim that it's led to more drug usage. Anyway, many countries that have had big drug epidemics have either legalized or decriminalized drug usage and instead built more rehabilitation centers. You know what happened? In every single case, there has been less drug usage. Imagine that. Compassion actually helps people with addiction more than condemnation does. Who'd have thought!

By making drugs illegal to sell or possess, the war on drugs has led to much more gang violence, especially in cities such as Chicago. By legalizing drugs, there would be no need for violence, and many of these gangs would disappear overnight.

The idea was that if you criminalize drugs, it would lead to higher prices and fewer buyers. This completely backfired. When cocaine became too expensive for poor blacks to afford, crack was invented and became very popular in poorer communities because it was much cheaper to make and even more addictive.

Because of the war, drug cartels have gained a large amount of strength, due to there being little to no competition. This, of course, leads to more crime.

More blacks are arrested for the same drug charges than any other race and usually receive longer sentences. One man infamously received a life sentence a couple of years back for smoking marijuana.

Noam Chomsky famously stated, "The drug war is basically for this - It has nothing to do with drugs, but it has plenty to do with criminalizing an unwanted population and scaring everybody else."

Basically, it's a tool to remove unwanted members from society, such as unemployed people, poor people, etc.

We almost owe 20 trillion dollars in debt, yet we're still fighting a war that we cannot win. Experts say if we end the war and legalize and tax drugs, we could make up to an extra 80 billion a year, if not more.

In my opinion, the government shouldn't be able to tell you something is too dangerous, and you cannot do it. As long as it does not hurt anyone else, then why should you be banned from doing it? People have died bungee jumping. Should that be illegal, too? How about babysitting people? We teach them responsibility. That sounds like a good plan to me.