At the time the war on drugs looked unwinnable. Which is why the joke about the war on drugs was that it was always a losing war. And then at some point in 2000s we ended the war on drugs.
In hindsight, I would definitely declare today that we WERE winning it when we were fighting it. Now that we don't, we're getting massacred.
>In hindsight, I would definitely declare today that we WERE winning it when we were fighting it. Now that we don't, we're getting massacred.
LOL, no, we've never even been in a winning position. Were we winning when the CIA used cocaine to finance weapons for Iran? I guess we were winning when we put a lot of black people in jail for decades for possessing crack while white wall street folks were getting slaps on the wrist for getting caught with the same amount of coke? Our country having the highest percentage of people in prison sounds like we were winning too. Lots of winning.
Yes, The fear with the war on drugs was that a large majority of the population would become addicted to hard drugs. The fear was the the US population would become like China in the 1800s and the communist aligned countries where drugs were produced would have massive trade and power imbalances over the US population. China had as much as 25% of the population addicted to British opium in the 1800s. The US war on drugs has been very successful in keeping the percentage of Americans abusing highly addictive drugs very low.
Imagine the strength of the cartels with 10-20x the customer base and far more frequent usage among them.
If you look at figure 1 on this CDC page (which looks at deaths rather than overall usage), I’d suggest the numbers are trending the exact opposite to what “winning” the war on drugs would look like.
Like the war on drugs.
At the time the war on drugs looked unwinnable. Which is why the joke about the war on drugs was that it was always a losing war. And then at some point in 2000s we ended the war on drugs.
In hindsight, I would definitely declare today that we WERE winning it when we were fighting it. Now that we don't, we're getting massacred.
>In hindsight, I would definitely declare today that we WERE winning it when we were fighting it. Now that we don't, we're getting massacred.
LOL, no, we've never even been in a winning position. Were we winning when the CIA used cocaine to finance weapons for Iran? I guess we were winning when we put a lot of black people in jail for decades for possessing crack while white wall street folks were getting slaps on the wrist for getting caught with the same amount of coke? Our country having the highest percentage of people in prison sounds like we were winning too. Lots of winning.
Yes, The fear with the war on drugs was that a large majority of the population would become addicted to hard drugs. The fear was the the US population would become like China in the 1800s and the communist aligned countries where drugs were produced would have massive trade and power imbalances over the US population. China had as much as 25% of the population addicted to British opium in the 1800s. The US war on drugs has been very successful in keeping the percentage of Americans abusing highly addictive drugs very low.
Imagine the strength of the cartels with 10-20x the customer base and far more frequent usage among them.
If you look at figure 1 on this CDC page (which looks at deaths rather than overall usage), I’d suggest the numbers are trending the exact opposite to what “winning” the war on drugs would look like.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db474.htm
Because we stopped fighting it like 20 years ago.
Vietnam war?
The US hasn't formally declared war since World War II.