The myth of the place where the war on drugs worked
*Agents destroying a[n] alcohol still in San Francisco during [alcohol] prohibition
Most defenders of the drug war can name nowhere were it has succeeded, yet they insist it must be intensified nonetheless.
It is true that if you construct a totalitarian police state, you can briefly reduce drug use – although the moment you relax the totalitarian control, you will find the drug problems return with even greater force because you have an even more traumatized and broken population, as the current addiction crises in Afghanistan and China show … Russia’s drug policy is was represented by a former KGB agent called Victor Ivanov, who has a sagging white moustache, and a blank stare. In Russia, if you are found with a single empty syrige, you will be arrested and charged with drug offences. This virtually guarantees that addicts will share needles – obviously nobody wants to risk being arrested, so in a group, one addict will bring a needle, and everyone passes it round. If you wanted to create a policy to maximally spread HIV, you’d pursue this policy, championed by Ivanov. This is why Russia has one of the fastest growing HIV crises in the world. If you wanted to cause maximum death among people with addiction problems, this is the policy you would choose – which is why it is condemned by virtually every relevant human rights group in the world … This dynamic plays out everywhere where drugs are banned. The trade is transferred to armed criminal gangs, who have no recourse to the law to protect their property. So they can only defend their property through violence and terror against potential thieves and rivals. Ask yourself – where are the violent alcohol dealers in Sweden? They don’t exist – because the alcohol trade is legal.
Original Article (Voltefaceme):
The Myth Of The Place Where The War On Drugs Worked
Artwork Fair Use: Public Domain
