We Have Tried the Drug-Free Ideal Yet it Has Failed to Work
For over a hundred years the US has attempted to control citizens drug use and failed. In fact, there has never been a drug-free society in all of recorded history so we shouldn't feel too bad about not living in one now.
Unfortunately, in the case of drugs, policy failure does not just mean the absence of drug-free success it also means many citizens' health destroyed and many premature deaths far beyond what would have been expected from the drug use alone!
One outstanding example of the lethality of US drug policy has been failure to fund science-based HIV prevention efforts such as needle exchange. Despite evaluations issued from 1991-1995 backing syringe exchange as an critical part of fighting HIV disease spread among people injecting from every federal evaluative body: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, National Academy of Medicine/Institute of Science, General Accounting Office, Office of Technology Assessment, and the National Commission on AIDS.
As of October 2008 neither Congress nor the Executive Branch has allowed funding of syringe exchange with any federal money.
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Jacob says: "Government should concentrate more on curing them completely..." The problem with that bit of fantasy is that neither Jacob nor the government know how to do that and while they delude themselves with magic opinions and fantastic solutions the blood borne pathogens continue to spread, where we know how to stop them. Syringe exchange is the most effective HIV intervention know to date. It deserves the full support of communities who have the will to live. Those who would rather keep their delusions intact rather than have lower rates of HIV, HBV, HCV infection, can continue to imagine the facts of life and suffer the consequences. Personally, I thought that it was better to lower the prevalence of HIV infection in the community where my children were growing up in order to increase their chances of survival. Jacob may have other priorities.
"Drug War" does not properly deserve to be called a "failure." Failure implies some serious attempt at success. For the 40 years that I know about drug war , there has been no serious attempt at success or belief, except among a few fanatics, that the concept of repression through enforcement alone would have any chance of success. Even much maligned Richard Nixon, who is the progenitor of modern drug war, for the purely political reason that he saw his opponents as "pot smokers," proposed a budget that directed 50% of the drug-fighting funds to drug treatment.
Beat-cops know this; so do prosecutors. They are on the merry-go-round, they see how it goes around & around and down & down. A few of them even read the research. Those cops and prosecutors know that heroin prescription programs in Switzerland resulted in an 85% reduction in drug-related crime . You run the numbers --- even apart from the economic savings, you tell me what that rate of reduction in crime would do for the safety and security of American communities. Then go back and understand the underlying fact that 85% of these crimes are driven by the desperation of addiction, which is built into our system to insure profits for mobsters. Please, tell he how that makes sense? Drug war is not a failure, it is not even only a fraud although millions cynically profit from it, but when the people, who prosecute it, openly say that it doesn't work, there is a problem taking the concept of "drug-war," as anything other than a social harm, seriously. Yet, we continue to invest billions of borrowed dollars into the obvious failure and fraud, that "drug war" has become. America's "drug-war" is a farce.
Then we can talk about "They hate us for our freedom..." but don't get me started on what drug war has done to degrade the civil rights of citizens. As my father would have said: "It's a sin and a shame."
Compared to making heroin available to addicts or communicating the evisceration of our civil liberties in the name of "drug-war" ideology, advocacy for needle exchange is a no-brainer. Needle Exchange works; not doing needle exchange abets the spread of a sexually transmitted disease that threatens our children 's lives while failure to fully implement this reasonable prevention effort accelerates the bankruptcy of our public health system.
And the reason not to implement this successful intervention is... Quoi? ¿Que? What?
I absolutely agree with supplying clean needles to addicts... through private organizations funded by voluntary donations.
We don't have a public health system (yet) and we should never adopt one.
"We don't have a public health system (yet) and we should never adopt one."
What? You are a grad student in biomedical engineering and you don't know the difference between "public health care " and a "public health system?"
America has one of the most extensive public health systems in the world. While it is not one of the most efficient or most effective the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the entire national public health network directed by the Surgeon General plays a role in public health in every state in the union. What we're talking about here is public health, the protection of the population from the spread of disease. By any political philosophical standard even the most conservative, protecting the public's health is a legitimate function of government .
How can you comment on needle exchange if you don't understand that distinction?
"I absolutely agree with supplying clean needles to addicts... through private organizations funded by voluntary donations."
If needle programs are just enabling addicts to do drugs then why would you support any program?
Reduce the occurrences of AIDS and the spread of HIV .
Then how doesn't that help the larger population?
It helps some of the larger population. I still want to support some but I want it funded by some (voluntarily)