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Originally Posted by AdAstra2009
Completely forgot about this post...
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Yes we have a right to destroy ourselves. Our lives are our own and what we do with them is our own business.
And when you say "so what" to things like militarization of police and building more prisons, you are completely ignoring the cost of it all. The increased need for prisons has lead to a massive private prison industry that creates a conflict of interest in which it is profitable for the few people in charge to have as many people incarcerated as possible and at tremendous cost to the taxpayer. The militarization of police has lead to gross misprioritization of law enforcement resources, with SWAT teams being deployed to terrorize citizens over misdemeanor worthy amounts of drugs because they get kickbacks from the federal government. There's a county in northern California that made severe cutbacks to its sheriff's department because of the recession, and now they almost only enforce drug laws because it's the only way they can keep themselves funded.
Additionally, property seizure laws that allow law enforcement agencies to auction assets seized from drug suspects have lead to rampant corruption everywhere. Off the top of my head, a simple example being that in many places, if some jackass steals your car and later get's arrested with drugs, you don't get your car back at all. The police keep it.
And no it's not my opinion that the drug war is wasteful, that is undeniably established fact. Why? Because it accomplishes
absolutely nothing. Drugs are not at all harder to obtain, everybody who would be using drugs if they were legal already are, and imprisoning them does nothing at all to curb their behavior. It is literally
money down the toilet.
And you're right, legalizing drugs will not make the drug problem go away. Nothing is going to make it go away. Drugs always have and always will be a part of the human experience and nothing can change that. Legislation and imprisonment is not how problems are dealt with. You mentioned the Netherlands? Here's an even more relevant example, Portugal. Portugal legalized all drugs for personal use, and what happened? Enrollment in rehabilitation programs skyrocketed, overdoses plummeted. Holy shit how did that happen?