But let's cut to the chase, this is not about drugs and health issues. This is about money and jobs for DEA. Essentially, we're pissing away our tax money to pay for DEA agents and their expensive toys, who, in turn, don't provide any real service.
This drug war is expensive, it costs dollars and lives. It's trivial to end it, but it's not happening. Too many dollars at stake.
I was with you until this, not because I disagree but because I think it's an irrelevant issue. There are many examples of enforcement/regulation wings of the government being rolled back when the political tide turned against them. The issue is that law enforcement expenditures, like military expenditures, are pitched as a response to public fears.
If you talk to older generation, suburban family folks who support criminalization instinctively, their number one stated concern is, in my experience, that they are afraid of drug-related crimes -- robbery, burglary, theft i.e., crimes being committed to support a habit (so the hypothesis goes). Now the obvious response to that is to point out that those things happen now, but then you are engaging an issue of the heart by attacking a point made in their head. This will probably segue into an argument about stiffer criminal penalties -- the exact opposite of what we want -- because the person is still afraid.
DEA toys don't figure into this argument, even if that is the end result, so if you want this to happen before that generation is old and gone you have to have an argument that addresses the core concerns people actually have. If you have to talk about the DEA, even if you are technically correct, I doubt anybody can be swayed by such an argument -- it's all cerebral and doesn't address the central issue, which is fear.
Law enforcement dollars is much bigger than the DEA. Think of all the local and regional task forces, and especially the prisons. That's a lot of money, salaries, services, profit.
So there's a source of campaign contributions and other lobbying efforts, or bribery.
And then there's the purely political side. Very few politicians will come out in favor of legalization or decriminalization. Not because they care one way or another. They just don't want to hand a brick to their opponent, which will be used. "Candidate Sluggo is soft on drugs, soft on crime!"
To play devil's advocate: do you think that drug-related crimes would increase or decrease as a result of legalization?
It's a question I haven't considered before, but one that takes a bit of consideration. I certainly don't see it decreasing. (I support legalization by the way, I side with libertarians on issues regarding the choice of what to do with one's body. However, the libertarian camp also advocates a government who's primary concern is protecting citizen's from violence. Just an aside.)
By "drug-related crimes" are you referring to crimes of trafficking, or crimes committed while under the influence (because the perpetrator is under the influence).
For the former, I don't see how it could do anything but decrease. As to the latter, I suspect initially it would go up, but I don't think that would last. And, the drop off in crimes related to trafficking would more than make up the difference. Having said that, crimes related to trafficking do tend to be heavily concentrated into fewer areas, so the typical suburban white fear-loving voter would probably perceive that crime has gone up.
This drug war is expensive, it costs dollars and lives. It's trivial to end it, but it's not happening. Too many dollars at stake.
I was with you until this, not because I disagree but because I think it's an irrelevant issue. There are many examples of enforcement/regulation wings of the government being rolled back when the political tide turned against them. The issue is that law enforcement expenditures, like military expenditures, are pitched as a response to public fears.
If you talk to older generation, suburban family folks who support criminalization instinctively, their number one stated concern is, in my experience, that they are afraid of drug-related crimes -- robbery, burglary, theft i.e., crimes being committed to support a habit (so the hypothesis goes). Now the obvious response to that is to point out that those things happen now, but then you are engaging an issue of the heart by attacking a point made in their head. This will probably segue into an argument about stiffer criminal penalties -- the exact opposite of what we want -- because the person is still afraid.
DEA toys don't figure into this argument, even if that is the end result, so if you want this to happen before that generation is old and gone you have to have an argument that addresses the core concerns people actually have. If you have to talk about the DEA, even if you are technically correct, I doubt anybody can be swayed by such an argument -- it's all cerebral and doesn't address the central issue, which is fear.
That's MHO anyway.