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Showing Original Post only (View all)10 Ways the Drug War Is Causing Massive Collateral Damage to Our Society [View all]
http://www.alternet.org/10-ways-drug-war-causing-massive-collateral-damage-our-society***SNIP
1. Racial Injustice
The war on drugs is built on racial injustice. Despite roughly equal rates of drug use and sales, African-American men are arrested at 13 times the rate of white men on drug charges in the U.S. -- with rates of up to 57 times in some states. African Americans and Latinos together make up 29 percent of the total U.S. population, but more than 75 percent of drug law violators in state and federal prisons.
2. Denied Access to Education, Housing and Benefits
Passed by Congress in 1998, the Higher Education Act delays or denies federal financial aid to anyone ever convicted of a felony or misdemeanor drug offense, including marijuana possession. A drug offense will also get you and your entire family kicked out of public housing. Thirty-two states ban anyone convicted of a drug felony from collecting food stamps.
3. Wasted Taxpayer Dollars
U.S. federal, state, and local governments now spend $50 billion per year trying to make America drug free. State prison budgets top spending on public colleges and universities. The prison industrial complex is ever more powerful. Nevertheless, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before.
4. Unsafe Neighborhoods
Most drug-related violence stems not from drug use, but from drug prohibition. That was true in Chicago under alcohol kingpin Al Capone and it is true now. The mass killings in Mexico and in many U.S. cities are not from marijuana or other drug use, but because the plants are worth more than gold and people are willing to kill each other over the profits to be made.
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10 Ways the Drug War Is Causing Massive Collateral Damage to Our Society [View all]
xchrom
Jan 2013
OP
Yeah, but rich people are getting richer and that's all that matters in this world.nt
valerief
Jan 2013
#3
For every crazed meth user who did something crazy, I can point to 10 boozers who did the same thing
Comrade Grumpy
Jan 2013
#22
Treatment only works if people want it to work, because there are consequences like jail.
dkf
Jan 2013
#15