What Darwin Could Tell Us About the "War on Drugs"

[marmar]

from MinuteMan Media, via AlterNet:



What Darwin Could Tell Us About the "War on Drugs"

By Sanho Tree, MinuteMan Media. Posted December 27, 2007.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, the "law and order" response by our politicians only intensifies the problem.



With every passing year the drug problem seems to get worse. The U.S. government responds by pumping billions more dollars into the war on drugs. Federal spending for this "war without end" is more than twenty times what it was in 1980 and still the drug traffickers appear to be winning. Despite more than six billion dollars spent on "Plan Colombia" alone, cocaine production has actually increased in that country. Now the Bush Administration is asking for $1.4 billion more to aid the Mexican government's drug crackdown through the "Merida Initiative."

Although it may seem counterintuitive, the "law and order" response by our politicians only intensifies the problem. Instead, they might turn to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to glean insight as to why these "common sense" reactionary solutions often are counterproductive.

As illegal drugs become easier to obtain and more potent, politicians respond in a knee-jerk manner by ramping up law enforcement. After all, drugs are bad so why not escalate the war against drugs? Politicians get to look tough in front of voters, the drug war bureaucracy is delighted with ever expanding budgets, and lots of low-level bad guys get locked up. Everyone wins - including, unfortunately, the major drug traffickers.

As politicians intensified the drug war decade after decade, an unintended consequence began to appear. These "get tough" policies have caused the drug economy to evolve under Darwinian principles (i.e., survival of the fittest). Indeed, the drug war has stimulated this economy to grow and innovate at a frightening pace.

By escalating the drug war, the kinds of people the police typically capture are the ones who are dumb enough to get caught. These criminal networks are occasionally taken down when people within the organization get careless. Thus, law enforcement tends to apprehend the most inept and least efficient traffickers. The common street expression puts it best: "the dealer who uses, loses." Conversely, the kinds of people law enforcement tends to miss are the most cunning, innovative and efficient traffickers. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/71678/

[mdmc]

1. meanwhile, the DEMS are suiting up, getting their poms poms ready

To continue to be cheerleaders for the drug war.

[SpiralHawk]

2. Big Brother Republicons screw up everything they touch

Why do republicons love Big Government?

Why do they spend, spend, spend on all these failed foreign mis-adventures?

Why won't republicons do anything to address real problems right here in America?

[mdmc]

5. There is nothing wrong with big government, my friend

the fault here lies with the failed policy of Prohibition.

[ixion]

3. Human Beings are hard-wired to seek to alter their perceptions of reality. As such

we have been using drugs for thousands of years.

The so-called 'war on drugs' has done nothing but shred the social fabric. It has caused needless death, destroyed families and livelihoods and taken lives. Nothing more.

End this travesty. End all bogus 'wars' on abstractions. They cannot be won. They can only make matters worse.

[Toots]

4. The more laws against it the more expensive it becomes and thus the more money

into the Republican Party..or does anyone think those billions upon billions just disappear. Politicians are getting filthy rich off this "drug war" plus they get black folk into prison and off the voter rolls. It is not all by accident.

[mdmc]

6. kick

[mdmc]

7. kick

[AntiFascist]

8. I watched a documentary about the cocaine problems in South Florida...

in the early 80s. Basically, the violence from the turf wars was becoming too extreme, so the Federal government stepped in and put an end to it.

What the documentary didn't show: apparently the Feds didn't end the drug trafficking, however, they simply imported the cocaine under more controlled conditions using the CIA. Turf wars are not as much of a problem when the government is in control.