Here's to 40 Years of "Winning"

Congratulations everyone on winning the war on drugs for forty years now! That’s right for forty years since law enforcement first took up combating drugs in the 1960’s we have been winning. In each decade of this war law enforcement members have been preaching their sacred mantra “We are winning the war on drugs”. So according to them for forty years we have been winning the war. Well I have a question. How long do you have to be winning a war before you finally win the damn thing?  It took less time to win both world wars than it has to win the war on drugs. When it comes to this war we don’t even have an end date. There isn’t even an estimated year when this war might come to an end. There isn’t even a timeline on how long this war is going to last. Will it be over in ten years, twenty years, or another forty? I guarantee if you asked anyone in law enforcement this same question that they wouldn’t be able to give you a straight answer. When will people realize that we are spinning our wheels by constantly throwing money and resources into a war that truly has no end in sight? Not even a light at the end of a tunnel.

I was searching around the internet in an attempt to find some counter arguments to this issue. I found this website containing an article written in 2006 by Jonathan V Last of the Philadelphia inquirer.  http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n150/a08.html. At this website I found this statement “Over the last five years, while no one was paying attention, America has been winning its war on drugs.”  We have been winning all along and you all just haven’t been paying attention! This is one of the biggest smoke and mirrors acts that I have ever seen. This guy’s counter argument to America is losing the war on drugs is “No, we are winning everyone just hasn’t been paying attention”. Imagine if someone gave the same argument about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. The political backlash would be enormous on whoever would dare say it. The truth is that it’s because people are paying attention to the war on drugs that’s making them question it. They realize that we still have illegal drugs coming into our country as we did forty years ago and in that forty years we haven’t made any progress to stop it completely, and don’t see it stopping any time in the future.  Mr. Last’s argument is ridiculous and the fact of the matter is anyone who would write this and expect people to just accept it as fact is shameful.

Let’s look at the last five years since this article was written. Since then Mexico has been torn apart by violent drug cartels who are trying to push more drugs into this country than ever before. There have been more murders and a more steady supply of drugs coming into the U.S which is continuing to fund their criminal organizations. In just five years it has become an epidemic. My question is where was Mr. Last who wrote that we were winning five years ago? Was he paying attention then? Is he paying attention now? I wonder what he would say about the situation today. Would he notice that the war on drugs is pointless, or would he try to convince the rest of us that we were still winning and not paying attention? Let’s get educated everyone it’s time to start questioning the war on drugs instead of mindlessly accepting it.