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| Is it a failed war? |
| Most definitely |
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85% |
[ 6 ] |
| In some ways, yes. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| In some respects, but there is no alternative. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Probably |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Possibly |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| It's flawed, but works overall. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Not at all. It's working fine. |
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14% |
[ 1 ] |
| I don't know enough yet to form an opinion. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Frankly m'dear, I don't give a damn! |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
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| Total Votes : 7 |
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| Author |
Message |
Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 5:46 am Post subject: Is the US war on drugs a failed war? |
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A failed war
| Quote: |
| America's badly crafted drug laws have exacerbated the country's already dire racial and economic divisions. |
| Quote: |
Many of my readers seem perennially disapproving whenever I say a nice word about America - as if seeing the good in a place blinds me to the bad. Well, let me return to a subject I've written about many times in the past, America's insane war on drugs, and present a whole dose of bad.
According to a report released last month by the Washington-based Sentencing Project, A 25-Year Quagmire, the number of drug arrests in the United States has tripled since 1980, with more than four out of every five of these arrests being for possession rather than the more serious sales-related offenses. About half of the possession offenses were for marijuana. In absolute terms: each year, nearly two million drug arrests are carried out in America.
A number even more staggering: in that same time period, the number of people imprisoned on drug charges has gone up eleven-fold. Today, nearly half a million Americans, most of them never convicted of any violent crime, are locked up because of use or sale of drugs. At a federal level, the numbers are still more jaw-dropping: 4,000 drug prisoners in federal penitentiaries in 1980; 87,000 in 2003.
To put that in perspective: there are now more drug prisoners just in federal prisons in the US (which hold only about one sixth of the total number of drug convicts in the US, with the remainder being in state prisons and county jails) than there are prisoners in the UK.
Like so much else here, the age-old overlap between poverty and race plays itself out in a peculiarly cruel way as regards drug prisoners: African Americans are estimated to make up 14% of the country's drug users, yet over half of those sentenced to prison on drug charges. In part that might be attributable to deliberate racism. At least as significant, however, in these allegedly colour-blind times, is that sentences for crack cocaine crimes - a drug disproportionately used by the poor, the sale and possession of which blacks are arrested for at a particularly high rate - are far more rigid and punitive than are sentences for other drug offences.
The result is all-too-predictable. In New York state, blacks make up about 16% of the population, but well over half of all prisoners. In South Carolina, blacks account for three in 10 residents, but nearly seven out of every 10 prisoners. In Massachusetts, one in 20 residents are black and over one in four prisoners are. And the list goes on.
Put simply, badly crafted drug laws have, for decades now, exacerbated already dire racial and economic divisions in the country. They divert a huge number of people into high-cost prisons and sweep enormous public health problems under the carpet rather than dealing with them proactively. |
To read full article click on the link above. You can also scroll down and read Guardian readers comments about the article (don't worry, there are also plenty of rightwingers reading The Guardian these days). |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Many of my readers seem perennially disapproving whenever I say a nice word about America |
That's because you write for the Guardian. Your audience is not full of critical thinkers.
Answer to the OP's question? Yes. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
That's because you write for the Guardian. Your audience is not full of critical thinkers. |
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