Would you support the drug war, prohibition of drugs, if you believed the despair described in the linked article was the symptom of all of the costs of that prohibition? We have believed that we can protect ourselves from drugs by law for a long time, despite all the evidence to the contrary (evidence like we can't even keep drugs out of prisons). I view the drug war as just another cultural delusion regarding what the government's monopoly on coercive force can create or accomplish.
Without the drug war, there would be no drug black market, there would be no funding to pay for the guns and ammo, there would be no drug turf over which to fight, the current practice of arresting poor young men dealing would end, so there would be a chance for young poor men to father their own children. There would be young, poor men around for young poor women to marry. The chance for family would be restored.
If then experiment - if the drug war, then mass imprisonment is the only way to reduce violence. Else - no drug war, less violence, less money to be spent by criminals on guns, more incentives to enter the work force (even if it is only the legal sale of drugs). It wouldn't be utopia, nor will we find utopia under any circumstance. But a drug war free US would be better than the current bloodbath and the way it pits the populace in these circumstances against the police officers who would try to protect them from crime. If no drug war, then many fewer reasons for police to confront minorities while each fears and perhaps hates the other.
But of course, this "conservative" author cannot even pin point the drug war as the problem - it would be akin to expressing doubt in the christian god in her circles to suggest that using violence to stop drug use is stupid, dehumanizing and ultimately more lethal to US citizens than al qaida.
‘The streets are gone,” Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago police union, told me last month. The night before, Aug. 14, a Chicago police officer’s son had been killed in a shooting while sitting on his family’s porch, one of 92 people killed in Chicago during the worst month for homicides in the Windy City since July 1993. The August victims who survived included 10-year-old Tavon Tanner, shot while playing in front of his house (the bullet ripped through Tavon’s pancreas, intestines, kidney and spleen); an 8-year-old girl shot in the arm while crossing the street; and two 6-year-old girls.
On Sept. 6, a 71-year-old man was accosted by a teen on a bike while watering his lawn. The robber demanded the man’s wallet and when he refused shot him in the abdomen, then grabbed his wallet before pedaling away.
By Sept. 8, nearly 3,000 people had been shot in Chicago in 2016, an average of one shooting victim every two hours. Five hundred and sixteen people had been murdered. Gun homicides and non-fatal shootings were up 47% over the same period of 2015, which had seen a significant rise in crime over 2014.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-black-body-count-rises-as-chicago-police-step-back-1473631079
Without the drug war, there would be no drug black market, there would be no funding to pay for the guns and ammo, there would be no drug turf over which to fight, the current practice of arresting poor young men dealing would end, so there would be a chance for young poor men to father their own children. There would be young, poor men around for young poor women to marry. The chance for family would be restored.
If then experiment - if the drug war, then mass imprisonment is the only way to reduce violence. Else - no drug war, less violence, less money to be spent by criminals on guns, more incentives to enter the work force (even if it is only the legal sale of drugs). It wouldn't be utopia, nor will we find utopia under any circumstance. But a drug war free US would be better than the current bloodbath and the way it pits the populace in these circumstances against the police officers who would try to protect them from crime. If no drug war, then many fewer reasons for police to confront minorities while each fears and perhaps hates the other.
But of course, this "conservative" author cannot even pin point the drug war as the problem - it would be akin to expressing doubt in the christian god in her circles to suggest that using violence to stop drug use is stupid, dehumanizing and ultimately more lethal to US citizens than al qaida.
‘The streets are gone,” Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago police union, told me last month. The night before, Aug. 14, a Chicago police officer’s son had been killed in a shooting while sitting on his family’s porch, one of 92 people killed in Chicago during the worst month for homicides in the Windy City since July 1993. The August victims who survived included 10-year-old Tavon Tanner, shot while playing in front of his house (the bullet ripped through Tavon’s pancreas, intestines, kidney and spleen); an 8-year-old girl shot in the arm while crossing the street; and two 6-year-old girls.
On Sept. 6, a 71-year-old man was accosted by a teen on a bike while watering his lawn. The robber demanded the man’s wallet and when he refused shot him in the abdomen, then grabbed his wallet before pedaling away.
By Sept. 8, nearly 3,000 people had been shot in Chicago in 2016, an average of one shooting victim every two hours. Five hundred and sixteen people had been murdered. Gun homicides and non-fatal shootings were up 47% over the same period of 2015, which had seen a significant rise in crime over 2014.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-black-body-count-rises-as-chicago-police-step-back-1473631079
No comments:
Post a Comment