Posted by cm on July 07, 1998 at 00:33:34:
In Reply to: I'm not saying give up the fight, I'm saying we're fighting backwards posted by Trixie on July 06, 1998 at 09:48:23:
:Why are we so afraid to change our tactics when :the ones we're using so clearly do NOT work???
I agree with you -- the war is being lost. I believe that the number of "new" drug users, high school kids, was decreasing at from the early 80s until the early 90s. The number I recall hearing was something like a drop from 48% percent in the early 80s to 33% in the early 90s. We're now back up to 47 or 48%.
Maybe we should go after the manufacturers of drugs with the same tenacity that we've gone after the Tobacco companies. The problem with that is the complicity of foreign governments (and maybe our own) with drug lords. Take a look at Mexican authorities on the take, for instance. This is a really tough problem, and it seems that everything we've tried has failed. The problem with legalization is that once we take that step, we can never turn back -- like Prohibition.