Drugs: The Legalization Debate
The Nov 13 2008 issue of Rolling Stone magazine has an interesting article about this subject by a reporter who tried to interview one of the major narcos and didn't get killed for the attempt.
The author points out that our drug policy can be described as asking other countries not to sell us something we very much want; which results in a lot of Mexicans getting killed.
He further states that the we should be talking about the one thing that can really put a stop to all this: legalization. I agree with him.
Your still focused on the commodity
First, the argument isn't over the merit of drug abuse, the argument is over the so the war on drugs strategy. Uboat, you keep taking the argument back to the Puritian argument that drugs are bad. Most of us would agree with you, but I also agree with Reed, that a lot of information out there is simply propaganda to justify the war, because those fighting the war have established their own industry/economic system, and they need to keep it going.
The education against drugs is grossly underfunded, so assuming you can shift some of the wasted millions from the front line effort to the demand side, it may have more effect. The key is make it culturally unacceptable, and that means recruiting some shallow pop stars to help sell that message.
Alcohol is still legal in the military, but is is much less culturally acceptable than when I first joined a few years ago. It takes time, but it can be done. Admittedly my argument for legalizing drugs shouldn't include all drugs, but you have to yet to challenge any of my points regarding strategy. That is the normal response, and that is why we continue to go down the same old road.