Americans are really good about deciding what they don’t like and throwing millions… er make that billions… sometimes even a trillion or more… to force people to stop doing it. We mount well-funded ad campaigns to show people how wrong they are, instead of figuring out attractive, non-punitive strategies to induce better behavior. Or we just kill or imprison them.
Take for example the difference between our campaigns against smoking vs. against drug use. You know the “just say no” effort didn’t make the slightest dent in the narcotics trade; 50% of those in our prisons are still there because of drugs (half of those for non-violent using or selling). Treatment programs for addicts are but a blip on our drug war response. Instead we prefer to send lots of casual drug users to “crime school” (prison), marking them as felons so too many are literally forced to remain on the wrong side of the law to make a living when they are released. Over the last four decades, it is estimated (DrugPolicy.org) that federal, state and local governments have spent over $1 trillion on the war on drugs. We lose close to $50 billion a year in tax revenue on illegal drugs (thank you, say the cartels), and here are some more nasty numbers from DrugPolicy.org:
Amount spent annually in the U.S. on the war on drugs: More than $51,000,000,000
Number of people arrested in 2012 in the U.S. on nonviolent drug charges: 1.55 million
Number of people arrested for a marijuana law violation in 2012: 749,825
Number of those charged with marijuana law violations who were arrested for possession only: 658,231 (88 percent)
Number of Americans incarcerated in 2012 in federal, state and local prisons and jails: 2,228,400 or 1 in every 108 adults, the highest incarceration rate in the world
Mexican and Central American cartels – armed with “legally acquired” guns (at least when they were purchased in the United States) based on Second Amendment zealots who do not want to curtail weapons sales – wage turf wars in their native countries, so large in some cases that they really are civil wars against their governments, protecting their drug routes and cultivation/manufacturing centers. All to get drugs into the United States. Marijuana has become so popular in the United States, medically and recreationally, that there is a slow and inevitable trend among states to legalize cannabis. The cartels hate this trend. At least this is a move in the right direction, noting that unlike some of these illicit drugs (particularly marijuana) that have unique medicinal values, cigarettes are just slow killers.
Contrast that with the campaign against smoking. Here’s the highlight: cigarettes have never been illegal in the United States. We do not incarcerate addicted smokers. We have tried to convince them, sometimes with a heavy hand, that smoking is bad for them and those in their immediate vicinity. The results? As recently as 1965, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 42.4% of adult Americans smoked. By 1980, that number had already tumbled to 33.2%. Today, only 18% of American adults are still smoking. Wow! Is there a lesson here?! But as much as we are nice to smokers, to placate voters, politicians have been loath to accord those with drug issues with anything but legal disdain, even though the results of that disdain have totally and completely failed. A crack in the wall over marijuana restrictions might just be the more open direction of coming generations of voters.
Which brings me back to the drug wars, and one piece of blowback from our rather unsuccessful meddling in Latin American countries under the guise of drug interdiction… stopping the flow of illicit narcotics into the United States, because we are completely unable to control our own consumer demand for those drugs: immigration. As the President asks Congress for $3.7 billion to handle the massive influx of unaccompanied children massing at and across our border (perhaps yielding to GOP demands to expedite deportations), do we remotely discuss why parents are willing to give up their children for safe haven in the United States in the first place?
Simply put, the majority of these children are victims of the mounting violence in their own countries, much of which is the result of American funding the war on drugs in their homelands, the funneling of illegal guns from the U.S., and the growing bribery and corruption that makes officials turn the other way… The statistics tell us that the violence has escalated to its highest levels only in the past few years. Try this report from the June 28th, San Diego Union-Tribune:
“A 2014 study by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) found that 58 percent of these children are likely eligible for international protection. The study involved 400 in-depth interviews by teams of experienced researchers. In a similar study in 2006, the commission found that only 13 percent were likely eligible for international protection.
“Throughout the current drug war with its beheadings and mass graves, murder rates in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have been higher than in Mexico. Many of the forms of violence in contemporary Central America target children in particular — forced recruitment into gangs, lethal attacks on public buses, kidnapping for ransom, and sex trafficking.
“Many unaccompanied children have heard rumors that if they make it to the United States, they will not be deported, and they will be able to reunite with their families. This explains why most surrender to U.S. law enforcement once they reach the border.” Look at the difference between the numbers in 2006 and today. Our failed policies did this to them!!!! These children are the victims… not the United States citizens who oppose immigration reform. We keep telling ourselves that people should be responsible for the consequences of their moral choices, their behavior. But we do not act that way. We are quintessential heartless, irresponsible American hypocrites!
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