Post by ck4829 on Feb 16, 2022 18:18:48 GMT
America’s longest war isn’t the 20-year fight in Afghanistan. That struggle is dwarfed by the war on drugs, started by President Richard Nixon more than 50 years ago and still raging.
The drug war—which has relied on both law enforcement and the military, at a cost of untold lives and hundreds of billions of dollars—has fared little better than the Afghan campaign. Since Nixon’s declaration of war in 1971, drug use has soared in the U.S. and globally, the range and potency of available drugs has expanded and the power of criminal narcotics gangs has exploded.
At the current rate, accidental drug overdoses are killing some 100,000 Americans annually, and those deaths have roughly doubled every decade since 1979. Law enforcement is now focused not only on the deadly opioid fentanyl but on a surge of new, stronger methamphetamines, capable of giving users mental disorders in just a few days. In Europe, cocaine seizures have hit record volumes, and Europe may now be a bigger market for cocaine than the U.S., according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
As one popular saying has it: We declared war on drugs—and drugs won.
www.wsj.com/articles/the-once-and-future-drug-war-11642780895
The drug war—which has relied on both law enforcement and the military, at a cost of untold lives and hundreds of billions of dollars—has fared little better than the Afghan campaign. Since Nixon’s declaration of war in 1971, drug use has soared in the U.S. and globally, the range and potency of available drugs has expanded and the power of criminal narcotics gangs has exploded.
At the current rate, accidental drug overdoses are killing some 100,000 Americans annually, and those deaths have roughly doubled every decade since 1979. Law enforcement is now focused not only on the deadly opioid fentanyl but on a surge of new, stronger methamphetamines, capable of giving users mental disorders in just a few days. In Europe, cocaine seizures have hit record volumes, and Europe may now be a bigger market for cocaine than the U.S., according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
As one popular saying has it: We declared war on drugs—and drugs won.
www.wsj.com/articles/the-once-and-future-drug-war-11642780895