Our F***ing Idiotic War on Drugs

As an idiot Sheriff in Georgia wastes taxpayer money trying to arrest everyone who was at the party with Michael Phelps, there is this headline in today's WSJ:

Latin American Panel Calls U.S. Drug War a Failure

You can read the whole story here, but since you have to subscribe to do so, I'll give you a few highlights:

"The available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war," said former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in a conference call with reporters from Rio de Janeiro. "We have to move from this approach to another one."

The report, by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, is the latest to question the U.S.'s emphasis on punitive measures to deal with illegal drug use and the criminal violence that accompanies it. A recent Brookings Institution study concluded that despite interdiction and eradication efforts, the world's governments haven't been able to significantly decrease the supply of drugs, while punitive methods haven't succeeded in lowering drug use.

The report warned that the U.S.-style antidrug strategy was putting the region's fragile democratic institutions at risk and corrupting "judicial systems, governments, the political system and especially the police forces."

Wow, what a great war! We get all the above benefits for only about $60B a year. And when it's obvious after many years that what we do doesn't work, we do more of it! Isn't that the definition of insanity?

Wake up America! The war on drugs costs far more in money, lives, and erosion of our Constitution than any small benefit it provides.....unless, that is, you work in law enforcement.