the war on drugs

Hey all,

I was thinking about this after watching the Wire again (which I will talk about in other posts). Still, I wonder: are we even close to winning this war? The number of drug arrests have only increased since 1970 with the total number of drug arrests in 2006 at approximately 1.89 million. Today, I was thinking about possible solutions to this problem. First off, we could just legalize drugs in this country. It seems like a simple solution that would cut drug arrests to a minimum and allow them to be taxed. Regulation would come into play which would be seen as a positive. However, this may be part of the solution, but it alone has some problems. There is no reason for addicts to discontinue using in this scenerio. The excess money from taxes can go to drug programs, but addicts would have to voluntarily seek treatment. For users of heroin, crack cocaine, and meth, this is unlikely to happen, so I've been thinking about another possibility.

There is an economic approach to this as well as a reasonable criminal approach. First, stop arresting the addicts unless they immediately go into a treatment program. By reducing demand, it should reduce supply. Secondly, the amount of drugs coming into this country and being made in this country have to be reduced. I'm not sure about the best way to do this, either. At this point, I hit a road block. I'll think of a plan and discuss this issue again. Let me know what you think.