by Justin Page

Created on: November 26, 2008

A LOOSING BATTLE

Introduction

The war on drugs is an international problem. The current war on drugs takes them out of their proper context. The current war inflates the value of drugs, diverts money into the hands of terrorist and criminal operations, empowers such organizations, and creates an unregulated market for the American consumer, which is often the American youth.

Discussion of Findings

The opening line of Dr. Andrew Weil's book, From Chocolate to Morphine, states, "Drugs are here to stay." (Weil 1). This is something that advocates of the current war on drugs have a hard time wrapping their minds around. Attempts to eradicate the substances only make them more valuable. The high cost of illegal drugs are associated not with what they are, but with the fact that they are illegal. With this begins discussion of the primary factor as to why illegalization takes drugs out of their proper context, money.

The high profits of the drug trade insure that there will always be people willing to take a risk. "At this time, the potential profits associated with the drug trade are almost beyond comprehension. The global market for illicit drugs was estimated by the United Nations to be $322 billion in 2005." (Kinney 510). At that rate the U.S could nearly cover its current budget deficit in three years if it were receiving these funds. Since it is illegal however, the money is going to rogue nations, and other criminals. According to an article out of the Washington post which is talking about Afghanistan, "Narcotics is a 2.6 billion-dollar-a-year industry that this year provided more than a third of the countries gross domestic product." (DeYoung 98). A more recent article from the New Yorker shows that the countries profits went up by about 6 million between the one year span in which the two articles were written. The second article also illustrates who is profiting from the trade in Afghanistan. The second article written in 2007 reads, "More than half of the country's annual G.D.P, some 3.1 billion, is believed to come from the drug trade, and narcotics officials believe that part of the money is funding the Taliban insurgency." (Anderson 89). That's right the Taliban, the group whose name is practically synonymous with terrorism. In this country the money goes to criminals both large and small. Drug war advocates will undoubtedly argue that this is precisely why we need to eradicate drugs. This approach fails to recognize the fact that it is the prohibition

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