Category Archives: War On Drugs

People of color experience discrimination at every stage of the criminal legal system.

The drug war has produced profoundly unequal outcomes across racial groups, manifested through racial discrimination by law enforcement and disproportionate drug war misery suffered by communities of color.

Many different communities of color bear the impact of the discriminatory enforcement of drug laws. This impact may vary across cities and regions. Nationwide, some of the most egregious racial disparities can be seen in the case of Black and Latinxpeople.

Higher arrest and incarceration rates for these communities are not reflective of increased prevalence of drug use, but rather of law enforcements focus on urban areas, lower income communities and communities of color.

Disparities in arrests and incarceration are seen for both drug possession law violations as well as low-level sales. Those selling small amounts of drugs to support their own drug use may go to jail for decades. This unequal enforcement ignores the universality of drug dependency, as well as the universal appeal of drugs themselves.

Watch DPA's Executive Director Kassandra Frederique speak abouthow drug policy and the Black Lives Matter movements intersectat our2015International Drug Policy Reform Conference.

We believe that the criminalization of people of color, particularly young Black people, is as profound a system of racial control as the Jim Crow laws were in this country until the mid-1960s.

This video from hip hop legend Shawn Jay Z Carter and acclaimed artist Molly Crabapple depicts the drug wars devastating impact on the Black community from decades of biased law enforcement.

The video traces the drug war from President Nixon to the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws to the emerging aboveground marijuana market that is poised to make legal millions for wealthy investors doing the same thing that generations of people of color have been arrested and locked up for.

Misguided drug laws and draconian sentencing have produced profoundly unequal outcomes for communities of color.

Other racial groups are also impacted by the drug war, but the disparities with these highlighted groups are particularly stark and well documented.

Learn about how the drug war has affected Latinx communities.

Despite the recent emergence of fentanyl in the illegal market, lengthy sentences have been on the books for decades. They have not stopped the spread of fentanyl. At the federal level, pre-existing penalties range from a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for a first offense to life without parole for a third conviction. With the majority (75%) of those currently federally sentenced for fentanyl trafficking being people of color, these laws threaten to only exacerbateracial disparities in the criminal legal system.

See our fentanyl report to learn about health-centered solutions to the overdose crisis.

For noncitizens, including legal permanent residents, any drug law violation can trigger automatic detention and deportation often without the possibility of return.

People deported for drug law violations are sent back to their countries of origin, where they may no longer have any ties to family or community. They may lack basic survival needs like food, housing and health services, and may face serious threats to their security. They are usually barred from reentering the United States, often for life. The result is thousands of families broken and communities torn apart every year.

Irrational and racist logic rooted in the drug war falsely associates Latinx and Black immigrants with drug use and drug activity. As a result, the U.S. has created the largest immigrant exclusion, detention, and deportation structure in the world.

Learn more about how the drug war invades immigrant communities at UprootingTheDrugWar.org.

Punishment for a drug law violation is not only meted out by the criminal legal system, but is also perpetuated by policies denying child custody, voting rights, employment, business loans, licensing, student aid, public housing and other public assistance to people with criminal convictions.

These exclusions create a permanent second-class status for millions of Americans. Like drug war enforcement itself, they fall disproportionately on people of color.

The Drug Policy Alliance is committed to exposing discrimination and disproportionate drug law enforcement, as well as the systems that perpetuate them. We work to eliminate policies that result in the unfair criminalization of communities of color by rolling back harsh mandatory minimum sentences and by addressing on the rampant over-policing of these communities.

We advocate for:

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Race and the Drug War | Drug Policy Alliance

Scenes from Sound Summit music festival on Mount Tamalpais in Marin. Photo: Bob Minkin / Sound Summit

Sound Summitis a daylong music festival at the natural amphitheater atop Mount Tamalpais some 2,500 feet above the San Francisco Bay for an audience with an adventurous spirit.

This years concert, the second since an unplanned two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 22, featuring performances by the War on Drugs, Faye Webster and Fruit Bats.

We try to keep it eclectic, said Michael Nash, executive director ofRoots & Branches Conservancy, the nonprofit that started hosting the annual outdoor concert in 2015 to raise money and awareness for the beloved state park in Marin County. We want to create an experience that is unique to the Bay Area.

Past performers at the festival have included Bob Weir & Phil Lesh, Herbie Hancock, Wilco, Los Lobos, Tedeschi Trucks Band,Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Father John Misty and the Allah-Las, amongmany others.

But the musicians arent always the main attraction.

There is a core of our demographic who come regardless of whos playing, Nash said. The venue is the star in many ways.

The lineup for Sound Summit 2022 includes the Americana act the War On Drugs, singer-songwriter Faye Webster, indie folk outfit Fruit Bats, and local ensemble Wreckless Strangers.

We wanted to have the War on Drugs for years, but the timing never worked out, Nash said. The stars aligned this time.

The band plan tomark its final tour date with its appearance at Sound Summit, following a year that saw the War on Drugs open for the Rolling Stones in Londons Hyde Park, headline Madison Square Garden in New York, and sell out Red Rocks in Colorado.

Theyre an incredible live band, Nash said. Theyre big, anthemic and poignant. I was blown away the first time I saw them.

The event is also expected to be hosted again by Bay Area radio personalities Brian Murphy and Paul McCaffrey, known as Murph & Mac, along with KPFAs Dead to the World radio host Tim Lynch.

Andy Cabic, the frontman of Richmond folk-rock band Vetiver, is slated toDJ between sets.

Sound Summit takes place at the panoramic 4,000-seat stone Mountain Theater, also known as Sidney B. Cushing Memorial Amphitheater, located on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, above Mill Valley to the east and Stinson Beach to the west.

Its for an audience with an adventurous spirit, Nash said. You have to hike or bike or jump on a bus to go up to the mountain roads. Its for people who want a day away from whats easily more accessible.

We joke its the highest festival in the bay. Its a place of spiritual nourishment and enlightenment and the views are stellar.

The site best known for hosting the KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival in 1967 with a program that included Jefferson Airplane, Captain Beefheart, the Byrds, Hugh Masekela, the 5th Dimension and the Doors. Held the weekend before the Monterey International Pop Festival, it is widely considered the first major rock festival.

Its also the venue where Mountain Play has presented open-air theater for more than a century.

Organizers suggest arriving by bus, car, hiking or biking.

There are shuttle buses available for an additional $25 fee for roundtrip service. They leave from thePohono Street Park & Ride Lotin Mill Valley, just off the Stinson Beach exit on Highway101. Look for the yellow First Student School buses and follow the signs.

Buses begin departing the lot at 8:45 a.m. and run on a continuous loop up the mountain until 3:30 p.m. They begin to depart the Mountain Theater entrance immediately following the show at 6:30 p.m.

We like to say come early and stay late, Nash said.

Street parking on Mount Tam is extremely limited. Paid parking for the festival is available for $50 at the Summit Lot, on East Ridgecrest Boulevard, past the venue entrance for about a mile. The lot opens at 9 a.m. and holds 250 vehicles. Shuttle buses will run from the lot to the venue and back throughout the day.

If you plan on using a rideshare service such as Uber or Lyft, be aware that the venue has no numerical address just East Ridgecrest Boulevard.Drop-offs are not allowed at the venue entrance. Direct your driver instead to the Rock Spring Parking Lot.

Theres atrail map available for hikers. (Organizers note that the sun is scheduled to set at 6:23 p.m. on the day of the festival.)

Free bicycle parking is available outside the venue on the right side of the Rock Spring Parking Lot, courtesy of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition.

Tickets cost $120 for adults and $65 for children ages 12 and younger. Children age 2 and younger are admitted free.

Seating is general admission and organizers have a first come, first served policy, so arrive early if you want to be close to the action.

The money raised by Sound Summit more than $250,000 so far goes toward a host of improvements for Mount Tamalpais State Park, including fire prevention, water conservation, trail repairs, visitor services and more.

We keep enough to keep the lights on, but were more about giving than getting, Nash said.

Organizers suggest arriving with a printed, physical ticket as cell phone reception on the mountain is spotty and it may be difficult to show an electronic ticket.

Marin County casual.

But with the breathtaking views come the natural elements. Organizers suggest bringing hats and sunscreen. Layers are also a good idea.

The weather is ever-changing on the mountain and it can get quite hot at the Mountain Theater, as most of the venue is in full sun, Nash said, adding that it tends to cool off later in the day.

Its not a down-on-the-ground affair, Nash said. Its a special place. When I go up there, this calm and centeredness come over me. Its a very conscientious crowd.

Stadium cushions, blankets and soft-backed trail chairs are encouragedto make the experience of sitting on uneven stone surfaces a little more comfortable. Just note that folding chairs are not not permitted.

While you can pack your food and beverages (no alcohol) in a small cooler, cashless alcohol and merchandise sales will be available on-site. Sealed or empty water bottles may be brought for the event.

Smoking of any kind is strictly prohibited.

We cannot possibly stress this rule and request enough, organizers said. We ask that you please respect it and remind your neighbors to do the same. If you dont, you are potentially endangering and jeopardizing your fellow concertgoers, the future of this event, and, more important above all, the safety of Mount Tam.

Sound Summit: 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 22. $120 for adults and $65 for ages 12 and younger; children age 2 and younger are admitted free. Mountain Theater, off East Ridgecrest Boulevard in Mount Tamalpais State Park. SoundSummit.net

See the article here:

Sound Summit 2022: a guide to the Bay Areas highest music festival - SF Chronicle Datebook

This year, we asked 100 Denverites about their top concerns in the upcoming midterm elections. The issues that rose to the top: Crime, education, the environment, trust in government and, important for this article, public health. Heres what you need to know about where health and wellness shows up on your Nov. 8th ballot.

For full descriptions and arguments for and against these measures, check out your blue book.

FF: Healthy School Meals for All

When COVID-19 shut down schools, it also severed access to free breakfast and lunch programs that a lot of Denver children rely on. The federal government stepped in with money to keep those meals coming, which expanded coverage to any kid not just those whose families are considered low-income.

That federal funding expired in 2022, and some state lawmakers raised the possibility of using state money to ensure all students have access to free meals in perpetuity. Their bill was never introduced, and became Proposition FF.

A yes on FF raises taxes on households that make more than $300,000 per year to pay for grants that schools can use to buy locally sourced food, increase pay for workers who work in school cafeterias and create parent and student advisory committees who will make sure menus are up to snuff. Those taxes would begin in 2023.

Schools will also be required to participate in federal programs to get the most federal cash available for meals. The Colorado Department of Education would also be required to report on the program every two years, to make sure things are on track.

Proponents say free meals are crucial now, as inflated housing and grocery costs hammer families. They also argue kids need to eat to participate better in class, and making free meals available to everyone eliminates a stigma attached to a program that would otherwise be designated for low-income families.

Opponents argue higher taxes will be onerous for households making more than $300,000 a year in a time when the cost of living is inflated, and that the state shouldnt buy meals for families who can afford to do it.

122: Access to Natural Psychedelic Substances

There were two proposed ballot measures on psychedelics, but only one made the ballot. The one that didnt pass Go would have decriminalized psilocybin, psilocyn, ibogaine, mescaline and DMT.

How it would work

Proposition 122, which will be on the ballot, (1) decriminalizes the use, cultivation, possession and gifting of magic mushrooms, dimethyltryptamine, ibogaine, and mescaline, (2) allows for licensed facilities where psychedelics can be used under supervision and (3) lets local governments set operating rules for those facilities and their own penalties for use and possession by people under 21 years old. It would also not allow local governments to all-out ban these facilities in their jurisdictions.

Heres whos for it and against it

Proponents argue psychedelic substances are important tools to help people deal with PTSD and severe depression, and say the FDA has found psilocybin mushrooms can be better at treating depression than existing therapies. They also say arresting people for using psychedelics means taxpayers will spend more than they should on the states criminal justice system.

Opponents say this measure forces governments to allow use of drugs that have been illegal for decades, under the guise of health care. They say psilocybin mushrooms havent been proven to be safe, and that no federal agency has earmarked DMT, ibogaine, or mescaline as breakthrough therapies.

Gov. Jared Polis, the Democrat whos running for re-election, touts a handful of health-related policy achievements on his campaign website.

Perhaps the most controversial of these bullet points is a bill he signed this year that lowered the amount of fentanyl someone needs to get caught with to be charged with a felony, from four grams down to one. The law also allows people to get out of felony convictions if they complete court-ordered treatment, funds more treatment and offers recovery programs in jail. But some pogressive politicians and activists have decried the measure as dangerous, claiming it sent Colorado back to a war on drugs mindset.

Polis website also mentions a law passed this year that funds mental health care as an intervention to help people before they might fall into contact with the criminal justice system, and a study funded by his Department of Human Services Office of Behavioral Health that showed Colorados co-responder programs which send medical and mental health experts instead of police to certain emergencies was successful in de-escalating situations and helped people in crisis get help without going to jail.

Polis also signed a bill that enshrined abortion access into law, which was passed along strict party lines.

Meanwhile, a scandal impacted Polis first term when allegations emerged that Colorados air pollution managers were rubber-stamping pollution permits to speed development and avoid creating a paper trail, in the event environmentalists sued the state. Polis also threatened to sue the EPA over its downgrading of Colorados ozone status, which will require reformulated gasoline to be sold in the state, and the feds denied his request to be let off the hook.

Heidi Ganahl, Polis Republican challenger, lambasts the governor on her campaign website when it comes to health and safety. In particular, shes pledging to make possession of any amount of fentanyl a felony, though theres a bullet point on her website that says shed also create statewide care courts to shore up drug rehabilitation vs. incarceration.

Lets address addiction with compassion for all involved, including more access to care but with consequences for criminal behavior, her site reads, and her platform generally pushes a crackdown on crime and a return to law and order.

Her site says shell shift the states mental healthcare into outcome-based funding models and use emergency authority to increase capacity at treatment centers, both in terms of available spots and workers to staff them.

Ganahl also says she opposes Colorados recent abortion law, and says shes pro-life with exceptions for the rare and terrible instances of rape, incest, and the health and life of the mother and child.

Outside of these issues, Ganahl doesnt have much else on her website that speaks explicitly to health and wellness, though she has pledged to renovate a whole lot of roadways, which environmental and transportation advocates say is not the way to go.

Incumbent Democrat Michael Bennets campaign website touts bipartisan work to lower healthcare costs and end surprise emergency medical bills at the federal level. He says hes also pushing to cap insulin costs to $35 a month, a measure that was taken out of a big budget measure passed in August, and codify abortion access in federal law, though that will be a virtually impossible sell without significantly more Democrats in the Senate.

Bennet also says hed like to pass legislation to plug orphan wells releasing methane and other chemicals into air and water.

Joe ODea, Bennets GOP challenger, walks a couple of tight lines in the language when it comes to health issues.

For instance, his website says hes pushing for more oil and gas development to restore Americas energy dominance, but he says hed like to see it done with tougher, smarter regulations to keep that development clean.

Also, his campaign materials suggest he supports a womans right to choose an abortion and has said he would not pursue an abortion ban in Colorado if elected, though he has supported strict abortion rules in the past.

Incumbent Democrat Phil Weisers website lists a platform of environmental priorities, which touts work to hold car companies accountable for air pollution, a push to increase penalties for companies that deliberately pollute Colorados air and water and the creation of a environmental crimes unit in his office. If reelected, he says hell work next on water access issues, especially in relation to the Colorado River Compact.

Weisers website also touts his role in securing settlements with companies hes said are liable for the nations opioid crisis.

John Kellner, Weisers GOP opponent, says hell crack down on opioid users, ensuring victims and law-abiding citizens are prioritized over offenders, and challenge the federal government on immigration policy to stop fentanyl flowing across the southern border. While details on his website are scant, it generally advocates for stronger police departments and tougher penalties for people who break the law.

Read this article:

Here's how health and wellness will show up on Denver's November ballot - Denverite

My back-to-work morning train WFH reads:

What a Stock Market Bottom Looks Like: Life would be easier if this was the case. But if everything was obvious in the stock market it wouldnt offer such wonderful long-term returns. (Wealth of Common Sense)

America Is Unleashing Its Economic Arsenal: Targeted measures are becoming a bigger part of US foreign policy. (Businessweek) see also US Chip Sanctions Kneecap Chinas Tech Industry: The toughest export restrictions yet cut off AI hardware and chip-making tools crucial to Chinas commercial and military ambitions. (Wired)

US banks gain from Fed rate hikes while keeping deposit interest low Wall St is charging more for loans but setting aside money for a possible downturn. (Financial Times)

Bad News is Good News: 52-week lows tend to cluster, and right now thats the environment we find ourselves in. The S&P 500 has experienced thirteen 52-week lows this yearwhich is more than we saw the entire last decade. (Irrelevant Investor)

Twitter Faces Only Bad Outcomes If the $44 Billion Musk Deal Closes: The company has been damaged by the drama over the deal, and things look bumpy if it goes through. (Businessweek)

San Franciscos Empty Train Cars Spell Trouble for Public Transit: The Bay Area experienced the nations sharpest decline in ridership during the pandemic, and a fiscal cliff looms. (Bloomberg)

The AI is Coming: It is now possible to generate a stunning lifelike image from scratch in thirty seconds by typing a prompt. Truly incredible. (Alex MacCaw)

Five Decades Into The War On Drugs, Decriminalizing Marijuana Has High Bipartisan Support: Americans agree that the countrys legislation on marijuana does need an update. Polling conducted before the Oct. 6 pardon found 6 in 10 American voters said weed should be legal in the U.S.; 7 in 10 among voters under 45 (72%), Democrats (71%) and Black voters (72%), Republicans (47%) and voters 65 or over (45%).(FiveThirtyEight)

Almost Famous Heads to Broadway, Purple Aura Intact: Cameron Crowe adapted his Oscar-winning screenplay, about writing for Rolling Stone in the 70s, preserving parts of the movies soundtrack and zingers (Dont take drugs!) for the stage.(New York Times)

The Bigfoot of Baltimore: Justin Tucker is the surest thing in football. But he gets nervous thinking about those kicks, too. (Wall Street Journal)

Be sure to check out ourMasters in Businessthis week with Tom Rampulla, managing director of Vanguards Financial Advisor Services division since 2002. He runs the business that provides investments, services, education, and research to more than 1,000 financial advisory firms representing more than $3 trillion in assets.

What do millionaires invest in?Source: Alpha Architect

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10 Monday AM Reads - The Big Picture - Barry Ritholtz

On the first day of the United Nations General Assembly, Colombian President Gustavo Petro made his first address to the body. The speech sharply deviated from those of his conservative predecessors. Petro did not shy away from calling out global North countries for their role in the destruction of the environment and in the perpetuation of the War on Drugs, as a symptom of their capitalist greed. He accused You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of the child, but in killing the jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison [the rainforest] is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere.

This is Petros first trip to the United States since he was inaugurated in August. He was received on Sunday night September 18 by hundreds of supporters in Queens, NY who manifested their support to his administrations commitment to working for peace and ensuring the wellbeing of the Colombian people.

Below is a full transcription of his speech on September 20, 2022 to the United Nations General Assembly:

I come from one of the three most beautiful countries on Earth.

There is an explosion of life there. Thousands of multicolored species in the seas, in the skies, in the landsI come from the land of yellow butterflies and magic. There in the mountains and valleys of all greens, not only do the abundant waters flow down, but also the torrents of blood. I come from a land of bloody beauty.

My country is not only beautiful, it is also violent.

How can beauty be conjugated with death, how can the biodiversity of life erupt with the dances of death and horror? Who is guilty of breaking the enchantment with terror? Who or what is responsible for drowning life in the routine decisions of wealth and interest? Who is leading us to destruction as a nation and as a people?

My country is beautiful because it has the Amazon jungle, the ChocWar jungle, the waters, the Andes mountain ranges, and the oceans. There, in those forests, planetary oxygen is emanated and atmospheric CO2 is absorbed. One of these CO2 absorbing plants, among millions of species, is one of the most persecuted on earth. At any cost, its destruction is sought: it is an Amazonian plant, the coca plant, sacred plant of the Incas. [It is in] a paradoxical crossroads.

The jungle that tries to save us, is at the same time, destroyed. To destroy the coca plant, they spray poisons, glyphosate in mass that runs through the waters, they arrest its growers and imprison them. For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, one million Latin Americans are killed and two million Afro-Americans are imprisoned in North America. Destroy the plant that kills, they shout from the North, but the plant is but one more of the millions that perish when they unleash the fire on the jungle. Destroying the jungle, the Amazon, has become the slogan followed by States and businessmen. The cry of scientists baptizing the rainforest as one of the great climatic pillars is unimportant.

For the worlds power relations, the jungle and its inhabitants are to blame for the plague that plagues them. The power relations are plagued by the addiction to money, to perpetuate themselves, to oil, to cocaine and to the hardest drugs to be able to anesthetize themselves more. Nothing is more hypocritical than the discourse to save the rainforest. The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you make war and play with it. The rainforest, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life.

The great sponge that absorbs planetary CO2 evaporates. The savior forest is seen in my country as the enemy to be defeated, as the weed to be extinguished.

Coca and the peasants who grow it, because they have nothing else to grow, are demonized. You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of the child, but in killing its jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere.

We serve them only to fill the emptiness and loneliness of their own society that leads them to live in the midst of drug bubbles. We hide from them their problems that they refuse to reform. It is better to declare war on the jungle, on its plants, on its people. While they let the forests burn, while hypocrites chase the plants with poisons to hide the disasters of their own society, they ask us for more and more coal, more and more oil, to calm the other addiction: that of consumption, of power, of money.

What is more poisonous for humanity, cocaine, coal or oil? The dictates of power have ordered that cocaine is the poison and must be pursued, even if it only causes minimal deaths by overdose, and even more by the mixtures necessitated by clandestinity, but coal and oil must be protected, even if their use could extinguish all of humanity.

These are the things of world power, things of injustice, things of irrationality, because world power has become irrational. They see in the exuberance of the jungle, in its vitality, the lustful, the sinful; the guilty origin of the sadness of their societies, imbued with the unlimited compulsion to have and to consume. How to hide the loneliness of the heart, its dryness in the midst of societies without affection, competitive to the point of imprisoning the soul in solitude, if not by blaming the plant, the man who cultivates it, the libertarian secrets of the jungle.

According to the irrational power of the world, it is not the fault of the market that cuts back on existence, it is the fault of the jungle and those who inhabit it. The bank accounts have become unlimited, the money saved by the most powerful of the earth will not even be able to be spent in the time of the centuries. The sadness of existence produced by this artificial call to competition is filled with noise and drugs. The addiction to money and to having has another face: the addiction to drugs in people who lose the competition, in the losers of the artificial race in which they have transformed humanity.

The disease of loneliness will not be cured with glyphosate [sprayed] on the forests. It is not the rainforest that is to blame.

The culprit is their society educated in endless consumption, in the stupid confusion between consumption and happiness that allows the pockets of power to fill with money. The culprit of drug addiction is not the jungle, it is the irrationality of your world power. Try to give some reason to your power. Turn on the lights of the century again. The war on drugs has lasted 40 years, if we do not correct the course and it continues for another 40 years, the United States will see 2,800,000 young people die of overdose from fentanyl, which is not produced in our Latin America. It will see millions of Afro-Americans imprisoned in its private jails.

The Afro-prisoner will become a business of prison companies, a million more Latin Americans will die murdered, our waters and our green fields will be filled with blood, the dream of democracy will die in my America as well as in Anglo-Saxon America. Democracy will die where it was born, in the great western European Athens. By hiding the truth, they will see the jungle and democracies die. The war on drugs has failed.

The fight against the climate crisis has failed. There has been an increase in deadly consumption, from soft drugs to harder ones, genocide has taken place in my continent and in my country, millions of people have been condemned to prison, and to hide their own social guilt they have blamed the rainforest and its plants. They have filled speeches and policies with nonsense. I demand from here, from my wounded Latin America, to put an end to the irrational war on drugs. To reduce drug consumption we do not need wars, for this we need all of us to build a better society: a more caring society, more affectionate, where the intensity of life saves from addictions and new slavery. Do you want less drugs? Think of less profit and more love. Think about a rational exercise of power.

Do not touch with your poisons the beauty of my homeland, help us without hypocrisy to save the Amazon Rainforest to save the life of humanity on the planet. You gathered the scientists, and they spoke with reason. With mathematics and climatological models they said that the end of the human species was near, that its time is no longer of millennia, not even of centuries. Science set the alarm bells ringing and we stopped listening to it.

The war served as an excuse for not taking the necessary measures. When action was most needed, when speeches were no longer useful, when it was indispensable to deposit money in funds to save humanity, when it was necessary to move away from coal and oil as soon as possible, they invented war after war after war. They invaded Ukraine, but also Iraq, Libya and Syria.

They invaded in the name of oil and gas. They discovered in the 21st century the worst of their addictions: addiction to money and oil. Wars have served them as an excuse not to act against the climate crisis. Wars have shown them how dependent they are on what will kill the human species.

If you observe that the peoples are filling up with hunger and thirst and migrating by the millions towards the north, towards where the water is; then you enclose them, build walls, deploy machine guns, shoot at them. You expel them as if they were not human beings, you reproduce five times the mentality of those who politically created the gas chambers and the concentration camps, you reproduce on a planetary scale 1933.

The great triumph of the attack on reason. Do you not see that the solution to the great exodus unleashed on your countries is to return to water filling the rivers and the fields full of nutrients? The climate disaster fills us with viruses that swarm over us, but you do business with medicines and turn vaccines into commodities. You propose that the market will save us from what the market itself has created. The Frankenstein of humanity lies in letting the market and greed act without planning, surrendering the brain and reason. Kneeling human rationality to greed.

What is the use of war if what we need is to save the human species? What is the use of NATO and empires, if what is coming is the end of intelligence? The climate disaster will kill hundreds of millions of people and listen well, it is not produced by the planet, it is produced by capital.

The cause of the climate disaster is capital. The logic of coming together only to consume more and more, produce more and more, and for some to earn more and more produces the climate disaster. They applied the logic of extended accumulation to the energy engines of coal and oil and unleashed the hurricane: the ever deeper and deadlier chemical change of the atmosphere. Now in a parallel world, the expanded accumulation of capital is an expanded accumulation of death.

From the lands of jungle and beauty. There where they decided to make an Amazon rainforest plant an enemy, extradite and imprison its growers, I invite you to stop the war, and to stop the climate disaster. Here, in this Amazon Rainforest, there is a failure of humanity.

Behind the bonfires that burn it, behind its poisoning, there is an integral, civilizational failure of humanity. Behind the addiction to cocaine and drugs, behind the addiction to oil and coal, there is the real addiction of this phase of human history: the addiction to irrational power, to profit and money. This is the enormous deadly machinery that can extinguish humanity.

I propose to you as president of one of the most beautiful countries on earth, and one of the most bloodied and violated, to end the war on drugs and allow our people to live in peace. I call on all of Latin America for this purpose. I summon the voice of Latin America to unite to defeat the irrational that martyrs our bodies. I call upon you to save the Amazon Rainforest integrally with the resources that can be allocated worldwide to life.

If you do not have the capacity to finance the fund for the revitalization of the forests, if it weighs more to allocate money to weapons than to life, then reduce the foreign debt to free our own budgetary spaces and with them, carry out the task of saving humanity and life on the planet. We can do it if you dont want to. Just exchange debt for life, for nature. I propose, and I call upon Latin America to do so, to dialogue in order to end the war. Do not pressure us to align ourselves in the fields of war.

It is time for PEACE.

Let the Slavic peoples talk to each other, let the peoples of the world talk to each other. War is only a trap that brings the end of time closer in the great orgy of irrationality.

From Latin America, we call on Ukraine and Russia to make peace. Only in peace can we save life in this land of ours. There is no total peace without social, economic and environmental justice. We are also at war with the planet. Without peace with the planet, there will be no peace among nations. Without social justice, there is no social peace.

Link:

Colombian president Gustavo Petro calls for an end to the War on Drugs ...

This June marks the 50th anniversary of the war on drugs, an ongoing campaign that has to a large extent reshaped American politics, society and the economy.

"[The goals of the war on drugs] were to literally eradicate all of the social, economic and health ills associated with drugs and drug abuse," said Christopher Coyne, professor of economics at George Mason University. "It doesn't get much more ambitious than that."

Since 1971, America has spent over a trillion dollars enforcing its drug policy, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania. Yet many observers, both liberal and conservative, say the war on drugs has not paid off.

The campaign, launched by President Richard Nixon, has spanned multiple administrations and led to the creation of a dedicated federal agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Law enforcement was given an unprecedented level of authority with measures like mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants, recently reevaluated after the death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by police in a botched drug raid.

"The drug war is a failed policy and the things that they said would happen people would stop using drugs, communities would get back together, we'd be safe, they'd get drugs off the street those things didn't happen," said Kassandra Frederique, executive director at the Drug Policy Alliance, a national nonprofit that works to end the war on drugs.

Despite a steep decline in illicit drug usage in the earlier years, drug use in the U.S. is climbing again and more quickly than ever. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of illicit drug users rose to 13% of Americans 12 years or older in 2019, nearly reaching its peak from 40 years ago. If the goal of the war on drugs was to decrease drug usage and prevent drug-related deaths, it hasn't made much progress.

"We are still in the midst of the most devastating drug epidemic in U.S. history," according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow at the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at Brookings Institution. In 2020, overdose deaths in the United States exceeded 90,000, compared with 70,630 in 2019, according to research from the Commonwealth Fund.

Yet, the federal government is spending more money than ever to enforce drug policies. In 1981, the federal budget for drug abuse prevention and control was just over a billion dollars. By 2020, that number had grown to $34.6 billion. When adjusted for inflation, CNBC found that it translates to a 1,090% increase in just 39 years.

According to the White House, the national drug control budget is estimated to hit a historic level of $41 billion by 2022. The largest increases in funding are requested to support drug treatment and drug prevention.

"In the overall scheme of how much the U.S. government spends, it's not a huge amount," said Coyne. "The bigger issue is that there's a burden from an economic perspective because when you make something illegal, it has a series of consequences that affect all areas of life."

Take mass incarceration for example. Mass incarceration leaves a heavy burden on both the federal and state government's budgets. The Prison Policy Initiative, a think tank and criminal justice advocacy group, found that 1 in 5 currently incarcerated people in the U.S. are locked up for a drug offense. The same research estimates that it costs an average of about $37,500 annually to house an inmate in federal correctional facilities and that mass incarceration costs the U.S. at least $182 billion every year.

"States found their budgets enormously strapped by having to put funds toward correctional facilities that grew into enormous complexes," explained Felbab-Brown. "One unfortunate way that states dealt with it was privatizing correction, something that's a specific feature to the United States. That has been a very problematic and fraught policy, partially driven by the tendency to arrest nonviolent drug offenders."

There is also a massive racial disparity that comes with drug incarcerations. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, nearly 80% of the people in federal prison and almost 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are Black or Latino. In 2019, despite making up just 13.4% of the U.S. population, the FBI reported that more than a quarter of the drug-related arrests were of Black American adults.

Nkechi Taifa, a justice system reform strategist, advocate and scholar, and founder and CEO of The Taifa Group, called the war on drugs the "New Jim Crow." "It disproportionately targets and impacts people of color," she explained.

Meanwhile, America's attitude toward drugs is changing. This spring, New York became the 15th state, along with the District of Columbia to legalize marijuana for recreational use. Oregon, in February, became the first state to decriminalize the possession of any small amounts of drugs.

Even many conservatives are reevaluating their support for the war on drugs. "What we need to come to grips with is addiction is a disease and no life is disposable," remarked Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey and former chair of the Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission, during a New Hampshire townhall meeting in November 2015. "It can happen to anyone and so we need to start treating people in this country, not jailing them."

Others, like Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy think tank, remain more cautious when it comes to changes in our drug policy. "Just as we don't abandon our efforts to prevent violent crime because murders, rapes, and robberies are still committed, we should not abandon our efforts to protect our neighbors and their children from the harms illicit drug use causes," he commented. "We should pursue our goal with every tool we have, such as education, interdiction, law enforcement and treatment."

While the U.S. might be on the path to potentially reversing some of the harshest impacts of the war on drugs, America's battle against illicit substances is likely here to stay.

"I see more of the same," said Coyne. "I don't think the war on drugs is going anywhere anytime soon as a political program and as a political talking point."

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The U.S. has spent over a trillion dollars fighting war on drugs - CNBC

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Heriberto Cogollo (Colombia), Carnival Los Cabildos de Cartagena (The Carnival of Cartagenas Cabildos), 1999.

Each year, in the last weeks of September, the worlds leaders gather in New York City to speak at the podium of the United Nations General Assembly. The speeches can usually be forecasted well in advance, either tired articulations of values that do not get acted upon or belligerent voices that threaten war in an institution built to prevent war.

However, every once in a while, a speech shines through, a voice emanates from the chamber and echoes around the world for its clarity and sincerity. This year, that voice belongs to Colombias recently inaugurated president, Gustavo Petro, whose brief remarks distilled with poetic precision the problems in our world and the cascading crises of social distress, the addiction to money and power, the climate catastrophe and environmental destruction. It is time for peace, President Petro said. We are also at war with the planet. Without peace with the planet, there will be no peace among nations. Without social justice, there is no social peace.

Colombia has been gripped by violence since it won its independence from Spain in 1810. This violence emanated from Colombias elites, whose insatiable desire for wealth has meant the absolute impoverishment of the people and the failure of the country to develop anything that resembles liberalism. Decades of political action to build the confidence of the masses in Colombia culminated in a cycle of protests beginning in 2019 that led to Petros electoral victory. The new centre-left government has pledged to build social democratic institutions in Colombia and to banish the countrys culture of violence. Though the Colombian army, like armed forces around the world, prepares for war, President Petro told them in August 2022 that they must now prepare for peace and must become an army of peace.

Enrique Grau Arajo (Colombia), Prima Colazione a Firenze (Breakfast in Florence), 1964.

When thinking about violence in a country like Colombia, there is a temptation to focus on drugs, cocaine in particular. The violence, it is often suggested, is an outgrowth of the illicit cocaine trade. But this is an ahistorical assessment. Colombia experienced terrible bloodshed long before highly processed cocaine became increasingly popular from the 1960s onwards. The countrys elite has used murderous force to prevent any dilution of its power, including the 1948 assassination of Jorge Gaitn, the former mayor of Colombias capital of Bogot, that led to a period known as La Violencia (The Violence). Liberal politicians and communist militants faced the steel of the Colombian army and police on behalf of this granite block of power backed by the United States, which has used Colombia to extend its power into South America. Fig leaves of various types were used to cover over the ambitions of the Colombian elite and their benefactors in Washington. In the 1990s, one such cover was the War on Drugs.

By all accountswhether of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime or the U.S. governments Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)the largest consumers of illegal narcotics (cannabis, opioids, and cocaine) are in North America and Western Europe. A recent UN study shows that cocaine use in the United States has been fluctuating and increasing after 2013 with a more stable trend observed in 2019. The War on Drugs strategy, initiated by the United States and Western countries, has had a two-pronged approach to the drug crisis: first, to criminalise retailers in Western countries and, second, to go to war against the peasants who produce the raw material in these drugs in countries such as Colombia.

In the United States, for instance, almost two million peopledisproportionately Black and Latinoare caught in the prison industrial complex, with 400,000 of them imprisoned or on probation for nonviolent drug offences (mostly as petty dealers in a vastly profitable drug empire). The collapse of employment opportunities for young people in working-class areas and the allure of wages from the drug economy continue to attract low-level employees of the global drug commodity chain, despite the dangers of this profession. The War on Drugs has made a negligible impact on this pipeline, which is why many countries have now begun to decriminalise drug possession and drug use (particularly cannabis).

Dbora Arango (Colombia), Rojas Pinilla, 1957.

The obduracy of the Colombian elitebacked by the U.S. governmentto allow any democratic space to open in the country led the left to take up armed struggle in 1964 and then return to the gun when the elite shut down the promise of the democratic path in the 1990s. In the name of the war against the armed left as well as the War on Drugs, the Colombian military and police have crushed any dissent in the country. Despite evidence of the financial and political ties between the Colombian elite, narco-paramilitaries, and drug cartels, the United States government initiated Plan Colombia in 1999 to funnel $12 billion to the Colombian military to deepen this war (in 2006, when he was a senator, Petro revealed the nexus between these diabolical forces, for which his family was threatened with violence).

As part of this war, the Colombian armed forces dropped the terrible chemical weapon glyphosate on the peasantry (in 2015, the World Health Organisation said that this chemical is probably carcinogenic to humans and, in 2017, the Colombian Constitutional Court ruled that its use must be restricted). In 2020, the following assessment was offered in the Harvard International Review: Instead of reducing cocaine production, Plan Colombia has actually caused cocaine production and transport to shift into other areas. Additionally, militarisation in the war on drugs has caused violence in the country to increase. This is precisely what President Petro told the world at the United Nations.

The most recent DEA report notes that cocaine use in the United States remains steady and that deaths from drug poisoning involving cocaine have increased every year since 2013. U.S. drug policy is focused on law enforcement, aiming merely to reduce the domestic availability of cocaine. Washington will spend 45% of its drug budget on law enforcement, 49% on treatment for drug addicts, and a mere 6% on prevention. The lack of emphasis on prevention is revealing. Rather than tackle the drug crisis as a demand-side problem, the U.S. and other Western governments pretend that it is a supply-side problem that can be dealt with by using military force against petty drug dealers and peasants who grow the coca plant. Petros cry from the heart at the United Nations attempted to call attention to the root causes of the drug crisis:

Sandra Vsquez de la Horra (Chile), Los Vientos (The Winds), 2016.

According to the irrational power of the world, the market that razes existence is not to blame; it is the jungle and those who live in it that are to blame. Bank accounts have become unlimited; the money saved by the most powerful people on Earth could not even be spent over the course of centuries. The empty existence produced by the artificiality of competition is filled with noise and drugs. The addiction to money and to possessions has another face: the drug addiction of people who lose the competition in the artificial race that humanity has become. The sickness of loneliness is not cured by [dousing] the forests with glyphosate; the forest is not to blame. To blame is your society educated by endless consumption, by the stupid confusion between consumption and happiness that allows the pockets of the powerful to fill with money.

The War on Drugs, Petro said, is a war on the Colombian peasantry and a war on the precarious poor in Western countries. We do not need this war, he said; instead, we need to struggle to build a peaceful society that does not sap meaning from the hearts of people who are treated as a surplus to societys logic.

As a young man, Petro was part of the M-19 guerrilla movement, one of the organisations that attempted to break the chokehold that Colombias elites held over the countrys democracy. One of his comrades was the poet Mara Mercedes Carranza (19452003), who wrote searingly about the violence thrust upon her country in her book Hola, Soledad (Hello, Solitude) (1987), capturing the desolation in her poem La Patria (The Homeland):

Fernando Botero (Colombia), La Calle (The Street), 2013.

In this house, everything is in ruins,in ruins are hugs and music,each morning, destiny, laughter are in ruins,tears, silence, dreams.The windows show destroyed landscapes,flesh and ash on peoples faces,words combine with fear in their mouths.In this house, we are all buried alive.

Carranza took her life when the fires of hell swept through Colombia.

A peace agreement in 2016, a cycle of protests from 2019, and now the election of Petro and Francia Mrquez in 2022 have wiped the ash off the faces of the Colombian people and provided them with an opportunity to try and rebuild their house. The end of the War on Drugs, that is, the war on the Colombian peasantry, will only advance Colombias fragile struggle towards peace and democracy.

Warmly,

Vijay

Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. Eds.

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From wounded Latin America, a demand comes to put an end to the ...

Beginning with an exuberant punch of drums, guitar and keyboards, and marching to a shimmering bounce throughout, you would think that this song would have been recorded and released by The War On Drugs immediately after conception. However, Oceans of Darkness, with a lyrical theme in keeping with its title (And all I do is push, push, push / And youre making it so hard to love) standing in contrast with its bright, major chord energy, was not such a sure thing.

As front man Adam Granduciel puts it, well into working on their 2021 collection I Dont Live Here Anymore, bassist Dave Hartley found the demo, and got them to record it: We were frustrated and exhausted at the time, but we set up in a circle after dinner and worked it out as the tape was rolling. Its rare that a song of ours could feel this complete after only a few takes, but it had all the desperation and urgency that we had been looking for. Ultimately, Oceans of Darkness did not surface in that album, but now sees the light of day as part of its box set reissue.

"Oceans Of Darkness" is joined on The War On Drugs' latest by another previously unreleased song, Slow Ghost.

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The War On Drugs, 'Oceans Of Darkness' - WNCW

Once again, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has succeeded in provoking and infuriating his bitter opponents at home and abroad while getting his supporters to break out in cheers. This time, his 20-minute speech to the plenary session of the 77th United Nations General Debate in New York aroused excitement, enthusiasm, rejection, and diverse interpretations both in Colombia and other countries.

No head of state from the worlds largest cocaine-growing country has ever outlined the connection between comprehensive nature and climate protection and a new, different drug policy to the global community as clearly as Petro did on 20 September 2022. This is how, Gustavo Petro, who was sworn into office just a few weeks ago, created a link between Colombias home-grown challenges and the need for regional and international cooperation to address both of these major issues in a sustainable manner. The speech also drew much attention because Petro called oil and coal mining a greater threat to humanity than coca cultivation.

Petros opponents from the right wing and conservative camp describe his statements as demagogic and dangerous, and brand them as populist. They accuse him of wanting to turn Colombia into a narcoestado (a drug state), in which Petro allegedly wants to unilaterally legalise cocaine. Meanwhile they disregard the fact that despite the billions of dollars that the United States has invested in Colombias special police forces, there has been little success in the fight against the organised drug trafficking groups and their ability to penetrate and corrupt politics, the economy, and society.

More clearly than his predecessor, Nobel Peace Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos (in office from 2010 to 2018), Petro described the War on Drugs declared by then US President Richard Nixon in 1972 - more than 50 years - as a failure. The Colombian President also held the international community, under the leadership of the US government, responsible for this disaster: more than a million Latin American women killed and more than two million African Americans imprisoned are clear signs of the madness of a destructive capitalism, whose only strategy in the face of drug use is prohibition, said Petro.

What Petro does not elaborate on here, but what many experts and representatives of non-governmental organisations agree on, is that there is no human society without the use of intoxicants. Moreover, it is hardly conceivable that this will be the case in the future. Therefore, according to the results of numerous studies, less importance should be placed on prohibiting and criminalising the consumption of substances previously classified as illegal, and more on their safe and regulated use.

Only through clear state regulation (and not through legalisation!) can the power of criminal drug trafficking organisations be limited.

Even if the road to a new drug policy respecting the human rights of farmers, producers and consumers will be neither easy nor quick, the fact that the discussion started by Petro in Colombia is moving in this direction makes the importance and scope of his words explicit: only through clear state regulation (and not through legalisation!) can the power of criminal drug trafficking organisations be limited, the violence associated with drug trafficking be reduced, and problem drug use placed at the centre of public health.

In his speech, Petro also showed how much the war on drugs is also preventing climate protection. Addressing the UN, he called for a halt to the widespread use of the pathogenic pesticide glyphosate against coca plants and marijuana as soon as possible. Its continued use would only contribute to further environmental degradation, continued biodiversity loss, and the perpetuation of violence in Colombia. The failed policies of the past decades have had a negative impact on the livelihoods of millions of farmers.

As a solution, the President proposed an international pact to save the unique ecosystem of the Amazon. To do this, the foreign debts of Latin American countries would have to be reduced, and Colombia and the other Amazon countries should receive USD 1bn annually over the next 20 years via an internationally controlled fund. The funds would be used to protect the rainforest from further deforestation and illegal mining and thus make an important contribution to global climate security. According to observers, this sum seems entirely justified and by no means too high: between 2000 and 2016 the United States alone pumped around USD 10 bn into strengthening the Colombian security apparatus again, without any significant success.

After this speech, it is clear that Gustavo Petro is aiming for a fundamental change in the current impasse: only if the drug trade is decoupled from the dynamics of violence can Colombia and Latin America become stable and their communities develop peacefully. This requires alliances both within society and between countries. However, Petro or Colombia will not be able to achieve this alone.

The Colombian President is relying on well-known studies by the scientific community and non-governmental organisations, as well as the representatives of indigenous communities. For decades they have emphasised that prohibition measures neither prevent the cultivation and trafficking nor reduce the consumption of substances or intoxicants classified as illegal. In fact, the opposite has been the case for more than 50 years: today, more cocaine is grown, trafficked, and used in Colombia and around the world than ever before. Although the peace treaty signed in 2016 with the guerrilla organisation FARC has made a significant contribution to pacifying large parts of the country, violence, displacement, murder, environmental destruction, and illegal overexploitation are still the order of the day in Colombia.

The President must now show that his unctuous words do not amount to just an up-to-date analysis: they must also be followed by concrete actions. Will Gustavo Petro succeed in harmonising the debates at the regional and international levels with the recognition of insight at the national level? Will he find allies beyond Bolivia and convince the international forums and decision-making bodies of the validity of his approach?

Today, more cocaine is grown, trafficked, and used in Colombia and around the world than ever before.

Here, too, there are doubts: conservative forces continue to determine politics in Latin America. The previous government under President Santos already tried to address the failed strategies of the past with innovative and scientifically based support. Petro must now try to advance the debate about an international drug control system, not so much with the aim of bringing about immediate changes as preparing them for the medium term so that they have even a chance of international support in around 10 to 15 years time.

In addition, Gustavo Petro would have to reconcile his international discourse with other domestic political decisions. In many places, this discrepancy between what he says and what he does is constantly pointed out. For example, despite all the announcements, he is unable to stop the use of glyphosate in Colombia.

And coca and marijuana growing communities have no choice but to take social action against the criminalisation of growing the crops, through strikes and other measures. Progress is also slow in filling important positions that could promote a new agenda. Although Gloria Miranda was appointed as the new director for drug policy in the Colombian Ministry of Justice at the end of September, a new appointment for the implementation of the Comprehensive National Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops has yet to be made.

Without clear and competent contacts at the national level, without locally adapted and integral development prospects, such as infrastructure measures in the provinces, the provision of goods and services, and a stronger state presence, the people in the regions affected by coca cultivation are left on their own. They remain without guarantees of their own safety, without job opportunities, and without access to education and health care and ultimately no alternatives.

Without an attempt to resolve the complex situation that has arisen as a result of the drug policy based on prohibition and criminalisation thus far, it will be impossible to bring about change. There is reason to fear that without a comprehensive political strategy, armed, illegal criminal groups will continue to kill and displace people, and that the already difficult economic and social situation will continue to worsen in many areas, with nothing being done to stop illegal drug cultivation and trafficking.

Such a strategy could include decriminalisation of producers, safety guarantees for communities, and a development strategy for regions of cultivation. At the same time, consumers should be educated and sensitised with campaigns about the safe and regulated use of intoxicants.

It is to be hoped that by taking decisive action in Colombia, the United States will also rethink its current approach and join Latin Americas most important ally in reassessing drug policy.

The Colombian government could leverage the national legal framework already in place, and enable non-punitive strategies to create alternative livelihoods for communities that currently live from and with coca and marijuana: Many of the communities have great potential for sustainable tourism; they could make a necessary contribution to sustainable value chains and support peace through innovative approaches to the use of traditional plants.

Gustavo Petro will not be able to do this alone and not just within Colombia in this policy area he also needs progressive counterparts in the region, and in Europe. It is to be hoped that by taking decisive action in Colombia, the United States will also rethink its current approach and join Latin Americas most important ally in reassessing drug policy.

If the international political actors refuse to engage in debate, there is a risk that the misguided War on Drugs and the accompanying environmental destruction in large parts of the Andean countries, as well as murder of and violence against their inhabitants, will continue for another 50 years. Today there is still some hope of making a difference.

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How the War on Drugs failed Democracy and society - IPS Journal

ByStaff|onOctober 14, 2022

It was just 40 years ago today, October 14, 1982, that President Ronald Reagan declared the War on Drugs, a serious issue that had long plagued America and the rest of the world. This was not the first War on Drugs that the United States had declared, several Presidents have made attempts to control different types of illegal substances. Real wars have been fought over the control and trade of narcotics and other various stimulants since the dawn of civilization. However, it was Reagans declaration that not only sought to control the trafficking in the United States but where it was produced as well.

There are various notions on whether or not the War on Drugs has been a success. As long as there is a demand, its hard for the government to control anything. However, though strict enforcement might not have had the greatest effects so far, the question remains, what should we do then? Currently, we are still facing age-old problems, but will there be a solution?

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This Day in History, October 14th, 2022 War on Drugs - Signals AZ