FBI crime statistics are out today. Lots of Gee Whiz numbers on the news tonight, how rapes are down, murders are down. Yippee! What they don't report, though, are some appalling numbers about drug busts. Last year somebody got arrested on a drug charge every 18 seconds. This translates to "1,702,537 drug arrests in 2008, 82.3 percent . . . for simple possession of a contraband substance. Nearly half, 44 percent, were for possession of marijuana." Somebody was arrested for pot every 37 seconds in 2008.
You've really got to be kidding me. The report doesn't say how much this costs us taxpayers every year--and don't forget to factor in the courts and the incarceration expenses. It has to astronomical.
When is somebody going to clue these people that this country's drug policy is patently insane?
2 comments:
They know it is insane. That is why they do it.
Same thing as War on Terror: it is insane. Therefore, it is our choice to proceed with.
How else could a polity like the USA invade a country like Afghanistan in 2001, claim victory, sit on its lazy butt for 6 years and do nothing while its enemy - the Taliban - re-established itself throughout the country, thereby leading to a renewed conflict which obviously requires more troops?
Well, a polity could not do such a thing, unless it had a penchant for insane policies.
More than insane: self-defeating!
Constant war will be self-defeating, just as are lack of education and lack of health care.
Our malaise is deep.
That's what happens. You glimpse one little corner of our national insanity and then you remember all the other insanities. War on Terror. A term invented in best Madison Avenue fashion to hornswoggle a populace, ill-equipped to deal with delving below the surface of anything, into believing that such a thing is even possible. Amazing how many of our national metaphors employ "War on . . ." It's an indication of just how we think.
Our malaise is fatal, sir.
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