The Film Archives: ‘The War on Drugs is a Failure’

Source:The Film Archives- with a humorous look at the War On Drugs.

Source:FRS FreeState 

“The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade. More on this topic: 

While the War on Drugs may have sounded like a good idea at one time, the consequences have been catastrophic. From physicians persecuted for providing health care to their patients to parents grieving the loss of their children to overdose or prison — we’ve all become victims of this war.

Our health, our families, our assets, our safety and our freedom are at risk…

Source:Amazon- book at about War On Drugs.

From Amazon 

From The Film Archives 

President Richard Nixon started the War On Drugs in 1971 with good intentions. Thanks to the Vietnam War, the Hippies, Counter-Culture, the personal freedom revolution of the 1960s, narcotics use was on the rise in the 1960s which came with real health care costs to our economy and health care system in the 1960s and early 70s. 

Chicago Economics Professor Milton Friedman (one of my favorite Liberals) had a great saying: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You can’t just judge economic polices by their intentions, but the actual effects of the policies. Do they work or not, do a cost-benefit analysis and if you do that with War On Drugs, it’s a colossal failure. Narcotics use is up since 1971, our prisons are not overcrowded and filled with drug addicts because of this so-called War On Drugs. 

Just because Big Government outlaws something, doesn’t mean it goes away. It just goes underground if you have a big enough market of people that still want to do that activity. And little things like jail time especially when they’re not actually hurting anyone (perhaps even themselves) probably won’t stop them from still doing that activity. And the so-called War On Drugs is the perfect example of that.

NBC News: Update With John Dancy: December, 1979

Source:NBC News- correspondent John Dancy.

"From December 1979, here is a NBC News update.  All copyrights acknowledged, uploaded for historical purposes.  This one features John Dancy talking about Ayatollah Khomeini allowing independent observers to view the hostages in Iran, Jody Powell saying it's a step on the right direction, President Carter overseeing the lighting of small Christmas trees but not the big tree until the hostages come home, (OPEC) oil prices rising by $6 per barrel, rising price of gold.  Ends with a commercial for Geritol."

Source:Jacky 9BR

1979 was a very rough year as the summer showed with an energy shortage and high inflation and interest rates and so-forth. And this was after the so-called crisis of confidence speech from President Carter in I believe August of that summer. And after the Iranian Hostage Crisis in November that year. 

One of the ironic things about 1979 economically, was that the economy was growing and jobs were created before the recession later that year. But people weren't feeling that because whatever economic growth there was, was getting wiped out by high inflation and interest rates. The economic malaise and the Great Deflation of the 1970s, a combination of high inflation and interest rates, was the worst economy America had at that point at least since the Great Depression.

But the bad economy was obviously bad enough for President Carter and the Democratic Congress then. And probably enough reason for President Carter to lose reelection and for Democrats to at least lose a lot of seats in Congress, even if Republicans didn't win back the House or Senate. The Iranian Hostage Crisis late in 1979 was simply the toper to that. 

The country was still dealing with an energy crisis that a very cold winter and very hot summer that year obviously didn't help. I actually remember a little of that summer. The country was essentially in crisis mode that year and except for what was going in entertainment and sports which was great that year, especially the World Series and Super Bowl which were both classics that were both won by Pittsburgh, there wasn't much to be happy about.

You can also see this post at The Daily Press, on Blogger.