The War on Drugs

Throwing people in jail for drug possession alone is a colossal waste of time and money - especially when it results in violent criminals being let out on the street early due to prison overcrowding.

The War on Drugs has been a colossal waste of time and money and has, in the long run, yielded no results. People are still doing drugs and people will always do drugs unless you monitor everyone 24 hours a day. The War on Drugs has often exacerbated the problem by driving up prices, leading to large profits which in turn leads to violence for control of the traffic.

However, seeing the ill effects of drugs, we as a society should never make them 100% legal. A great way to keep them on the “wrong” side of the divide between right and wrong without filling up our prisons is to impose steeper and steeper fines the higher you go up the scale (no pun intended). Small fines for possession of marijuana and big fines for possession of heroine.

We’ll never eliminate the problem, but perhaps instilling economic penalties rather than jail time will make the drug laws more effective and take away a lot of the negative unintended consequences that our current drug laws generate.