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In the 1920s we lost the war on alcohol. In the 1950s we lost the war on tobacco. In the 1950s and 1960s we lost the war on Communism. Nancy Reagan lost the war on drugs in the 1980s and now Trump as decided to fight it all over again because it is a “crisis” running out of proportion.
Last year 43,800 people lost their lives to drug overdoses. That is .0001 of the U. S. population. In the same year there were 17,000 alcohol related road fatalities. That is .00005 of the U. S. population. Last year 159,000 people died of lung cancer. That is .00045 of the U. S. population; some crisis. Except for perhaps some of the alcohol related traffic deaths, this very small fraction of the population died because they couldn’t govern themselves and abused the substances that caused their death. Why should the taxpayer foot the bill to rehabilitate someone who abuses himself? Because the government panders to the people who are too stupid to realize they are paying for it, not the government.
What we should have is a war on a government that incarcerates over 317,000 people at $50,000 per year for offenses they have no constitutional authority to prohibit. We should have learned that with the Volstead Act and were smart enough then not to repeat it with trying to ban tobacco. We failed to learn our lesson or just plain forgot that you cannot legislate morality.