"Afghanistan has doubled its opium production over the past two years and now accounts for 93 percent of the world's output, according to the annual UNODC survey. The southern province of Helmand alone has become the world's biggest source of illicit drugs. The amount of Afghan land used for opium has surpassed the total used for coca cultivation in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined. Afghan poppies, which start as flowers in farmers' fields and often wind up as heroin on U.S. streets, fuel a $3 billion a year industry in Afghanistan. The industry is filling the coffers of the Taliban, the group who gave safe haven to al Qaeda before and after 9/11, and it is destabilizing the Afghan government" (CNN).
This investigative report was done using the figures from 2005, since then the figures from 2006 have been released and are much higher. After our many decades of fighting this same war on illegal drugs; it would be safer, faster and much cheaper to end this war by legalizing the drugs. The worst resistance would come from the drug cartels world-wide and the terrorist networks in the Middle-East and Mexico. Without the illegal drug industry funding the terrorists, this global war on terror could end much sooner, and our own boarders would be easier to guard. At the same time for just a few more years (not decades) the United States would still have to continue clearing up the mess by the once illegal drugs; the same way as usual, with taxpayer funded drug rehabs, including heroine or methadone babies and their lifetime medical costs etc...
Our society needs to get more faith in itself, because in the Middle-East where it is much easier to get heroin than it is to get clean drinking water they are not a society of drug addicts. This would also cut off the funded government corruption in the Middle East, Mexico, and the United States. In time this will also solve many other problems in our economy especially the cost, and availability of health care. The repercussions this would help to create for a few years (not decades) is one of the best examples of why our forefathers emphasized so strongly on the necessity of separation between the church and state. We should take one-third of the drug rehabs in the U.S. and turn them into hospice units for the "drug challenged."
Will the drug companies survive once the need for methadone or other similar synthetic drugs are not is such high demand? What would happen to our court system and law enforcement, would they have enough work to keep them busy? What would all these defense attorneys do? The prison guards? With most all of society making a living on this war on drugs for so many decades now, do you think our economy would collapse by ending this war on drugs? What would happen to the terrorists' networks in the Middle-East if American taxpayers ALSO stopped funding them? What would the Mexican drug cartels do without our tax money or the gangbangers in and around all our middle and high-schools? And would the cost of oil skyrocket again when the illegal drug industry is no longer more profitable than the oil industry? MAKE YOU VOTE COUNT HERE AT CHANGE DOT ORG AND HELP END ALL WAR'S (THE DOMINIO EFFECT)