Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:


get the offenders to fix the problem
themselves


But they're only offenders in your eyes. Extraterritorial enforcement
of laws is against international law.

If Canada decriminalizes pot possession, it has no direct effect on the
US. However, they keep getting cranky and threatening every time the
topic comes up. Most countries treat drug addiction as a medical problem;
the US holds to obsolete ideas about it being a criminal problem. Fix
it in your own country and stop trying to export your backward problems.

They can't fix it, Michael. It's an integral part of their system to
criminalize use of soft drugs, to hand out ridiculous sentences to those
who use soft drugs, so that those people can be used in the
commercialised prison industry as a kind of legalised slave labour.

Of course, this very ineffective symptom solving keeps the drug trade
alive, while the U.S. DEA keeps pointing fingers everywhere, without
anyone in their right mind thinking about what does lessen the problem.

That would be done by taking the drug users out of the criminal system,
educating people about drugs, trying to setup a system to provide clean
needles, medical care and medically prescribed drugs to those who fail
to detox time and again. By making it possible for the drug addicts to
have a somewhat normal life in which they can live and be in touch with
their family and freinds and have a job instead of having to live with
the ever present fear of where they will have to find money (usually by
commiting some crime) to pay for their next shot.

The enormous amounts of money wasted by the DEA and other agencies to
try to stem the flow of drugs have not worked at all in the past
decades, and I doubt that the so called "War on drugs" has been
beneficial for anyone but the increasing budget of the DEA and the
increased income of the drug cartels due to the very high price of drugs
on the street.

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://wilko.webzone.ru/