{"id":141915,"date":"2014-11-13T15:57:21","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T15:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=141915"},"modified":"2014-11-13T15:57:21","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T15:57:21","slug":"americas-failed-drug-war-crazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/americas-failed-drug-war-crazy\/","title":{"rendered":"America&#8217;s Failed Drug War Is Crazy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The following is a transcript of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/ethan_nadelmann_why_we_need_to_end_the_war_on_drugs\">TED talk<\/a> by Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Ethan Nadelmann<\/em><\/p>\n<p>What has the War on Drugs done to the world?\u00a0Look at the murder and mayhem in Mexico,\u00a0Central America, so many other parts of the planet,\u00a0the global black market estimated\u00a0at 300 billion dollars a year,\u00a0prisons packed in the United States and elsewhere,\u00a0police and military drawn into an unwinnable war\u00a0that violates basic rights, and ordinary citizens\u00a0just hope they don&#8217;t get caught in the crossfire,\u00a0and meanwhile, more people using\u00a0more drugs than ever.\u00a0It&#8217;s my country&#8217;s history with alcohol prohibitionand Al Capone, times 50.<\/p>\n<p>Which is why it&#8217;s particularly galling to me\u00a0as an American that we&#8217;ve been the driving force\u00a0behind this global drug war.\u00a0Ask why so many countries criminalize\u00a0drugs they&#8217;d never heard of,\u00a0why the U.N. drug treaties emphasize\u00a0criminalization over health,\u00a0even why most of the money worldwide\u00a0for dealing with drug abuse goes not\u00a0to helping agencies but those that punish,\u00a0and you&#8217;ll find the good old U.S. of A.<\/p>\n<p>Why did we do this?\u00a0Some people, especially in Latin America,\u00a0think it&#8217;s not really about drugs.\u00a0It&#8217;s just a subterfuge for advancing\u00a0the realpolitik interests of the U.S.\u00a0But by and large, that&#8217;s not it.\u00a0We don&#8217;t want gangsters and guerrillas\u00a0funded with illegal drug money\u00a0terrorizing and taking over other nations.<\/p>\n<p>No, the fact is, America really is crazy\u00a0when it comes to drugs.\u00a0I mean, don&#8217;t forget, we&#8217;re the ones who thoughtthat we could prohibit alcohol.\u00a0So think about our global drug war\u00a0not as any sort of rational policy,\u00a0but as the international projection\u00a0of a domestic psychosis.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/americas-failed-drug-war-crazy\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is a transcript of a TED talk by Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.\u00a0 Ethan Nadelmann What has the War on Drugs done to the world?\u00a0Look at the murder and mayhem in Mexico,\u00a0Central America, so many other parts of the planet,\u00a0the global black market estimated\u00a0at 300 billion dollars [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":138980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-141915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}