Free Talk Live

"The apocalypse never happened" as some predicted when the country of Portugal decriminalized ALL illegal drugs eight years ago. The country did NOT become a haven for drug use, and drug abuse & drug crime actually FELL.

After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.
Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

Street drugrelated deaths from overdoses drop and the rate of HIV cases crashes

For a muscular agency that combats vicious drug criminals, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration acts like a terrified and obstinate toddler when it comes to basic science. For years, the DEA and the National Institute for Drug Abuse have made it all but impossible to develop a robust body of research on the medical uses of marijuana.

More than 1.6 million people were arrested for drug offenses in the US last year, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report 2010, and more than half of them were for marijuana. That's a drug arrest every 19 seconds, 24 hours a day, every day last year. The numbers suggest that despite "no more war on drugs" rhetoric emanating from Washington, the drug war juggernaut is rolling along on cruise control.

A corrupt police officer and his wife who spent years acting as spies for a major drug dealer were jailed for a total of four-and-a-half years today.

Drug warrior William J. Bennett dismisses legalization's potential to reduce harm, argues for stricter punishments and more law enforcement. Great stuff to debunk in here such as "Drug decriminalization in Portugal has also been a failure."

A decade is a period of ten years, any ten years can be a decade - years 1994 to 2004 is a decade. Decades are often given various tags which help to define that decade and are often, if not always, simplified by being rounded up or down to the nearest tenth. 60's (decade) being tagged with hippies, 70's with disco, 80's hair only to name a few.

People like to ponder as to what the 2010-2020 decade will be known for, what great and likely horrible things that are on the horizon.

MEXICO CITY — America’s drug problem is shifting from illicit substances like cocaine to abuse of prescription painkillers, a change that is forcing policy makers to re-examine the long and expensive strategy of trying to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States. This rethinking extends beyond the United States, where policy makers are debating how to better reduce demand for painkillers.