Two epic undertakings, one started by conservatives, one by liberals, both designed to appeal to their hard core faithful. Both hideously expensive, both put extreme stress on our constitutional system and both have had disastrous unintended consequences. Which was the bigger failure? And why do we continue to pursue them?
Why is the war on poverty a failure? 20.8% of american families lived below poverty level in 1959, by the end of Clinton's second term the figure had dropped to 9.6%. Of course the number of people living below poverty level tends to go up when republicans (Reagan, Bush Senior and GWB) are in the White House, as a matter of fact it's back to 12.7% now but don't blame it on the war on poverty, blame it on the indifference and incompetence of republican administrations. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/histpov/hstpov2.html
I'll think I'll go with the one that came within an inch of killing me: http://www.prohibitionkills.blogspot.com/ The thing about drug prohibition, it causes far more damage than anyone is even aware of, as most people are unable or unwilling to connect all the dots. Take the Vioxx scandal for instance. Did you even realize that most of the vioxx injuries & deaths were a direct result of drug prohibition? Vioxx was an ineffective 'pain medication', prescribed to millions of pain patients by doctors who would have prescribed real (=narcotic) pain medication instead, had they been given a free hand to do so. In October 2003, the AAPS went as far as issuing the following warning to physicians: "If youâre thinking about getting into pain management using opioids as appropriate -- DONâT. Forget what you learned in medical school -- drug agents now set medical standards. Or if you do, first discuss the risks with your family." http://www.aapsonline.org/press/hurwitz1002.htm Vioxx, while nearly useless at relieving actual pain, caused the pain patients to become four times as likely to suffer a heart attack than non-vioxx users. FDA analysts estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks, 30 to 40 percent of which were probably fatal, in the five years the drug was on the market. You can also add the thousands of (often lethal) strokes, also caused by vioxx & prohibition.
if i were president.... id leagalise it, and give the tax to the poor. easy come, easy go. either that, or id have spent the money on going to war with iraq for the nth time and give that to the poor. then the poor could spend all that money on lottery tickets, booze, cigs, etc and i get my money back on tax anyway! simple. vote bloggs!
RM- Read your story in past threads, glad to see you're good now. But in all honesty, were your problems getting treated a result of prohibition, or poor/faulty medical knowledge ? If I remember correctly, you're now on a drug that really helps you out, and you 'found' it for your physican ? Or did you find a physican that was more knowledgable about your condition ? Please dude, not flaming here, just trying to remember....
the human species is a total failure. the experiement must be terminated. make room for more worthy species to develop. the cleansing process will commence shortly a la war of the world except this time the martians win.
If I remember correctly, you're now on a drug that really helps you out, and you 'found' it for your physican ? ----Yes, that's what happened. But in all honesty, were your problems getting treated a result of prohibition, or poor/faulty medical knowledge ? -------It'll be hard to answer this without giving away too much personal info. The part I have to leave out is the extreme severity of the clinical depression, so you'll have to use your imagination. The situation was as follows: Oxy was the one and only medication I knew to be capable of relieving my condition. I had obtained and used a very small amount of oxy a couple years back, so I was familiar with it. Hydrocodone (vicodin) and opium were NOT good enough, and I <b>wasn't</b> willing to try smack. (Requiem for a Dream) My doctor <b>knew</b> that many depression patients respond ONLY to opiates/opioids, nothing else helps them, and I was one of these patients. The doctor told me straight out that he'd seen this identical condition before, and he would be happy to prescribe me all the oxy I needed, <b>If not for the prohibition laws.</b> He had to choose between saving my life and saving his own ass from license revocation /asset forfeiture /felony conviction /prison time. He chose the latter, as any rational non-saintly person would do. <b>After</b> this whole situation played out and almost killed me, I: A) <b>Finally</b> obtained sufficient quantities of oxy from a black market, prohibition defying hero. (You know, the sort of people your favored politicians label 'drug dealers', divert billions of dollars in resources to catch, and then oppress with multi-decade prison sentences. All this for the heinous 'crime' of providing a desired service to consenting adults.) B) It was only months after I had stabilized on this illegally and very expensively ($1.55/mg, which is about 85 times the price of gold bullion, by weight. When legally prescribed, oxy costs only $0.075/mg.) obtained oxy, that I figured it all out, and taught the M.D. about the legal loophole under which he could prescribe buprenorphine to patients in my condition. Needless to say, for every patient able to overcome all these obstacles, there are plenty of corpses who weren't quite as resourceful as I was.
Poverty sucks of course, but it's relative deprivation that seems to antagonize and cause the most trouble amongst the primates, man included. Since the disparity between rich and poor is now greater than it was in the days of plutocratic Rome, I'd have to say the war on poverty has been the biggest failure. And since that reality sucks for so many, drug use is more frequent. The wars fail together.
Yup-its odd that these "wars" arent actually AGAINST any of the things mentioned, they are in reality wars AGAINST PEOPLE under the guise of altruistic, supposedly benevolent government action.