Lets look at gun control as oppose to the top reason, income inequality.

[SlayerRondo]

HappySqurriel said:

SlayerRondo said:

HappySqurriel said:

SamuelRSmith said:
The number 1 problem is the War on Drugs.

I'd wager that poverty is the number 2 issue (and heavily tied in with the WoD)

The problem isn't the war on drugs, it is how the war on drugs is fought ...

If the United States put its resources that are being spent on the war on drugs towards monitoring their ports and borders, and tracking down drug labs, it would likely result in fewer drugs hitting the street and forcing them to sell them at a higher price; resulting in lower over-all addiction and usage rates. Basically, for the police to recover 10kg of drugs through street level arrests they (probably) have to make hundreds of arrests over several weeks/months; but it is likely that a greater amount is seized on the border or at manufacturing sites from a single arrest.

They are trying to collect grains of sand after they have been blown away by the wind ...

But then people would have nothing to fear when buying drugs uf the police are not going after end users and dealers. Most likely people would just get better at hiding munufacture and import of drugs while enjoying the ruduced pressure elsewhere.

In my opinion we should devote 100% of our resources in the war on drugs to treating people rather than locking them up especially for drugs such a marijuana.

 

The re-allocation of police resources would (probably) result in 10 to 100 times as many border-control or customs agents and, while there would still be the possibility of small quantities of drugs being imported by individuals, large drug importing operations would lose far more drugs than they imported and prices of these drugs would skyrocket. In a similar fashion, if 10 to 100 times the resources were put towards tracking down drug manufacturing a handful of small manufacturing operations could still exist but their production could not meet demand and prices would skyrocket.

Certainly, people would not necessarily fear using these drugs, but when you're spending hundreds of dollars on a single dose of a drug it is unlikely that you will have it regularly enough to become an addict.

That seems a little optomistic in my point of view that there would be 10-100 times as many border control or customs agents. Plus their is a risk of oversuturating the border with too many people doing the same job. Plus people will just turn to drugs that can be manufactured within the united states and the manufacturing levels will just increase. Switching all the resources in the drug war from demand to supply will mean drugs will cost more but people will be willing to pay more as the risk of being arrested has signifigantly decreased.

At best 75% of the resources in the drug war are focused on demand ( more likely 50%) meaning eliminating it would result in 4 times as many border control or custom agents and 4 times as many people looking for drug manufactures in the US. As you increase the resources involved in the fight against the supply side they don't result in a proportional increase in effectiveness.

Plus natural selection will just mean that the better drug dealers survive while the weaker one's die and they will keep doing it given the higher demand due to lower police pressure on buyers.

My advice is legalize, regulate and tax.