Thursday, October 2, 2008

Are we getting anywhere with this?

Since my last post was about the enormous debt that we've incurred as a country, here's a quick observation on where some of that money is going. We'll spend around $40 billion (!) this year in the war on drugs, and by the government's own standard, we're accomplishing nothing! We're also around a million and a half people for drug offenses, and yet drugs remain cheap, legal, and popular. Bjorn Lomberg, founder of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, estimates that spending $200 million per year could prevent 300,000 deaths from heart disease in developing countries. Basically by distributing aspirin based medication. He doesn't mention it, but I would think that the people this would help are older and probably wiser, and exactly the kind of people you'd want to help in these regions. The drug war seems to be something that everyone hates, and yet no one will stand up and say something about because they are afraid. Maybe in a time of national crisis like this, we can find the courage to speak out.

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