Re:What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War...
by chrischen on Sunday May 18, 2014 @02:38AM
(#7762391)
While true for a lot of countries, this not true for China, which have probably stricter drug policies (with the exception of maybe alcohol). China would not let itself be dictated by US policies.
Re:What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War...
by dragonwriter on Sunday May 18, 2014 @12:24PM
(#7763442)
Well, yeah, there are a number of countries that have their own parallels to some or all aspects of the US motivations for the war on drugs -- particularly as part of a broader militaristic centralization of authority, the racism involved in the US war on drugs is a less-common motivation -- and don't need to be pressured by the US. There's also religious authoritarianism in, e.g., the Islamic world, though that often overlaps with militaristic centralization.
My point was that a lot of the countries where there may not be direct domestic parallels to the US motivations still have a War on Drugs as a product of the same motivations because they do so as a result of US pressure.
Re:What If U.S. Cities Just Stopped Participating in the War...
by chrischen on Sunday May 18, 2014 @03:37PM
(#7764087)
Right. And what you end up seeing is that all disparate cultures, religions, non-religions, have concluded that they need to control drugs, in order to control the people. When Opium was unleashed China it just allowed the British to control the people.
The War on Drugs that happens in many countries is, in fact, a result of that; specifically, its a result of (1) the War on Drugs in the US being a direct result of those things, and (2) the War on Drugs implemented in many other countries being a direct outgrowth of the exportation of the US War on Drugs through US foreign policy. (Ironically, this is true even of international treaties that foreign governments are now accusing the US of violating due to marijuana legalization efforts in some states.)