It's a question of what does more harm than good. The vast majority of people who drink alcohol can still be sober at work. Whereas a crack addict will tend to be high all day, unable to work, thus needing to rob to feed their addiction.
Crack is unusually addictive but many people maintain casual cocaine habits for years on end. Both of these drugs have the same classification, and the same penalties in most of the world.
Crack is also particularly bad for your health outside of just being extremely addictive. If it wasn't a Class A drug people would rapidly end up in treatment for it anyway.
Ultimately there's hardly any actual science involved in the War on Drugs, just as there wasn't during prohibition.
There should be evidence heavily involved in a war on drugs, on a drug by drug basis, for sure. I'd estimate the totality of the drag on society, even parenting, in determining the resources to apply to reduce the usage of that drug.
You're also conflating all levels of alcohol usage with crack addiction. It's possible for many people (though granted, probably nearly genetically impossible for some people) to use either without becoming addicted. And for alcoholics, it's often very hard to hold down a job.
It's a matter of percentages. Perhaps 5% of alcohol users have a significant problem with it, that drags down those around them. I don't know what the percentage is for crack but I bet it's over 90%, high enough that we shouldn't take a chance on the users who aren't addicted to it promoting it to the 90% who would become addicted it.
> I don't know what the percentage is for crack but I bet it's over 90%
According to this spurious page [0], "up to 75% of those who try cocaine will become addicted." Of course, the page also says "an estimated one-in-four Americans between the age of 26 and 34 have used cocaine at least once in their lifetime, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy." Since it looks like around 15% of Americans are between the age of 26 and 34, that would mean that "up to" 11.25% of Americans will become addicted, which seems unlikely. We need some better data.
Yours is a rude form of disagreement, is all. Your comments elsewhere:
> This isn't going to happen because a bunch of people in line at an airport isn't a high-value target.
Can you point to research?
> I mean it would suck, of course, but 'bunch of people get blown up at an airport' isn't nearly as worrying as 'large plane falls/is steered out of the sky and into downtown.'
Proof that it isn't as worrying?
> It doesn't have much value to terrorists because it's not as scary and it won't generate vast numbers of photographs.
How do you know it's not as scary? Have you measured?
I don't need to post research. Logically, if a plane falls out of the sky this also presents a threat to anyone on the ground at the time of impact. If people are blown up at an airport, there's no additional risk for those outside the immediate vicinity. This is a consequence of the fact that planes are mobile while airports are not.
Yes, I'm being rude, because by your own admission you are arguing from a position of ignorance and inaccurate prejudice.
You're making a big assumption: that the war on drugs, even if it cost no money and ruined no lives on its own, in any way lowers the number of people addicted to hard drugs and the amount of violence related to hard drugs. While I don't have any specific data, it seems pretty obvious to me that it only increases both.
I do make the assumption that a war on drugs can lower the number of people addicted to hard drugs, and from there the amount of violence related to it. But that assumption includes the way I would handle it, like forcing users to be in rehab before prison is considered.
That's nonsense. GCracks'a horrible drug, crack addicts are tedious & depressing to be around, but they're not all as dysfunctional as you suggest. The most common crime I've seen among extreme crack addicts is prostitution rather than robbery.
