U.S. Invasion of Afghanistan spawned Heroin Epidemic In Europe and America

Since the US Invasion of Afghanistan, the Heroin Output has Increased over 5,000%

More than decade since the US invaded Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda and punish the Taliban, the US and NATO occupation drags on, even as the war begins to wind down. And Afghanistan's status as the world's number one opium poppy producer remains unchallenged.

Afghan opium production started with the US-backed overthrow of the secular Afghan Government in 1978 and grew steadily with the consequent civil war, the Russian invasion and the US-backed religious-based resistance.

Afghan opium production increased further after the departure of the Russians. However in 2000, several years after they captured Kabul, the Taliban banned opium production, slashing Afghan opium production from about 76% of word production in 2000 to 6% in 2001.

In the aftermath of the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan, the British government was entrusted by the leading industrial nations to carry out a drug eradication program, which would, theoretically, allow Afghan farmers to get out of poppy cultivation and switch to alternative crops. The British were working in close liaison with the US DEA's "Operation Containment" out of Kabul.

The British crop eradication program was an apparent smokescreen, considering that since October 2001, opium poppy cultivation has flourished. The presence of occupation forces in Afghanistan did not result in the eradication of poppy cultivation as lawmakers had promised, it did exactly the opposite.

The Taliban prohibition had caused "the beginning of a heroin shortage in Europe by the end of 2001", the UNODC acknowledged, however immediately following the October 2001 invasion, opium markets were restored and opium prices spiraled. By 2002, the opium price was almost 10 times higher than in 2000.

Heroin is a multimillion dollar business protected by powerful, international interests, which requires a stable, steady and secure product flow. One of the secret objectives of the war was to restore the CIA sponsored drug trade to its historical norms and establish control over the smuggling routes.

Within a year of the US Alliance invasion the Afghan opium production skyrocketed from 6% of world production in 2001, to 74% in 2002, 93% in 2006, 95% in 2007 and 94% in 2008.

According to Glenn Greenway, the Drug Truth Network reported September 15, 2008, "Afghan heroin output has increased a staggering 5,000% since the US invasion 7 years ago." I would guess this percentage is even larger today.

UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon said recently at an international conference in Vienna, that Afghanistan will never be stable unless it tackles its drug problem.

In 2007, Afghanistan supplied 93% of the world's opium, according to the U.S. State Department. Illicit poppy production, meanwhile, brings $4 billion into Afghanistan, or more than half the country’s total economy of $7.5 billion, according to the United Nations Office of Drug Control (UNODC).  It also represents about half of the economy of Pakistan, and of the ISI in particular.

Destroying the labs has always been an obvious option, but for years America refused to do so for political reasons. In 2001 the Taliban and bin Laden were estimated by the CIA to be earning up to 10 per cent of Afghanistan’s drug revenues, then estimated at between 6.5 and 10 billion U.S. dollars a year. This income of perhaps $1 billion was less than that earned by Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI, parts of which had become the key to the drug trade in Central Asia. The UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP) estimated in 1999 that the ISI made around $2.5 billion annually from the sale of illegal drugs.

At the start of the US offensive in 2001, according to Ahmed Rashid, “The Pentagon had a list of twenty-five or more drug labs and warehouses in Afghanistan but refused to bomb them because some belonged to the CIA's new NA [Northern Alliance] allies.”  Rashid was “told by UNODC officials that the Americans knew far more about the drug labs than they claimed to know, and the failure to bomb them was a major setback to the counter-narcotics effort."

Donald Rumsfeld

James Risen reports that the ongoing refusal to pursue the targeted drug labs came from neocons at the top of America’s national security bureaucracy, including even Donald Rumsfeld. These men were preserving a pattern of drug-trafficking protection racket in Washington that dates back all the way to World War 2.

Thanks primarily to the CIA-backed anti-Soviet campaign of the 1980s, Afghanistan today is a drug-corrupted and heroin-ravaged society from the heads of state all the way down to the junkies on the streets.

Governing Afghans are likely to become involved in the drug traffic, sooner or later, just as the FARC in Colombia and the Communist Party in Myanmar have evolved in time from revolutionary movements into drug-trafficking organizations.

Afghan President Hamid Karza

The situation in Pakistan is not much different. The US mainstream media have never mentioned the February 23 report in the London Sunday Times and that Asif Ali Zardari, now the Pakistani Prime Minister, was once caught in a DEA drug sting.

Important as heroin may have become to the Afghan and Pakistani political economies, the local proceeds are only a small share of the global heroin traffic. According to the UN, the ultimate value in world markets in 2007 of Afghanistan’s $4 billion opium crop was about $110 billion: this estimate is probably too high, but even if the ultimate value was as low as $40 billion, this would mean that 90 percent of the profit was earned by forces outside of Afghanistan.

It has been estimated that 80 percent or more of the profits from the traffic are reaped in the countries of consumption. The UNODC Executive Director, Antonio Maria Costa, has reported that “money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis.”

Since the time of invasion of Afghanistan, the Opium production is given a boost by United States and its powered Afghan government. Hamid Karzai and his clan are heavily involved in this business. This being understood, they have taken measures to cultivate Opium, provided support for trafficking with Tajikistan in a legal way and this has resulted as an increase in use of Opium around the globe and has especially hit Russia and Europe.

In the years since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan Russia has been flooded with heroin. The drug has crept along a trail stretching from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations and over the Russian border, turning the country into the world's top consumer of heroin, the Russian government says.

The drug has spread like fire through a country uniquely unqualified to cope with its dangers: Narcotics were largely absent during Soviet times, and most people are still unaware of the risk of heroin addiction, even as an estimated 83 Russians a day die by overdosing on the drug, official statistics show. Russia estimates that one in every 50 people of working age is addicted to heroin. South Wales has seen a jump of 180% in heroin addiction rates since the invasion of Afghanistan. In 2008, the EU estimated that a young European died every hour from a drug overdose.

   Watch, Heroin Afghan Drug Wars 2 of 4, here. Heroin Afghan Drug Wars 3 of 4, here. Heroin Afghan Drug Wars 4 of 4, here.

Also, folks, it's not just opium coming out of Afghanistan. According to the UNODC World Drug Report 2011, Afghanistan is also "among the significant cannabis resin producing countries," producing somewhere between 1,500 and 3,500 metric tons of hash in 2010, with no reason to think it has changed dramatically in 2011. That brings in somewhere between $85 million and $265 million at the farm gate.

A decade after the US invasion, Afghanistan remains the world's largest opium producer by far and possibly the world's largest cannabis producer. Given the crucial role these drug crops play in the Afghan economy, there is little reason to think anything is going to change anytime soon.

Written By: Tom Retterbush

Email: tomretterbush@gmail.com

American War Machine

This book explores the covert aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Prominent political analyst Peter Dale Scott marshals compelling evidence to expose the extensive growth of sanctioned but illicit violence in politics and state affairs, especially when related to America's long-standing involvement with the global drug traffic. Beginning with Thailand in the 1950s, Americans have become inured to the CIA's alliances with drug traffickers to install and sustain right-wing governments. The pattern has repeated itself in Laos, Vietnam, Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Turkey, Pakistan, and now Afghanistan_to name only those countries dealt with in this book. Scott shows that the relationship of U.S. intelligence operators and agencies to the global drug traffic, and to other international criminal networks, deserves greater attention in the debate over the U.S. presence in Afghanistan.The so-called war on terror, and in particular the war in Afghanistan, constitutes only the latest chapter in this disturbing story.

Get American War Machine directly from Amazon, HERE


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How the CIA Operates the International Drug Trade and keeps Drugs Illegal in US

How the CIA Runs the Global Drug Trade and Manipulates American Drug Laws

What keeps the drug industry going is its huge profit margins. Processed cocaine is available in Colombia for $1500 dollars per kilo and sold on the streets of America for as much as $66,000 a kilo (retail). Heroin costs $2,600/kilo in Pakistan, but can be sold on the streets of America for $130,000/kilo (retail).

Drugs and Guns are the two most profitable industries in the world, so as long as we operate under the same rules of capitalism and materialism like we have been for so many years, nothing can or will ever change the status quo.

If the Illicit Drug Industry is the second largest industry in the world, the Anti-Drug Industry, or DEA, is the next largest. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish where one ends and the other begins.

"In my 30 year history in DEA, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA." - Dennis Dayle, Chief of an elite DEA unit in Central America.

The CIA has control of the global drug trade. Just as the British Empire was in part financed by their control of the opium trade through the British East India Company, so too has the CIA been found time after time to be at the heart of the modern international drug trade. From its very inception, the CIA has been embroiled in the murky underworld of drug trafficking.

There are billions of dollars per year to be made in keeping the drug trade going, and it has long been established that Wall Street and the major American banks rely on drug money as a ready source of liquid capital. With those kinds of funds at stake, it is unsurprising to see a media-government-banking nexus develop around the status quo of a never-ending war on drugs – aided, abetted and facilitated by the modern-day British East India Company, the CIA.

The CIA has been involved in drug trafficking long before former President George H.W. Bush served as the CIA Director, but it was while he was in charge that CIA drug trafficking was first exposed and 47 members the Reagan Staff were convicted and imprisoned.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett presenting the history, documented facts, and cases on the CIA’s involvement and operations in the underworld of drug trafficking, from the Corsican Mafia in the 1940s through the 1980s Contras to the recent Zambada Niebla Case today.

Now it's not just the United States being bombarded with drugs. Today Russia, the CIS Countries (the Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union) and all of Europe are under covert assault by the CIA, Mossad, and Drugs Inc.

It appears that the cold war has gone into a new and deadly direction. Currently Russia, the CIS countries as well as the rest of Europe are suffering from a new drug epidemic from the vast quantities of cheap, high quality heroin from Afghanistan. Since the US occupation, the Opium production in Afghanistan has increased one hundred thousand fold.

It is well documented that US soldiers and private contractors are both protecting the poppy fields and safeguarding the cultivation. And with the occupation of Afghanistan, the US controls the source of this cheap high quality heroin, managed by the CIA, being is responsible for this plague upon the people of the Eastern Asia and Europe, not to mention the vast quantities of the drug which make it back to the United States.

To see how the CIA organizes the international drug trade, we must only look as far as former CIA officer, John Millis, who served for thirteen years as a case officer supplying covert CIA aid to the heroin-trafficking guerrillas in AfghanistanÑan analogous and contemporary alliance between the CIA and known drug-traffickers (New York Times, 6/6/00). At least one of the airlines involved in the Afghan support operation, Global International Airways, was also named in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal (Los Angeles Times, 2/20/97).

During the same time as the Contras, the CIA was arming and advising heroin-trafficking guerrillas in Afghanistan. Its leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, became one of the leading heroin suppliers of the world. During the last few years, the CIA has helped promote the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), whose leaders and arms had been financed by Kosovar drug-traffickers. Indeed, the CIA's practice of recruiting drug-financed armies is an on-going, never-ending affair. Using Laotians, whose sole cash crop was opium, the CIA recruited an army numbering in the tens of thousands. 

It is easy to see how these practices by the CIA have greatly contributed to the drug crisis worldwide, including the United States. When the first established contact was made with heroin-trafficking Afghan guerrillas in 1979, no Afghan-Pakistan heroin was known to have ever reached the United States. By 1984, according to the Reagan Administration, 54 percent of the heroin reaching this country came from the Afghan-Pakistan border. Today, it is estimated that well over 90% of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan!

In a typical year, Afghan farmers sell around 7,000 tons of opium, which converts into around 1,000 tons of heroin. That comes out to roughly $900 million in annual revenues for the farmers, $1.6 billion for the local traffickers within Afghanistan, and another $1.5 billion for those who smuggle heroin out of the country. You do the math.

The CIA is more or less responsible for providing the contacts, protection, transportation and required chemicals to process raw opium into heroin. Without these elements the whole multi-billion dollar operation would not be possible. Again, you do the math.

The United States Department of Agriculture is even providing agricultural advice (at US taxpayer expense), to increase the yield per acre of opium poppies. The USA is sponsoring this chemical attack upon the Russian people and their allies.

Of course, the Afghanistan heroin operation is just one of many CIA dug trafficking fronts. The same thing they are doing there with heroin they are doing in Columbia, Chile and Peru with cocaine and in Mexico, Central and South America with Marijuana (read my article, The Great American Marijuana Conspiracy and/or get The Emperor Wears no Clothes FREE marijuana conspiracy ebook, just for signing up for the FREE Conspiracy Watch Newsletter).  

The proceeds of CIA drug sales now buys elected officials, judges and entire police departments and law enforcement agencies around the globe. The corruption goes from the US and Mexico, to Europe, Eurasia and even Southeast Asia. Wherever people have power, the CIA will buy them and their influence.

The US government has no desire to stop the drug epidemic in America, much less anywhere else, as too many American politicians and businessmen are getting very wealthy from both domestic and international illegal drug problems.

I will be bringing you more on the phony War on Drugs, here on Conspiracy Watch, as I continue to track government conspirators across the globe.

For now, I would appreciate your feedback, as you let Conspiracy Watch readers know how you feel about The War on Drugs and our government official's involvement in keeping millions of people addicted or locked up for their own profit.

Written By: Tom Retterbush

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What Obama didn’t tell the American People during his Presidential Address

As I sit watching Obama’s Presidential Address, I can’t help but picture him as a puppet king hailing his minions, while he tells us what the puppet masters think we want to hear.

Reading from teleprompters and cue cards, we aren’t hearing what our President has to say, but what his speechwriters have been told by big business.

While delivering his speech, it all sounds promising, but I think the President knows, that we Americans have figured out that it’s all nothing but BS, and that nothing he is saying will ever get done.

Obama knows that the gears are in motion, where nothing that anybody says or does will change the fact, that the world is in a downward spiral and can no longer be saved.

It is possibly too late for even the power elite calling the shots to manipulate an economy this broken beyond repair. It appears the New World Order will fail again, just as they did when they were still called the Third Reich.

And so our government, the Federal Reserve, the World Bank and Rothschilds, Rockefellas and Morgans of the world scramble, trying desperately to salvage what’s left of a sinking ship, otherwise known as our economy.

Although, no matter what world governments or rich secret societies do now, the damage has already been done long ago. Ever since money was no longer backed up by gold. In fact, world economies returning to a gold standard is possibly the only thing that could save us from a financial chaos.

There is no question, the world is head towards a depression never before seen. The bigger question is now, how far will China go to collect the money it’s owed. There are many that believe this it is this tension that will eventually lead to war.

The Wall Street Journal writes, Inflation Is China's Top Concern, World Bank Chief Says.

China is America's largest creditor. Depending on how it's measured, we owe China anywhere from $739 billion to $1 trillion - and that sum is likely to rise given how much we're going to need to borrow to stimulate the economy. What is China going to do once they realize that the US and various European countries will never be able to repay them what they are owed? How far will China go to collect?

Once bitter foes during the Cold War, Moscow and Beijing have over the past years ramped up political cooperation as both are driven by a desire to counterbalance US global dominance.

Together they want to replace the dollar with an alternative currency!

Russia and China have joint plans to expand their "strategic cooperation" including within multilateral structures like the UN and the Group of Twenty developed and developing economies.

Joint work is also to be ramped up within regional groupings like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in order to… "support peace, security and stability on the planet and facilitate the formation of a multilateral world and the democratization of international relations," a Chinese diplomat said.

The language coming from these two Superpowers suggests eastern alienation towards the west.

Could it come down to the unthinkable. A world war between America and Europe against China and Russia?

Oblivious to the average American, China has been developing modified Dong Feng 21 missiles capable of extremely long flight. Although the potential of threat didn’t go unnoticed by our government, nobody seemingly bothered to tell the American public.

China has also made itself known to be a cybersecurity threat to both the industrial and military communities. And as we sleep, China has conducted numerous penetration tests against srategic U.S. computer systems.

We also know that China has a relatively active, organized cybercriminal community, with large groups of people conducting phishing attacks against Americans.

China has 1.3 billion people, more than four times America’s population. China gives birth to more babies each year than Canada has people — and that’s after China’s incredible policy which only allows the Chinese one child per family.

China has become an economic powerhouse, growing its GDP by about 10% per year. This year, China blew past Japan to become the world’s second largest individual economy, after the U.S.

China’s cows, alone, will be consuming more than one seventh of the world’s oil supplies within 10 years. Just their cows. That’s not counting what their 1.3 billion people need.

China consumes slightly more than we do, at about 2.6 billion tons of go-juice. What makes China particularly interesting is that they’re consuming more and more each year. While our demand increases only 0.34% annually, China’s demand is increasing at 8.68%. Even the rate of increase is increasing. Back in 2000, China’s demand only increased by 2.46%.

I did a lot more math in How To Save Jobs, but one calculation stood out. China has made it a national priority to push more and more of its citizens into a middle class. But if China manages to “middle class” most of its citizens, China alone would then consume 10.1 billion tons of oil equivalent per year, or 78% of the world’s total output.

If India were to grow at the same rate (and India is growing fast, as well), China and India combined would consume 1.5 times the world’s total energy supply. In other words, those two countries, alone, will need more oil that the world actually has. This could be a problem.

The Chinese government is aware of all of this. The more they build, the more they consume. This is why China has become frenemies with the United States.

We provide a market for their goods and a source of money for all that energy they consume.

But there’s one more important fact about China you should know. China absolutely hates that Taiwan isn’t part of the PRC. They absolutely, viscerally hate that the United States has been defending Taiwan and has been standing in their way to repatriate Taiwan, to bring Taiwanese citizens under mainland control.

In fact, to many PRC government minds, Taiwan is now part of mainland China. It’s just that America is blocking their rightful governance.

So, put it all together. China has four times our population. They have an economy going gangbusters, but will likely need more oil than exists on the planet, and they have an irrational anger at us for our role in keeping Taiwan out of their clutches. Plus, we owe them trillions of dollars.

It makes for a potent and volatile cocktail, doesn’t it?

I’ve written several articles on state of the world economy within the last year myself, trying desperately to warn people of the coming chaos. Thank God I’m not the only one who sees the approaching doom.

In his book, The Next Great Clash: China and Russia vs. the United States, Michael Levin makes the case that China and the United States will go to war with each other within the next 5 to 25 years.

Though this may sound like something from a Tom Clancy novel, The Next Great Clash is no wild theory. Levin looks at the impending causes for a major global confrontation through economic, political, cultural, and historical lenses.

Levin also explains how Russia, America’s Cold War enemy, has deftly positioned itself as the “swing player” in this real world game of Risk. Though the USSR has fallen, Russia has a lot to gain by promoting a conflict between East and West. Levin carefully examines the fragile 400-year relationship between these neighbors and the strategic partnership that has developed between them.

Levin and I have the same agenda in mind, as we both try to raise awareness before a clash becomes inevitable. By understanding the issues from all sides, we hope that we as people will find a way to avoid World War III.

Written By: Tom Retterbush

The Next Great Clash: China and Russia vs. the United States
These are uncertain times. The balance of power is continually shifting worldwide. In The Next Great Clash, Michael Levin presents evidence of a global political order on the verge of a historic power shift from West to East. A reemerging China is the only nation with the latent capacity to challenge American hegemony, and Levin demonstrates that such challenges to the status quo usually lead to war. 
Buy directly from Amazon for Best Price $19.88, or New for $44.95, HERE

 
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Could the End of Our 40 Year Old Drug War finally be in Sight?

War on Drugs is a Total Failure

“The war on drugs is an utter failure,” Barack Obama said before he became president and dedicated $40,000,000,000 a year to the drug war.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy describes America’s “war on drugs,” a total failure as well.

In a new initiative, the GCDP has made some important new, game-changing recommendations in its Drug Policy Report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade.

The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

More than 40 years after Nixon started the war on drugs, we have over one million non-violent drug offenders living behind bars.



The Global Commission on Drug Policy report describes the total failure of the present global anti-drug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared over 40 years ago. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

Former President Nixon signing in the War on Drugs

These recommendations of the Global Commission on Drug Policy are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, President Carter said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. The former President also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”



These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress, under pressure from Big Alcohol, began to unbalance balanced drug policies, including prison sentences instead of treatment and rehabilitation of addicts and attempted efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries, leading to the rise of the powerful, violent Columbian and Mexican Cartels.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.

We were told by our government that the "War on Drugs" is being waged on our behalf, to save us from ourselves.

We are told that the "war on drugs" is being waged, on our behalf, by our governments and their armed bureaucracies and police forces, to save us from ourselves. "Potential for abuse and harm" are supposed to be the criteria by which the use of drugs is suppressed - the greater a drug's potential for abuse and harm, the greater and more vigorous the degree of suppression, and the more draconian the penalties applied against its users.

When we look at the history of the "war on drugs" over approximately the last forty years it must be asked whether the criminalization of the use of any of the prohibited substances has in any way been effective in terms of the stated goals that this "war" was supposedly mounted to achieve? Specifically, has there been a marked reduction in the use of illegal drugs over the past forty years - as one would expect with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money having been spent over such a long period on their suppression - and has there been a reduction in the harms that these drugs supposedly cause to the individual and to society?

The two hour documentary above, American Drug War, shows how money, power and greed have corrupted not just drug pushers and dope fiends, but an entire government. It also shows what can be done about it. This is not some 'pro-drug' stoner film, but a collection of expert testimonials from the ground troops on the front lines of the drug war, the ones who are fighting it and the ones who are living it.

The War on Drugs has become the longest, most costly and controversial war in American history.  

The Global Commission on Drug Policy recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment “with models of legal regulation of drugs ... that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.” For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.

But they probably won’t turn to the United States for advice.  In America 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole!Drug policies in America are more punitive and counterproductive than in any other democracy, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations.

At the end of 1980, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, more than in any other country and 7 times as great as in Europe.  Some increase is due to mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes you’re out” laws, but the majority of new admissions is non-violent drug offenders.

Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families, but it is also a great burdon on state and local budgets. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in 1980, 10 percent of his state’s budget went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and only 7.5 percent to higher education.

Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help to bring about a reform of America’s drug policies. At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right.

More that half of the men in United States prisons are incarcerated for non-violent, drug-related crimes. To help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug policies more humane and more effective, the American government should support and implement the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Beginning on Friday, June 17, the 40th anniversary of the “war on drugs,” thousands of people will come together to hold “Communities Rising” actions and rallies in communities across America. Over 40 organizations in California alone will be calling for active steps to end the 40-year-old “war on drugs” and to prioritize vital social services over prison spending.

America is tired of the War on Drugs. The majority of Americans will welcome the end of this costly, destructive, failed war against its own people. In fact, according to a recent poll, 56% want marijuana legalized and regulated like alcohol. Even many law enforcement officers are now speaking out against the failed Drug War (see my article, Law Enforcement Against the Prohibition of Marijuana). Most Americans have a family member, friend or colleague who has spent time in jail because of the War on Drugs.

Nothing good can become of waging a war against your ow citizens! It is time the War on Drugs ends.

 Nearly forty years after President Nixon declared a "war on drugs," it is clear that the nation's approach to drug policy is counterproductive and inhumane. Shifting our priorities toward a more logical, productive approach which offers treatment rather than punishment for addicts and recognizes the injustice of mass incarceration seems like an impossible task. But we have all the answers and resources we need. If ever there was a time to say end the war on drugs, it's now.

If you believe that the drug war is a failure, and it's time to bring it to an end, Sign the nomoredrugwar.org petition and send a clear message: No More Drug War! Take action now, HERE. Also, urge your state Rep. to introduce legislation to regulate marijuana for adults over 21. Take action now, HERE.

How do you feel about the War on Drugs? Do you personally know someone who has been directly affected by it? Do you believe drugs should be decriminalized or legalized? Let Conspiracy Watch reader know what you believe by leaving a comment down bellow.

Written By: Tom Retterbush
Updated: 5-30-12
Email: tomretterbush@gmail.com

Busted!: Drug War Survival Skills
Busted! is a funny, smart, subversive worst-case scenario guide for casual drug users and their tolerant friends. It's the Bible on how not to get busted and what to do if you are. Using celebrity busts, outrageous everyman busts, and the author's professional experience, Busted! is everything you need to know about the criminal justice system, Drug War style, before it's too late. Like a Law & Order episode, the book takes the reader through a typical small-time drug possession case from committing the crime, to handling police encounters like a pro, to getting busted, to spending a night in jail, to fighting your drug bust, to pleading guilty, through trials and appeals, and, finally, punishment all the way to the end.  
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Sources
D.A.R.E. to End the War on Drugs, The Nation

It's Time to End the War on Drugs, nomoredrugwar.org

Call Off the Global Drug War, by Jimmy Carter, New York Times 

Global Commission on Drug Policy Report, globalcommissionondrugs.org