Submitted by Daniel Aldridge, Dec 14, 2007 10:53

What McWhorter says is the absolute truth. The War on Drugs is as counterproductive and doomed to fail as was Prohibition in the 1920's. Putting thousands of young, often black, people in jail thereby enrolling them in universities of crime has only helped the criminal subculture grow and become somewhat mainstream in poor neighborhoods. The focus on the police as the source of all evil is a cop-out --it gives poor blacks an excuse to be slothful and blame others for their life choices--but the War on Drugs does not make matters any better. If we were to de-criminalize drugs, which I advocate, we still would have to find some way of combating the culture of poverty in these neighborhoods which produces people who seem to believe that refusing to do elementary things to improve their life conditions (like learning standard English) is a badge of honor and cultural authenticity.

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