The Need For Accurate Drug Data

Obviously we ought to be collecting more, and with as much scientific objectivity as we can muster. That this isn't happening to the current degree could well be a crime in itself.

It is, at the very least, in fact, the equivalent of knowing that a new form of a communicable disease may be causing a big spike in first responder reported deaths, but not having a fully functional CDC to handle the collection of miriade critical data points; all of the intel required in order to understand not only spread vector, incubation periods, and lethality, but over all numbers, and whether various demographics, and social interactions might be playing into the spread as well.

One part of this, of course, is that to acknowledge the problem is tantamount to accepting that more money will have to be spent, and at government expense. That we are unable to see much of any kind of problem as little more than another cost that nobody wants to be responsible for is sad enough, but I think our focus shouldn't be just there. It should also be justifiably suspicious that another reason altogether might be at work here.

And in this you need only consider what might happen to our "War On Drugs" if it were to be seen, with significant accuracy, and comprehensive confidence, that not only is use up on various sorts of them, but their availability has not been interdicted all that much, at the very least, and perhaps not even very much at all.

One could further be forgiven for holding such a suspicion when one considers that a great deal of money has been made not only on the other side, of whatever border, in the production and sale of drugs, but also on this side as both the militarization of drug enforcement, and the commercialization of imprisonment, continues (see here and here). Equipment makers on the one hand, and authoritarian service providers on the other, have been able to make some pretty good money in the past. Why wouldn't they want to try and keep that going? And if it takes a bit of lobbying here and there to do that, why wouldn't they do that also?

This is where I then point out that, despite a number of independant (doing the best they can with the info at hand) studies have concluded that the "War on Drugs" is folly of the first kind, we are still pursuing a severe "Criminalization," and foreign source interdiction, approach do our drug problem.
And that the avoidance of collecting necessary information, and the fear of what that information might reveal of national policy, is what makes this deficiency criminal, in my opinion.

What do you think?

Data On Drug Use Is Disappearing Just When We Need It Most

See Also:

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