Street Gangs... the terrorists we love

It is peculiar, that despite the government and media's obsession with Islamic terrorism (i.e. "all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are Muslims", an absurd notion heavily promoted by paranoid 'neoconservative' Islamophobic hatemongers in both the Bush and Obama Administrations), domestic street gang activity, which terrorizes millions of people throughout the U.S on a daily basis, both actively and passively, is largely ignored as regards the terrorism framework in which it belongs. Perhaps street gangs are not "Muslim" enough to warrant a terrorism moniker, according to State Department classification?

The chance of witnessing, and even more to the point, succumbing to an act of international (read Muslim) terrorism in the US is 100 times less likely than being struck by lightning.. and we all know how unlikely that is. However, we all know about domestic terrorist groups, ie street gangs, whose member annually murder thousands of people in all major cities nationwide; this violence being the primary byproduct of the illegal status of certain drugs, the second of course being the profit motive for the largely privately run prison industry.

The war on drugs... BOGUS!

In 2001, the Portuguese government decriminalized the possession/use of most "recreational" drugs, including marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines. Statistics reveal that since then, fewer people are turning to drug use, and the number of people seeking treatment for drug abuse has soared.... on other words, the policy has proven to be a resounding success.

In the US (and many other places in the world), the Portuguese approach has been roundly ignored. Why is this?

If the powers-that- be really are concerned with maintaining the health of the nation in the area of drug abuse, then nobody has paid a blind piece of attention to this (and other) studies. It appears that either
(a) the powers-that-be don't give a flying fuck about public health issues, or
(b) the powers-that-be don't give a flying fuck about public health issues unless profitable to wellplaced corporations, or
(c) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because of laziness, inertia and/or inefficiency, or
(d) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because changing things would mean 'loss of face" for certain high profile people who have championed the so-called "war on drugs", or
(e) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because going Portugal's way would likely see a decrease in revenue streams for certain wellplaced parties who benefit from the illegality of these substances, or
(f) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because America is very traditionalist in approach, and old habits die hard, or
(g) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because drug abuse is rampant amongst inner city minorities, and we are a nation which actively maintains "institutionalized racism". A way of keeping the black and latino communities down is to keep them fighting amongst themselves, and the proliferation of street gangs is a most effective vehicle for such. The story of widespread cocaine importation in the 1980s which was written up in the San Jose Mercury, and the deliberate setting up of crack houses in numerous cities simultaneously and specifically targeting the black communities, is witness to this.