NPR:
President Trump says he is ready to declare the nation’s opioid crisis “a national emergency,” saying it is a “serious problem the likes of which we have never had.”
President Trump is showing he is a progressive and getting sucked into the swamp. Progressives left and right declare “War on something” where that something is whatever fits. Trump’s declaration is a variation on the War on Drugs. His adminsitration was clever enough to avoid the same “War on” label but its the same thing.
The War on Drugs initially by President Richard Nixon and US Congress and continued: Fail. The legalization to varying degrees by states of marijuana and the ease of availability suggests this failed also.
The U.S. also had the War on Poverty by President Lyndon B bing-bing-bing, Johnson and US Congress: Fail.
In the decade following the 1964 introduction of the war on poverty, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level since comprehensive records began in 1958: from 17.3% in the year the Economic Opportunity Act was implemented to 11.1% in 1973. They have remained between 11 and 15.2% ever since. It is important to note, however, that the steep decline in poverty rates began in 1959, 5 years before the introduction of the war on poverty (see figure 4 below).
Expect more aggressive policing, arrests, headlines, wasted tax money, civil liberties violations, larger bureaucracies in government and elsewhere, and failure.
