According to political talking points, the purpose of The War on Drugs is to reduce drug use, especially among minors. But over a ten-year period the number of teen deaths attributed to heroin use in the U.S. went up 157% between 1999 and 2009, says the National Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Among 12- to 17-year-olds, introductions to heroin have increased 80 per cent since 2002, according to data obtained by NBC. The prevalence of heroin is often connected to prescription pain medication, like Oxycontin, which is legal and easily accessible to some teens.

Just about any drug is “easily accessible,” especially with the profits to be made on the black market, but when you focus all your “anti-drug” education on lying to kids about marijuana, the message about how deadly other illicit substances are gets lost in the noise.

What are we spending all this drug war money on? Where are the results? The results were are aiming for is not dead teenagers. It’s time to take a different approach.

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- Joe Klare