Are We Winning The War on Drugs?

WASHINGTON -- Americans believe overwhelmingly that the U.S. is losing the war on drugs and are unenthusiastic about spending more money to win it, according to aRasmussen poll released Tuesday.

The national telephone survey found only 7 percent of American adults think the United States is winning the war on drugs, while 82 percent say the country is losing and 12 percent aren't sure. That's a marked decrease in support since AngusReid Public Opinion last posed the question in June, when two-thirds of Americans considered it a failure.

The U.S. government's war on drugs, officially launched in 1971, costs an estimated $20 billion to $25 billion annually in anti-drug policy efforts alone, according toreporting from The New York Times. That doesn't include the tremendous costs associated with prosecuting and incarcerating drug offenders. Meanwhile, hard drug use in America remains steady.

Only 23 percent of survey responders felt the U.S. doesn't spend enough on the war on drugs, while 34 percent think it spends too much. Other poll findings:

-- 51 percent of respondents said alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, while 24 percent said pot is more dangerous and 24 percent aren't sure.

-- 60 percent said marijuana laws should be left to the states, while 27 percent said enforcement should be done by the federal government.

-- 88 percent of respondents said they hadn't smoked pot in the last year.

-- Recent pot users are twice as likely as non-users -- 60 percent to 30 percent -- to think the government spends too much money on the war on drugs.

The survey, which sampled 1,000 adults on Nov. 9 and Nov. 10, comes after residents of Colorado and Washington voted last week to approve legalization of recreational marijuana, a historic move that puts them at odds with the federal Controlled Substances Act.

The survey had a sampling error of +/- three percentage points with a confidence level of 95 percent.

Conservative Politics, 'Low-Effort' Thinking Linked In New Study

Conservative Politics, 'Low-Effort' Thinking Linked In New

Conservatives and liberals don't seem to agree about much, and they might not agree about recent studies linking conservatism to low intelligence and "low-effort" thinking.

As The Huffington Post reported in February, a study published in the journal "Psychological Science" showed that children who score low on intelligence tests gravitate toward socially conservative political views in adulthood--perhaps because conservative ideologies stress "structure and order" that make it easier to understand a complicated world.

Ouch.

And now there's the new study linking conservative ideologies to "low-effort" thinking.

"People endorse conservative ideology more when they have to give a first or fast response," the study's lead author, University of Arkansas psychologist Dr. Scott Eidelman, said in a written statement released by the university.

Does the finding suggest that conservatives are lazy thinkers?

"Not quite," Dr. Eidelman told The Huffington Post in an email. "Our research shows that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism, not that political conservatives use low-effort thinking."

For the study, a team of psychologists led by Dr. Eidelman asked people about their political viewpoints in a bar and in a laboratory setting.

Bar patrons were asked about social issues before blowing into a Breathalyzer. As it turned out, the political viewpoints of patrons with high blood alcohol levels were more likely to be conservative than were those of patrons whose blood alcohol levels were low.

But it wasn't just the alcohol talking, according to the statement. When the researchers conducted similar interviews in the lab, they found that people who were asked to evaluate political ideas quickly or while distracted were more likely to express conservative viewpoints.

"Keeping people from thinking too much...or just asking them to deliberate or consider information in a cursory manner can impact people's political attitudes, and in a way that consistently promotes political conservatism," Dr. Eidelman said in the email.

The study was published online in the journal "Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin."