The Sick and Futile War On Drugs
by Joel TurtelThe fact that the head of our government’s War on Drugs is called the drug “czar” reveals a great deal about the sick “war” on drugs. Czars were the absolute rulers of Russia for a thousand years. They were totalitarian dictators, above the law. In Russia there was no such thing as a Constitution or Bill of Rights.
Russia’s people were rightless creatures, most of them serfs. The czar had absolute control over all property in Russia and could confiscate people’s property with impunity. He could imprison or execute people at his whim. He could regulate all commerce in Russia through arbitrary edicts and regulations. He could dictate to all Russians what they could or could not do, based on the czar’s moral or religious values. His moral code was sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church, the state religion.
Unfortunately, our drug czar is too close a relative-in-spirit to the Russian czars. He wages war against the American people’s basic liberties, their right of free choice. Drug laws promote arbitrary confiscation of peoples’ cars, homes, and bank accounts. Drug laws condone violent, middle-of-the-night raids on people’s homes by SWAT teams who break down doors without warrants, and sometimes kill innocent people. Drug laws let airport police conduct “cavity” searches on innocent travelers’ bodies, and searches of their luggage. They allow arbitrary police searches of cars on our highways, without warrants or probable cause. Drug laws condone long prison terms for millions of Americans whose only “crime” was simple possession of a single joint of marijuana.
Our drug “czars” always claim that their War on Drugs “protects our children.” Yet, it turns out that the War on Drugs not only doesn’t protect our kids, but actually hurts them. Instead of getting kids off drugs, the War on Drugs pushes more kids into taking drugs. How can that be?
Organized crime, Columbian and Afghanistan poppy growers, and foreign terrorist organizations sell high-priced drugs to millions of Americans, and make huge profits because the drugs are illegal. Local drug dealers also make huge profits, so they push drugs on school children. If the profits weren’t there, the pushers would disappear.
If drugs were legalized, they would be manufactured and marketed by pharmaceutical companies. Competition would sharply reduce the price of drugs down to the price of a pack of cigarettes. Illegal drug pushers and crime syndicates would be out of business very quickly, as they would not be able to compete with pharmaceutical companies.
That’s what happened after Prohibition ended in the 1930s. During Prohibition, many people died from adulterated booze. When Prohibition ended, organized crime went out of the liquor business. They couldn’t compete with Seagrams and other legitimate manufacturers who made high-quality, low-cost liquor. When drugs are legalized, the quality of drugs offered would be high, so adulterated drugs and dirty needles would be a thing of the past.
Best of all, drug use by teenagers, the teenagers our drug “czars” want to protect, would drop sharply. That statement might seem contradictory. Why would drug use go down if drugs became legal and more freely available? Because profits are so high, drug pushers roam our schools enticing school kids to take drugs. If people could buy marijuana and other drugs for the price of a pack of cigarettes because fierce competition between pharmaceutical companies slashed prices, drug pushers’ profits would be gone. The pushers would be out of business. They would have no incentive to entice kids into becoming addicts. As a result, the number of kids using drugs would drop sharply.
That is exactly what happened when drugs were legal in England for fifty years prior to 1971. Drug use and crimes related to drugs were far lower before 1971. After 1971, England made drugs illegal, and drug use then became Britain’s number one crime problem. The drug laws in England had the exact opposite effect they were intended to have. They increased drug use and drug-related crime. The same has happened here. Our drug laws incite drug pushers to sell drugs to our children. So our drug “czar” is not protecting our children. His drug war is hurting the very children he wants to protect.
Besides hurting our children, the War on Drugs is creating a Federal tyranny. The Federal government acts as if it were a dictatorship. Several States, including Arizona and California, have passed Referendums legalizing the medical use of marijuana. Yet, Federal SWAT teams still invade the homes of people in these States who use marijuana for valid medical reasons such as AIDS and cancer.
The Federal government has told the States, in effect, that we don’t care what Referendums your citizens pass. If Federal law still prohibits a drug’s use for any reason, the Feds say, then the vote of the State’s citizens is null and void. Federal law, they say, is the “law of the land,” not State laws.
Here we see how far we have gone done the road to Federal tyranny. The States have become emasculated non-entities if one of their laws clashes with a Federal law. States rights, an issue the Civil War was fought over, is no longer an issue. The Federal government has usurped all power unto itself, despite the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, State laws, and citizen Referendums in various States.
Our drug czars “justify” their actions by claiming that the end justifies the means. “What does it matter if we “bend” the Bill of Rights, throw millions of Americans in prison, and confiscate their homes and bank accounts, if we can get drugs off the streets,” they proclaim. Like the Russian czars, “the end justifies the means” has been the moral rationalization of every bloody, self-righteous dictator in human history. In the name of their “moral code,” the Nazis and Communists killed or imprisoned tens of millions of innocent people. All the crimes committed by all the murderers of history are not a drop in the ocean compared to the crimes against humanity committed by governments who thought that their end justified using any means at their disposal.
Even if the number of Americans using drugs increased ten-fold after drugs become legal, that is totally irrelevant. Yes, irrelevant. Millions of Americans hurt themselves far worse in dozens of ways. They smoke, they drink and drive, they have unprotected sex, they eat fatty hamburgers that will give them heart attacks, they send their children to government-run public schools that turn their children into illiterates. Should we make “war” on everything people do to themselves that might cause them harm? Is personal stupidity the justification for a police state?
In a free country, along with freedom comes risk and personal responsibility. If you harm yourself with drugs, alcohol, or fatty hamburgers, you will pay the consequences. That is part of what freedom means. You reap what you sow. Risk is part of liberty, and risk is part of life. You cannot legislate away personal risk. To imprison people for the alleged “crime” of doing harm to their own bodies is morally obscene.
To do that takes away our most precious possession, our freedom. If every person in this country wanted to fry their brains with drugs if they became legal, that is their right, the right of free men and women, of free citizens. No drug “czar,” no self-righteous legislators, no “moral majority” has the right to abrogate our liberty because some stupid people harm themselves with drugs.
Even if the War on Drugs achieved its fantasy goal of wiping out all drug use in this country, at what cost would this be done? Who would want to live in a drug-free country as a slave-citizen, obedient to the dictates of tyrannical “moral” government officials? There are no drugs in prison (in reality, there are), but do we want to live in a country that has become a vast prison?
We cannot win this imbecile war on drugs because you cannot contain human greed. Once you criminalize drugs, you make potential criminals of millions of American citizens, just as Prohibition did. You then set the stage for the explosive growth of organized crime. You encourage career criminals to supply Americans with something they should be able to buy legally. In doing so, the War on Drugs creates huge profits for organized crime.
As a result, we could spend every cent of the annual multi-trillion dollar Federal budget on this war, but never win. You cannot stamp out human nature and human greed, or the criminal ingenuity that greed fosters. For every drug dealer or drug smuggler we catch, ten more looking for easy riches will take their place.
We have been fighting this insane War on Drugs for over 70 years. Only insane people and bureaucrats never learn from their mistakes. Only bureaucrats have the greed, arrogance, or stupidity to continue policies that are obvious, dismal failures. For proof, see our public schools. Given the power-hungry bureaucratic mentality, future drug czars will still be spouting their optimistic forecasts of “victory” against drugs a hundred years from now, when the drug 'problem' is worse than ever.
If we want to reduce drug use, why not respect people’s rights. Why not use a small part of the $50 billion government spends every year on drug police, court trials, prisons, and helicopter raids on Columbian farmers and American wheat fields, for a national, continuing, anti-drug ad campaign directed at kids? With free citizens, government should only have the right to convince, not compel. posted by joelt @ 2:29 PM
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