The war on drugs

Source



A friend sent me an article by José de Córdoba, published in The Wall Street Journal in which he reports on the conclusions of “a commission led by three former Latin American heads of state [in which they] blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point.”

The problem is that there is lots of money to be made from opposing illegal drugs, so much that legalizing them would be very bad for certain people. For example, what would happen to all those poor, unemployed DEA agents and their superiors? With the illegal market out of business, how could they justify all that military aid to Colombia? And what would happen to all the palm-greasing and corruption for local officials? And we haven’t even started to worry about the miserable fate of the jobless drug czars!

What I wrote to my friend is this:

The drug problem is similar to arms production. As long as they are in use, someone will make a pile of money producing them.

But since you can't forbid what is deeply desired you have to legislate it.

When I did my thesis on alcohol -years and years ago- I read about the Greek king Penteo who tried to forbid the Dionysian celebrations. As a result he was torn to pieces by the god's frenzied followers. It's the same with drugs: you have to permit their use under controlled circumstances or society will invent very violent ways to worship their intoxication deity.

If I were queen of the world, I'd buy all the poppy produce and the rest of the "recreational" drug materials, I'd manufacture the stuff, and I'd open centers where registered people could get it for free. They'd have to take part in therapy, health control, etc, but I'd know who they are, and I'd leave organized crime with no customers. But I'm not a queen, am I.

It's the same for the everyday guns that show up on the streets. Anyone with a gun permit would have to be in weekly group therapy. And of course, this queen wouldn't be taking her country to war all the time. I'd go to Afghanistan and those other places where everyone is so unhappy, and I'd build hospitals, schools, irrigation systems, factories….. and nobody would want to be on a suicide mission. They'd prefer to sit in a café smoking those water pipes and telling each other stories, knowing their kids are safely in school.

See also:

1. Timeline of war on drugs: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9252490
2. Awareness of the futility of the war on drugs: http://stopthedrugwar.org/
3. Former presidents blast drug repression efforts: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29145662/