The Drug Cartels, the organizations that produce and smuggle hard drugs
for distribution and sale in the United States are using a series of
increasingly sophisticated techniques to bring their wares into our
country. As a consequence the cost of enforcing the prohibition on the sale and
use of the same hard drugs has risen to virtually astronomical levels.
What's to be done?
Let's start by examining how the mess began.
One theory is that at the repeal of Prohibition, the insane attempt to
ban the consumption of alcohol, there were a mass of federal agents
looking for work. And by looking for work, I mean the acquisition of
another federal job, not an actually honest job doing real work. The
appalling employment situation in the civilian sector during The
Depression may not have been a factor here. They're federal government employees after all.
Another factor was that the unholy alliance of Holy Rollers and
Progressives still believed in the social control attempted in
Prohibition. They refused to understand that real virtues, such as
sobriety, can't be enforced at the point of a gun. Instead the unholy
coalition sought to deny their error and instead inflict another mistake
on our nation with another insane act of legislation.
Hard drugs such as Cocaine and Heroin were developed by pharmaceutical
companies as proper pain suppression medicines. At the time there was
only a minor subculture in existence that abused these medicines.
But the fact that there were only that a small number of people abused these
medicines, and that the negative social impact was nonexistent, didn't
stop the those lobbying for unemployed Prohibition agents and moral
morons from pushing the clearly necessary legislation.
The mass of politicians faced with being held to account for Prohibition
and the Great Depression needed a sacred cause to restore their exalted
position with the electorate. The prohibition of hard drugs along with Marijuana fit the bill. At first there was no clearly discernible adverse effects. Some users
switched back to alcohol to destroy themselves while others remained
undetected. The task of a federal agent was a government job after all.
Cocaine was still administered under medical supervision. By one
report President Roosevelt received a dose from his doctor later in the
afternoon on the Infamous Day, and quite frankly I don't blame him at
all.
But there were still users of hard drugs and therefore a market. The
manufacture only required a simple knowledge of chemistry that an upper
level of criminal could understand and the early suppression efforts
were only a jobs program and therefore a joke. But the street level
pushers were only receiving a minimum income at best. They had to
expand their user base in order to increase their income.
The increase in the number of discernible users in turn provoked a call
for tighter enforcement which in turn increased the cost drug pushing.
The self-reinforcing cycle continued to gain more power until the
present absurd situation has come to effect.
So what's to be done?
The absolute first thing that must be understood is that no actual
virtue, in this case cleanness from drugs, can never be imposed at
gunpoint. The only person who ever stop a drug user is the user
himself. He has to recognize the fact that he is destroying himself, and only he can make the decision and act to save himself.
With the pretense of morality buried we must then legalize the hard
drugs and Marijuana. The specialized enforcers of the drug laws can be
retired, retrained and reassigned to real police positions, or simply
fired.
Legalization will have the beneficial effect of reducing federal
spending at the same time. A further effect will be to cut off the
federally mandated stream of funding to the Drug Cartels. Criminals
simply can't compete on pricing with a business that has no overhead
costs associated with operating in a black market. Criminal
organizations will be faced with the alternatives of legitimization or
bankruptcy, but that's their problem.
With the subsequent drop in drug prices the pressure to commit crimes to
pay for the addiction will be relieved. But again the only valid
solution to drug addiction is for the user to end it himself.
The legalization of hard drugs won't solve all of the associated
problems of usage but it will restore government to the proper mission
of defending our lives. And it will make he situation better for
everyone in general.
I fully acknowledge the fact that this was the position of the
Libertarian Party. I was an active member of the Libertarian Party. But the Libertarian Party in
fact is a joke.
