Some thread-drift flotsam

Published: July 2, 2005, 11:40 am

Updated: July 2, 2005, 11:55 am

Some thoughts about (The War on) drugs

One of the threads on LP recently involved a man in the NE who committed grand larceny against a lottery ticket buyer. He was charged with a misdemeanor, a slap on the hands.

This led to a few remarks about why that happened.

The reason it happened is called ‘The War on Drugs’.

We no longer have a priority to prosecute and dissuade crimes with victims because the system is chock full of drug criminals, loaded to the gills. And every piece of the system is biased in favor of continuing in that direction so long as the Feds pour money into local police departments, judges get more jobs, lawyers get richer, prisons bulge with money and funding.

A bank robber was asked why he robbed banks. “Because that’s where the money is,” he replied.

Sorry folks, but the money on the streets is in drugs, the money in criminal justice is in drugs. It’s not in prosecuting the guy who steals your car, rapes your daughter, or mugs you.

I’ve been blessed to have been intimately familiar over the last half century with a lot of people who were users of, or were addicted to illegal drugs. I can say without reservation that I believe use of those drugs is a lousy choice for a person to make with life.

I’d go a step further and say, based on hard experience, that Meth users, both tweakers and blasters, are, without exception, among the sorriest, least-trustworthy, most incorrigible I’ve ever encountered. To call them swine would be a defamation of character to the hog community.

However, having said that, I’d also point out that the so-called War on Drugs is an abysmal failure. It’s had a quarter century to succeed, cost buzzillions of dollars, filled the prison houses, made legions of lawyers wealthy, gotten us hundreds of thousands more cops, judges, restrictions and intrusions into who can kick our door down, and when. It’s driven the price of drugs so high they’re more available today than when the War on Drugs began in 1980.

Thousands of young girls are now ‘Coke whores’ in every city in America. Thousands of young men who committed no other crime than possessing a forbidden substance are being raped nightly in our prisons. And any drug anyone wants is easily obtainable anywhere, same as always, but with a higher pricetag. Even inside the prisons.

Maybe it’s time for some re-thinking on how much we’re willing to sacrifice to keep people from making lousy choices.

Maybe it’s time to put recreational drugs, pharmaceutical quality and drugstore prices on the shelves where people can buy them without helping to support the legions of scumballs feeding on the illicit drug business whether they’re Meth cooks, cops, lawyers, judges, legislators, prison guards, or local crack house operators.

Jack

Entry #111

Comments

Rip Snorter - Jul 2, 2005, 12:40 pm

Afterthought:

Surprisingly, maybe, this is the 'conservative' view of things. WF Buckley argued persuasively in much the same vein on the issue in a televised debate on PBS around 1990. However, things haven't changed much since then, except another generation of money has flowed down the drain, another generation of lives, another generation of eroded rights of the citizenry. But we can hug ourselves because we're trying to do the right thing, even if it's wrong, even if it's a waste, even if it's helping to keep muggers on the streets.
J

Todd - Jul 2, 2005, 1:45 pm

I'd call it a Libertarian viewpoint, not Conservative. When it comes to drugs, some conservatives have a big huccup and support this view, but I do not believe that makes it a Conservative view. A more traditionally conservative alternative would be to allow the states to decide their own drug laws, but not to legalize them on a federal basis.

Rip Snorter - Jul 2, 2005, 3:53 pm

I've never heard WFB accused of being a Libertarian, but the old-time conservatives certainly vilified a lot of his views all those years when he was considered the leading edge of conservative thinking.

However, WFB aside, I'd be in favor of anything that restores power in anywhere in the political spectrum to the states. Including drug enforcement.

Jack

Todd - Jul 3, 2005, 1:49 pm

The issue of drugs is one area in which there is no clear consensus of thought, and where a lot of people "switch sides" in their political beliefs. Some liberals, who have seen the devastating effects that drugs have on poor neighborhoods, become quite conservative in their support of the government's war on drugs, and want to punish offenders with stiff sentences. Some conservatives, acknowledging the dispair of a seemingly unwinnable war on drugs, take a libertarian approach as a countermeasure.

Like you, I would like to see more power taken AWAY from the federal government, and handed back to the states. Unlike some of my conservative brothers, I would like to see the states decide how they want to handle drugs. The bottom line is that there is no correct answer. Every path leads to some kind of problem. But I think the increased states rights path is the lesser of all evils, and goes back to what the framers intended.

-Todd

Some thread-drift flotsam

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