Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2001
Source: Northwest Florida Daily News (FL)
Copyright: 2001 Northwest Florida Daily News
Contact:  http://www.nwfdailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/313
Author: Tibor R. Machan
Note: Tibor Machan is a professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA, and 
a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He 
advises Freedom Communications, parent company of The Yuma Daily Sun.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/bush.htm (Bush, George)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?170 (Downey, Robert Jr.)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

US WAR ON DRUGS IS INSANE, INJUST AND IMMORAL

There are many issues about which it is important to do a lot of thinking - 
the distinctions are murky and the policies ambiguous, so it takes a lot of 
figuring to get it right.  Just how far should the military go in its 
efforts to defend the country? Should 14-year-old kids be prosecuted as 
adults for grave crimes? Is abortion a rights violation or would its 
prohibition be? Does the Second Amendment's reference to "people" mean 
individuals or groups?

Yet there are issues over which I have stopped debating and now just feel 
sad and angry.  George W.  Bush's re-ignition of the miserable and shameful 
war on drugs is such an issue.

I have written my heart out arguing against this policy over the years.

I have debated state attorneys general and professors of chemistry, and by 
now I am just angry with anyone who thinks the government or anyone else is 
authorized, morally and politically, to force people to go to jail for 
engaging even in the most "abusive" drug consumption and trade.  How can 
anyone with the slightest sense of justice tolerate this damnable approach 
to trying to deal with drug abuse?

First, it is mostly self-abuse - drug abusers do not force anyone to take 
drugs.  Second, even the sale and distribution to adults of the harmful 
drugs cannot be anyone else's business aside from family and friends - 
certainly, clearly, not to the extant that others somehow gain moral rights 
to physically, forcibly interfere!

Who on earth are these folks who take it upon themselves to bully their way 
into other people's lives to rescue them from themselves in the most 
uncivilized way that people can interact, by means of the gun! Yes, they 
are drug czars -- and doesn't that clue folks into just how evil they are? 
For at the end of every legal edict there has to be guns, and when the 
edict is unjust, these guns will have to be used unjustly whenever 
compliance isn't forthcoming.

Over the years, ever since I lived through the wild '60s, I have witnessed 
this vain effort to force people into sane behavior, at first mainly by 
conservatives but later by too many in the mainstream, even as some 
conservatives such as William F.  Buckley Jr.  have come to their senses 
about the matter.  The only consistently wise prominent voice on the topic 
has come from the Nobel Prize-winning economist - go figure - Milton 
Friedman, who has been calling for decriminalization for decades.

Nothing justifies this horror to which millions of Americans are put and 
which confronts, most visibly, the likes of actor Robert Downey Jr. who are 
in the public eye.  Perhaps because of the resentment many feel toward 
celebrities who risk their careers and talent so flagrantly by indulging in 
drug abuse, the general public seems to have no sense of the gross 
injustice of whisking these people off to court over and over again.

Yet it is the millions of unknown "criminals" who are forced to linger 
lengthy stretches of time in jail who are shown the most severe neglect and 
abuse with the injustice perpetrated against them when the soldiers of the 
war on drugs carry out their vile mission.  Folks should be in an uproar 
over this.

Instead of commentators and political leaders fretting about PC-related 
injustices - using the wrong words for blacks or Indian terms for baseball 
teams - it would be so gratifying to see all those who speak out in columns 
and other places in the media to mount a serious assault on the insanity 
that is the war on drugs.

But somehow the spirit of justice seems to have left the bulk of the people 
of this country.  Not even the shameful fact that America - "the leader of 
the free world" it used to be called - is now reputed to be a Western 
nation with the highest number of its citizens in jail ( mostly because of 
the insane war on drugs ) seems to move folks to quit this war.

One thing is for sure: On this score there is no difference between the 
liberal and conservative political leadership.  George W.  is not a bit 
compassionate when it comes to those who engage in drug abuse and the 
distribution and sale of the substances - never mind that alcohol kills far 
more people than even the hardest of drugs and never mind that 
...  .  Well, I am just too nauseated by this feature of our society to go 
through all the arguments again.  Not that I have any sympathy for drug 
abusers, anymore than I would for those who peddle yellow journalism or 
sell sex or ruin their lives - I had to walk out of "Leaving Las Vegas" 
because I couldn't stand how the Nicholas Cage character drank himself to 
death!

But none of this is the state's business, not when it is clear enough that 
those running the state have no moral authority to impose upon others their 
will, no matter how much support they have!

A free society puts up with sleaze, as it does with trash and pornography 
and other undesirable stuff, because in such a society all men and women 
are supposed to be equal under the law! And the law must be confined to the 
securing of our rights instead of being perverted into an instrument of 
morally obscene paternalism.
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MAP posted-by: Thunder