Pubdate: Fri, 17 Apr 2009
Source: DrugSense Weekly (DSW)
Section: Feature Article
Website: http://www.drugsense.org
Author: Sheldon Richman
Note: Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom 
Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare 
State, and editor of The Freeman magazine.  Visit his blog "Free 
Association" at http://www.sheldonrichman.com/

ENDING THE DRUG WAR WOULD END THE VIOLENCE

The news media are rife with stories about Mexican drug cartels 
operating throughout the United States and drug-related violence 
threatening U.S.  cities near the border.  Americans are becoming 
reluctant to cross into Mexican towns for fear of getting caught in 
the crossfire.

Do we need another reason to end the abominable war on "drugs" (a war 
on people, actually)?

You read that right.  The drug trade is violent because the U.S. 
government persists in trying to eradicate the manufacture, sale, and 
consumption of certain substances.  If there were no drug war, there 
would be no drug violence.  Those who doubt this should ask 
themselves why violent cartels aren't fighting over the tobacco and 
liquor trades.

In America we play a dangerous game. We pretend that if the 
government outlaws a product - such as heroin or cocaine or marijuana 
- - it vanishes.  But we know it's not true. The product simply goes 
into the black market, where anyone who wants it can get it. They 
still can't keep drugs out of prisons!

The key question is, who provides it? When a product is banned, 
respectable people tend to stay out of the trade. That leaves it to 
those who have few scruples - including scruples about the use of 
violence.  Indeed, the black market rewards such people. If a party 
reneges on a contract for heroin, the other has to take matters into 
his own hands because he can't sue. Cutthroats prosper.

So we shouldn't be surprised when violence erupts between drug gangs 
and harms innocent people.  While each perpetrator of mayhem is 
responsible for his actions, we must also condemn the entity that 
created the environment in which violence pays.

That entity is government. As long as it enforces the ban on drugs, 
there will be violence within the drug trade. And there will be more 
than that: police brutality, particularly in minority communities; 
erosion of civil liberties; corruption of the legal system; prisons 
full of nonviolent drug consumers; development of more-potent 
substances; and the enticement of youth - the lure of forbidden fruit.

Those are only the domestic effects.  By trying to suppress the 
growing of coca and poppy in foreign countries, the U.S. government 
makes enemies for America, creates constituencies for terrorist and 
guerilla movements, and helps to finance their operations.

Nothing good comes from prohibition.  Yet the evils of prohibition 
are blamed on drug consumers and guns!

So why is there a "war on drugs"? It provides a nice living for 
demagogic politicians, DEA thugs, and all kinds of "drug-abuse 
experts" who gladly accept taxpayer money for services no one would 
pay for willingly.  There are big bucks in prohibition, compliments 
of the taxpayers.  The only people less eager for an end to it are 
the cartel bosses, whose profits would evaporate overnight.

Americans have been systematically propagandized by the 
aforementioned people into believing that chaos would rule if drugs 
were legal.  How absurd. Most who abstain from forbidden drugs today 
wouldn't start using them if they became legal tomorrow. Besides, as 
former drug czar Bill Bennett acknowledges, most consumers of illegal 
substances are self-responsible.  We aren't aware of them because 
they support their families, hold decent jobs, and pay their 
bills.  Contrary to the anti-drug government-industrial complex, the 
danger is not in the drug; it's in people and how they choose to use 
drugs.  A drug habit is a choice. True, some people harm themselves 
with illegal drugs, but other people harm themselves with things that 
are perfectly legal, such as the drug we call alcohol. To the extent 
people get hurt because black-market drugs are impure, again the 
blame belongs largely with government.  An open market would offer 
consumer protection.

In a free society adults would be free to ingest what they want. Drug 
consumers would be responsible for their actions, but as long as they 
were peaceful the law would leave them alone.

The drug war should end simply because it is unfit for a free 
society.  Perhaps the latest violence will finally prompt people to 
think about this outrage.
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