Not, of course, that it had any chance of success as a war. The “enemy” is a large percentage of the American people, a people renowned for their independence of thought and action. Any attempt to “protect” them from themselves has always been met with resistance, derision and failure.
We are told that drugs kill people, that drug dealers are murderers.
50,000 people die each year because of automobiles. Are automobile dealers murderers? And yet, this is far, far more than the number of people killed by “recreational” drugs.
Better we should permit the people the freedom to choose for themselves, but protect them from mislabeled, impure drugs, than attempt, feebly to prevent them from obtaining them.
Billions of dollars have been spent, millions of Americans families have been disrupted as millions of Americans, innocent of all but attempting to pursue happiness after their own fashion, have been imprisoned. And yet, there has been no perceptible effect upon the availability of recreational drugs—in fact, it is easier to procure a wider variety of better quality pharmaceuticals today than at any other time in US history!
On average, people with drug convictions, “crimes” (vices more accurately) which directly affected only themselves, serve monger terms in prison than murderers and rapists. Yes, you can kill your neighbor and rape his wife and children and serve less prison time than cultivating a small patch of marijuana for your own families medicinal use.
Mandatory sentencing, asset forfeiture and the relative safety of pursuing such cases, have combined to produce a law enforcement environment with crooked police who are highly aware that drug busts are safer for the police and result in budget increases and additionally provide ample opportunity for individual police officers to benefit from ‘alternative income’.
The only people protected by the current “War on Drugs” are the pharmaceutical companies—and crooked police.
For the most part, this has been a ‘war’, which no one is fighting. Oh, the government is spending money like air to fight it, but the ‘enemy’ is not fighting a war, the users and dealers and manufacturers are merely attempting to do business—successfully, despite a hostile environment.
Most of the “illegal” (I use quotes because there is not constitutional justification for prohibiting drug use—no proof of threat to the general public exists!) drug use is nearly always voluntary, and when it is not, it is covered under ‘battery’. Listing drugs as illegal merely denies the users of protection against adulterated, mislabeled and contaminated drugs. If anything, it protects the dealers and manufacturers! It is not possible to go to court to prosecute a dealer for selling adulterated drugs.
The drug laws began with a good idea, the Pure Food and Drug Act. A law passed to prevent people from ingesting unknown, impure substances. Expanding the law to prohibit entire classes of compounds from possession and use expands the law past the boundaries of the constitution.
Yes, people do die and have their lives ruined by drug use. And most of them are damaged by alcohol tobacco, caffeine and nicotine. All of which are legal, all of which can and do cause damage and death. All drug use is a personal choice, not a community choice (excepting such tragedies as Jonestown.)
There is no such thing as a safe world. There never will be. But America was not designed or intended to be ‘safe’ but rather to permit freedom of choice. That includes the right to be foolish, stupid, vain and self-destructive. To remove ‘bad’ choices is to effectively remove all choices. And that, is the death knell of freedom.
You will die. I will die. America herself will probably fall at some time. It is the nature of humanity. Choice as to how you will live is worth fighting for—to the point of death. Anyone who would remove your choices is your enemy, no matter their good intentions.