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.