With American drug use levels essentially the same as — and levels of drug-related violence either the same as or lower than — those in countries like the Netherlands with liberal drug laws, public support for the War on Drugs appears to be faltering. This was most recently evidenced in the victory of major drug decriminalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington. Some misguided commentators go so far as to say the Drug War is “a failure.” Here, to set the record straight, are fifteen ways in which it is a resounding success:
1. It has surrounded the Fourth Amendment’s “search and seizure” restrictions, and similar provisions in state constitutions, with so many “good faith,” “reasonable suspicion” and “reasonable expectation of privacy” loopholes as to turn them into toilet paper for all intents and purposes.
2. In so doing, it has set precedents that can be applied to a wide range of other missions, like the War on Terror.
3. It has turned drug stores and banks into arms of the state that constantly inform on their customers.
4. Via programs like DARE, it has turned kids into drug informants who monitor their parents for the authorities.
5. As a result of the way DARE interacts with other things like Zero Tolerance policies and warrantless inspections by drug-sniffing dogs, the Drug War has conditioned children to believe “the policeman is their friend,” and to view snitching as admirable behavior, and to instinctively look for an authority figure to report to the second they see anything the least bit eccentric or anomalous.
6. Via civil forfeiture, it has enabled the state to create a lucrative racket in property stolen from citizens never charged, let alone convicted, of a crime. Best of all, even possessing large amounts of cash, while technically not a crime, can be treated as evidence of intent to commit a crime — saving the state the trouble of having to convert all that stolen tangible property into liquid form.
7. It has enabled local police forces to undergo military training, create paramilitary SWAT teams that operate just like the U.S. military in an occupied enemy country, get billions of dollars worth of surplus military weaponry, and wear really cool black uniforms just like the SS.
8. Between the wars on the urban drug trade and rural meth labs, it has brought under constant harassment and surveillance two of the demographic groups in our country — inner city blacks and rural poor whites — least socialized to accept orders from authority either in the workplace or political system, and vital components of any potential movement for freedom and social justice.
9.In addition, it brings those who actually fall into the clutches of the criminal justice system into a years-long cycle of direct control through imprisonment and parole.
10. By disenfranchising convicted felons, it restricts participation in the state’s “democratic” processes to only citizens who are predisposed to respect the state’s authority.
11. In conjunction with shows like Law and Order and COPS, it conditions the middle class citizenry to accept police authoritarianism and lawlessness as necessary to protect them against the terrifying threat of people voluntarily ingesting substances into their own bodies.
12. Through “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear” rhetoric, it conditions the public to assume the surveillance state means well and that only evildoers object to ubiquitous surveillance.
13. In conjunction with endless military adventures overseas and “soldiers defend our freedoms” rhetoric, it conditions the public to worship authority figures in uniform, and predisposes them to cheerfully accept future augmentations of military and police authority without a peep of protest.
14. It creates enormously lucrative opportunities for the large banks — one of the most important real constituencies of the American government — to launder money from drug trafficking.
15. Thanks to major drug production centers like the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, the opium industry in Afghanistan, and the cocaine industry in South America, it enables the CIA — the world’s largest narcotrafficking gang — to obtain enormous revenues for funding black ops and death squads around the world. This network of clandestine intelligence agencies, narcotraffickers and death squads, by the way, is the other major real constituency of the American government.
The Drug War would indeed be a failure if its real function was to reduce drug consumption or drug-related violence. But the success or failure of state policies is rightly judged by the extent to which they promote the interests served by the state. The Drug War is a failure only if the state exists to serve you.
Translations for this article:
- Spanish, 15 Beneficios de la Guerra contra las Drogas.
- Portuguese, Quinze Benefícios da Guerra às Drogas.
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, Seventeen Benefits of the War on Drugs, River Cities [Iowa] Reader, 03/20/13
- Kevin Carson, Fifteen Benefits of the War on Drugs, Sonoran News, 03/20/13
- Kevin Carson, Truthdig, Pacifica Radio, 03/14/13
- Alexander Reed Kelly, The Orwellian Consequences of the War on Drugs, Truthdig, 03/13/13
- Kevin Carson, 15 Benefits of the War on Drugs, Counterpunch, 03/12/13
The War on Drugs should end.
Hard drugs should certainly be reconsidered in legality but soft drugs should be legal; to either make the growing and selling of drugs such as marijuana/cannabis a legitimate profession that is liberated from the black market (which forces them to engage in other criminal markets) and/or setting up a state-regulated market to remove some of the health problems caused by the illegal market such as junk ingredients to increase deal weight to
make profit.
Hope that made sense…
Tom, why should the State be involved in "regulating" socially taboo "drugs" at all? If the State sets up a tight, regulated market for, say, Marijuana,Heroin, or what have you, sure, it would be better than these substances being illegal, but the "War on Drugs" would not be stopped. The DEA would simply merge into the BATF and/or IRS.
Now, theoretically, I suppose one could argue for government "regulatory oversight" under the guise of "safety" which operated efficiently enough that taxed and regulated drugs would not cost that much more than untaxed drugs (which would make the black market for such drugs a marginal economic activity, like the black market in untaxed cigarettes/"buttlegging")…. but that is highly unlikely given the insanity of State "Drug warriors" and the current social/cultural context.
Sure, some of the "harder" drugs, like Crystal Meth and such are legitimately "dangerous", but I do not see what the State could actually "do" to lessen the instances of people overdosing and such.
At the end of the day though, I'll take any step away from Drug Prohibition as a good thing.
I find it very encouraging that even with the current system of medical cannabis in California and the aggression of the federal police against the different cannabis testing agencies that many customers will still pay the premium for a tested product. This is just a glimpse into the possibilities of a self regulating freed market in recreational drugs. I do wish cannabis legalization would bring the price down so that even more customers could rationalize the costs of testing.
We ought to ask ourselves: whom is the War on Drugs good for? Well, it has been a good war for a whole host of parties that feed off and are fed by the industry, the criminal industry, prohibition really is: financial services, industrial military complex, enforcement agencies, security service providers, politicians, captains of industry…you name it!
As far as the US is concerned, it has used the War on Drugs to both blackmail and entice drug producing and transit countries to follow US foreign policies, amongst them, its drugs policies.
For instance, it has used the War on Drugs as a securitisation tool, i.e. as a decoy to pursue its national security policies in drug producing and transit countries. The Plan Colombia is a perfect case in point.
Certification is another tool the US has keenly used to force producing and transit countries to follow US policies. In order to ‘certify’ (or ‘decertify’) a given country, the US State Department evaluates on a regular basis the level of cooperation shown by that country with the US anti-drugs policies, and depending on how strong and committed that cooperation has been in its eyes, the US gives or denies its "seal of approval".
Needles to say, decertification can have, and do have, serious implications, it damages the credibility of that country and its stand among the international community, and it may have dire economic and financial repercussions as well, including withdrawal of US “aid”, difficulties to obtain loans from international lending institutions and trade sanctions.
And then, there is the icing on the cake: the so-called “aid programmes” such as the Mérida Initiative and the Plan Colombia, for instance.
For starters, to call them "aid" is a misnomer, a seriously misleading one, for it leads people to believe that they are some sort of donation or gift, but they are not. They are, for all intents and purposes, something akin to "lending money to oneself".
Even though they are expressed as X or Y amount of dollars, they are actually the equivalent in dollars of the goods and services provided by the "donor", in this case the US—usually helicopters, guns, security companies services, advisors, and so on and so forth.
Estimates vary according to the specific destinations and objectives of any given “assistance program”, but in many cases the percentage remaining in the US could be as high as 90%.
And to add insult to injury, the counterpart, in this case Mexico or Colombia, is usually required to match, although not necessarily dollar to dollar, what it has received from the "donor".
For instance, it is estimated that Mexico spends 13 US dollars for every dollar the US "gives" to Mexico to enforce the War on Drugs. And guess what, the lion's share of this expenditure is not spent in goods and services provided by Mexican or Colombian companies, but by companies overseas, mainly US suppliers.
One thing is for sure, it is not a gift to Mexico or Colombia; rather, it is an economic mechanism to prop up industries and services in the US.
Gart Valenc
Twitter: @gartvalenc
I see what you did there, you said benefit but you meant the opposite. Wow that was clever.
See the YouTube video: "Thomas Szasz: The Right to Take Drugs."
Szasz explains the futility of any argument that attempts to medicalize the case for or against various substances.