Hardly a week goes by without me seeing another think piece on the question: “Are we winning the war on drugs?”
That depends on who “we” is. The War on Drugs has certainly served some very powerful interests in our society. Between the Drug War and the War on Terror, we’ve militarized police culture with SWAT teams, turned the Fourth through Sixth Amendments into toilet paper, and created the biggest prison-industrial complex in the world. From the standpoint of those who push the Drug War the hardest, these are all — as Martha Stewart would say — good things.
The Drug War has handed over the entire country to organized crime gangs fighting over control of the drug trade. And one of the biggest gangs involved in this turf war is the one in police uniforms. Big city (and increasingly, small city) law enforcement is a wretched empire of entrapment, warrants sworn out on false pretenses, perjured testimony by jailhouse snitches, coerced plea bargains, and civil forfeiture robbery.
Internationally, by far the biggest drug cartel of all is the CIA. It’s used the global drug trade, from the Golden Triangle to the Northern Alliance territory in Afghanistan, to fund black ops that wouldn’t even pass the smell test of the U.S. Congress — and that’s saying a lot.
Just consider the real story behind Afghanistan. One of the reason the Taliban was so unpopular, and the population was so eager to throw off their rule, was that they really did hate drugs — they virtually stamped out the poppy cultivation that had been a main source of income for dirt-poor Afghans. Meanwhile, the opium trade flourished in Northern Alliance territory (a lot like the good ol’ boy sheriff here in Arkansas who turns a blind eye to the farmer with a mortgage who cultivates a little wacky weed to make ends meet). And now that the Northern Alliance has become the Afghan national government — that’s right, you got it — Afghanistan is once again the center of world opium production. If you believe Our Troops are really trying to stamp it out, you probably still look under your pillow for a dime from the Tooth Fairy.
So the Drug War is every bit a success in furthering the interests of America’s real government: The unholy alliance of the intelligence community, the drug cartels, the big banks that launder drug cartel money, and the domestic police state apparatus.
My guess is that the most hard-core drug warrior politicians, sincere or not, whether they’re aware of it or not, get most of their campaign funds from laundered drug cartel money — just as bootleggers used to be the biggest campaign contributors to teetotaling Baptist preachers running for office.
I would guess, further, that any major party presidential candidate who offered a credible promise to end the War on Drugs would find himself buried deeper than Jimmy Hoffa, with more fingerprints on the operation than a million Warren Commissions sitting for a million years could make sense of.
So in the War on Drugs, the important thing to keep in mind is that the public isn’t the customer — it’s the product. On second thought, maybe you better forget it and go back to watching “Dancing with the Stars.”
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, Two Cents: The “War on Drugs” is Really a War on You, Deming, New Mexico Headlight, 11/21/11
- Kevin Carson, The “War on Drugs” is Really a War on You, Carroll County, Maryland Standard, 11/01/11
A few objections:
1. Wouldn't the reluctance of U.S. soldiers to attack the opium fields be largely a matter of pacifying the natives rather than being in on the drug trade?
2. From a law and order standpoint, aren't the people pushed into milking welfare, vagrancy and petty theft by drug addiction a problem?
The soldiers are trying to stamp it out, and enraging the people they are supposed to win the hearts and minds of in the process. The contradictory policies of the US government are great for growing the state, but they don't solve any problems.
The number of people who are so addicted to drugs they have to steal or go on welfare is minute compared to the millions locked up for possession of marijuana or other victimless crimes. If we freed up the billions of dollars spent incarcerating them, we might be able to treat those who have real problems.
@Hidden Author
Whatever problems that are caused by drug addiction are far eclipsed by the problems that the Drug War has created. When innocent Central American farmers die because the CIA poured toxic herbicides over their land, is this really comparable “vagrancy and petty theft”?
It reminds me of the of the Jewish story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where Yahweh obliterated two cities because he didn’t like the way they were having sex…the classic story of a punishment that far outweighed the crime.
Maybe "innocent Central American farmers" shouldn't poison people?
1. Selling drugs is not “poisoning people” if users take the drugs voluntarily.
2. The word “poison” implies harm. Not all illegal drugs harm people.
3. These farmers don’t even necessarily grow drugs, they just happen to be living in the wake of the chemicals.
4. What about the drug growers children? Are they to be sacrificed in the name of preventing “petty theft and vagrancy”?
5. Even if the farmers are “poisoning people” (nope), you still support killing them without a trail.
6. What gives you, or anyone, the authority to decide what drugs should or should not be banned?
I would leave to hear your response to any of these comments.
Maybe you shouldn't poison us with your idiocy
Hidden Author, are you CIA? Sure sounds like it.
I say people are poisoned before a person hollowed out by drug addiction is in many ways a zombie. And I point out petty theft and vagrancy to show that the forces of law and order do not choose to address the drug issue but are COMPELLED to address the drug issue. And I don't support killing anyone over drug use–it's just that I refute your position that growers/users of drugs are purely victims even though their drug use is a big externality imposed on society. (Funny how this is an example of anarchists arguing that people can live by rules without the state while condemning the state for encouraging people to live by rules!)
But you know what? If a person can be addicted to drugs without being transformed into an externality on the rest of society, then I guess he or she has earned the freedom to decide which drugs he or she consumes–it's not like I advocate rules for the sake of rules…
You're right–no one outside the CIA supports America's drug laws!
You are trying to blame the producer of a certain product they took, but how could they be justly held responsible? The mere act of selling is a victimless crime. If I don’t have my coffee in the morning I cause a car wreck, should the CIA raid Folgers?…After all, your logic would say that by simply offering the product for me to buy, THEY are responsible for me being addicted to coffee. If you say not, then you are just cherry picking your particular externality because it already fits nicely into your world view.
“Funny how this is an example of anarchists arguing that people can live by rules without the state while condemning the state for encouraging people to live by rules!”
You are conflating the laws of the state with “rules”. No anarchist has argued that people would still follow oppressive laws without the state. They argue that people will spontaneously create cultural standards for their mutual benefit, not that people would still, as you say, “encourage” others to obey oppressive laws through arrests and violence.
“And I point out petty theft and vagrancy to show that the forces of law and order do not choose to address the drug issue but are COMPELLED to address the drug issue.”
The police, CIA, or whoever, chose to be part of the culture of violence and oppression the day they signed up for the job. They were “compelled” to arrest/kill drug sellers as much as I was…meaning in no way whatsoever.
If drug dealers weren’t pushed underground, it would be easier to prosecute those who sell a tainted or misleading product.
While some people take a puff of a joint and move on, long-term drug users especially the kind that go through the prison system have a strong tendency to become parasitic. If the majority of habitual coffee users were disabled by their consumption of coffee (remember that druggies often claim Social Security on grounds of "drug-induced disability"), then perhaps there would be a case for banning coffee. But in the real world, comparing coffee to cocaine or meth (marijuana isn't as bad as other drugs though it still has bad effects), is comparing apples and oranges.
And people don't join the police or the CIA to part of a "culture of violence and oppression"–they do so to get paid. But because they get paid by public funds, they often feel that they have a duty to promote public interests like law and order. And law and order requires that the issue of narcotics be addressed. So when I say they are compelled, I am referring to their strong sense of duty, something anarchists ignore probably because they do not feel a strong sense of duty in their own lives…
The fundamental idea that anarchists challenge is that there can be a justified authority that gets to dictate the decisions of others. That really is the crux of my argument. Until you understand the dilemma of authority yourself, it is difficult for me to make the case that banning drugs is a bad thing. We could go back and forth with the consequentialist arguments (Me: “Dead children in Central America”, You: “Creates Social Security parasites”), but we would be avoiding the core difference that lead us to our beliefs.
Why is slavery wrong since we now have so many nice pyramids? It’s just the freedom thing…it’s tough to explain if you don’t already get it.
Sometimes, this war on drugs can get pretty scary. Imagine you're just out to buy viagra, then all of a sudden you're surrounded by cops waiting to take you to jail. I think which drugs are legal and illegal would still remain a controversy for the next years.