War on Drugs is war on people ...

Today, even conservatives say the drug war "has led only to overcrowded courts and prisons, rising crime, official corruption, eroded civil rights and race relations, and new public-health crises."

An online poll with votes totalling 286 shows 74 percent (213 votes) answering "No" to the question:
"Do the benefits of the federal War on Drugs justify the costs?"

Three percent (10) were "Undecided"

The venerable Walter Cronkite said two years ago, "... I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure."

Coined in 1971 by President Richard Nixon when he called drug abuse "public enemy number one in the United States," the so-called "War on Drugs" has not reduced drug use in the United States.

While yearly drug use statistics rise and fall slightly, the percentage of Americans who regularly use drugs designated illegal remaining steady at about 8 percent.

Generals prosecuting the War on Drugs are like the British Admiralty in the 1920s: Although an agreement with the United States limited the size of the British Fleet and the number of ships and sailors declined between 1917 and 1928, by the latter year the number of officials in the Admiralty had *increased* by 73 percent !

The War on Drugs is clearly about employment more than about drugs - not just on the federal level, but extending to state and local police forces which must be "beefed up" to counter the threat of dangerous drugs in our communities.

In fact, the War on Drugs was a major justification for selling, at a "reduced" rate, surplus military equipment and gear to police departments all across the country at the end of the Cold War, and the same sort of sales were made in Britain and Europe.

Of course the proceeds of those sales were not returned as a "Peace Dividend" to American citizens or any "taxpayers" who worked so diligently to "win" the Cold War, but instead were funneled into new and improved weaponry and devices to control not only Americans' lives, but those of people all around the world.

We now understand that the War on Drugs has as much to do with human health as Prohibition did in the 1920's.

The great American *victory* which was the Repeal of Prohibition (December 5, 1933) masks one of the great achievements of modern capitalist social engineering: regulating the distillation of alcohol.

Prior to implementing the income tax in 1913, about a third of the federal treasury came from liquor taxes, and that revenue dried up during Prohibition, so repeal of the Volstead Act was not just a response to popular sentiment, but there was a deeper economic problem.

Without alcohol as a competing, easily made fuel for the growing number of automobiles and aircraft, increased dependence on petroleum products from which huge profits were already being realized was guaranteed, and the stage was already being set for controlling oil anywhere it could be found in the world.

Hemp, a mainstay American crop 200 years ago, was similarly controlled in order to concentrate profits from paper made from wood pulp, and from newly created plastics - the former primarily for newsprint, and both commodities for packaging.

Later, the "evil menace" of Marijuana - essentially a weed crop which once again allowed average persons to profit from what could be easily grown on the land - was likewise prohibited, once again ensuring an increase in taxpayer supported employment, and giving the federal government another reason to control money.

Taxed incomes and regulated businesses create "underground economies" no matter in what part of the world such government policies are implemented, and the result of making a substance or product or service illegal is scarcity, increasing price, which makes trade more likely, and in turn gives government more reason to justify increased enforcement to "contain the evil" and punish those who engage in it.

Underground economies are the true *free-market* economies which flourish and survive in spite of government imposed controls.

People naturally wish to trade with each other without the supervision and interference, and without alleged benefits of government "help" which always takes a portion of any income resulting from natural free trade.

Free trade challenges any government's "excuses" for existence because, if free markets work, and they do, who needs government ?

Governments require taxation to operate, and the longer a government operates, the more tax revenue it requires to maintain its ever-increasing payroll of co-opted citizens who are employed primarily to guarantee votes that keep the system operating which delivers those paychecks.

Even in a system of law where church and state remain separated, criminalizing drug use - a victimless crime - is a "godsend" since far more profits can be stolen from an unwary public than if drug use were simply taxed like alcohol.

The War on Drugs has come to be justification for violations of privacy, raids on bank accounts, seizures of cash and personal property - theft which is not compensated even when there is no evidence the accused is guilty of any crime.

Beyond trashing the Bill of Rights and inflating regulatory payrolls at all levels of government, the War on Drugs also grows the corporate prison complex as another profit center, giving it financial resources to contribute to election campaigns aimed at keeping the tax gatherers and drug lords in power.

Victims of the War on Drugs are the American citizens themselves who have voted to lock themselves into paying for a never-ending "war" which can never be "won" but only serves to jusfify the continuance of government

Continuing the War on Drugs is like allowing a pet's poop to stay on the carpet.
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