-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.lewrockwell.com/edmonds/edmonds86.html
}}}>Begin
Bush Says Addicts Are Traitors
by Brad Edmonds
Over the weekend, George W. Bush told Americans that illegal drug use
among Americans was helping our enemies by putting money in the hands
of terrorists and regimes that support them. There’s a sense in which
this is true, but the issues of cause and effect implied by such a
statement are comically wrongheaded, and need to be addressed.
It is indeed significant that Americans’ buying cocaine, heroin, and
other drugs on the black market puts money in the hands of terrorists
and other unsavory types. But the American government’s war on drugs
is the cause. Without the laws we have against recreational drug use,
Americans first would be able to buy American-grown drugs.
Additionally, drugs would be unimaginably less expensive were they
legal. Americans who buy drugs now pay a premium for transportation,
and another exorbitant premium for the risks being taken by the
providers. With a free market in drugs, even if imports still were
popular, they would be so inexpensive the terrorists would
be forced to find other means of support.
So as not to get bogged down in the social, economic, legal, and philosophical
ramifications of recreational drug use, I ask the reader to search LewRockwell.com and
Reason.com for background on the drug war and its relia
ble tendency to worsen drug-related social problems. Suffice it to say here that
legalizing all recreational drugs would not result in chaos: Nearly all drug-related
violence would disappear; milder versions of drugs woul
d appear (much as beer and wine outsell distilled liquors), resulting in fewer
hard-core addicts; virtually all people who don’t use drugs now would continue not
using drugs; and, fundamentally, if you’re not allowed to s
it in your own home and inhale marijuana smoke into your own body, then you are not
the owner of your own body. Rather, the owner is whoever tells you what you can do
with your body.
It is the United States government that has made drugs so profitable, that has sent
most of their production overseas, and that has created social problems relating to
drugs here at home. There’s more to Bush’s unfortunat
e statement, however. In the particular case of Afghanistan, the Taliban (our enemies)
prohibited drug production when they were in power, while the Northern Alliance (our
friends) used the drug trade to scare up funds. I
n the case of heroin, then, addicts who indirectly supported Afghan heroin growers
have been good patriots!
The radio MD, Dean Edell, said it better months ago: To break the finances of those
overseas who subsist on the illegal drug trade, just legalize the drugs. The current
wealthy and violent cartels will fade away, replaced
for the most part by peaceful entrepreneurs here at home.
While recreational drugs are almost universally a bad idea, Bush (as are nearly all
other politicians here and abroad) is looking in the wrong place for a solution to
future terrorism directed against the United States. T
he solutions are in the Peace Archive on this site, and have been advanced by
libertarians elsewhere.
Unfortunately, the tendency of politicians to look at everyone but themselves as
causes of a problem has a long history, and likely a long future. The Patriot Act,
detentions of over 1,000 people in America so far (includ
ing 60 Israelis!), and now this statement by Bush show that we can continue to expect
a keener Big Brotherly eye directed at each of us from Washington. We can only hope
that someday we will begin closing that eye.
December 18, 2001
Brad Edmonds [send him mail], MS in Industrial Psychology, Doctor of Musical Arts, is
a banker in Alabama.
Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com
Brad Edmonds Archives
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