Pubdate: Sat, 12 Jun 2010
Source: Register Citizen (CT)
Copyright: 2010 Register Citizen
Contact:  http://www.registercitizen.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/598
Author: Bill Collins
Note: OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is a former state 
representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.

THE DRUG WAR: MORE WASTED MONEY AND LIVES

The Drug War

Has a mission;

'Bout as smart as

Prohibition.

The Associated Press recently reported on some exhaustive research, 
undertaken by the nonprofit International Centre for Science in Drug Policy.

These tireless scholars examined 300 studies covering the past 20 
years, evaluating the public good arising from police crusades 
against drug peddling.

The result of all those beefed-up crackdowns? Increased violence! It 
seems that whenever you finally nab the top drug lords, a deadly 
struggle erupts to replace them. Gang wars explode, body counts rise, 
and new openings arise for upwardly mobile young thugs.

This is capitalism in its purest form, visible just now in Mexico. Of 
course, these results are obviously tainted.

As you can guess from the spelling of "Centre," the research is 
British and Canadian, and thus somewhat suspect. It's not necessarily 
sensitive to America's special culture.

We once did our own research about this approach to stamping out a 
widespread vice, and it was exhaustive to say the least. Remember Prohibition?

Its results were published daily on the local obituary page. Those 
results were so violent that the nation eventually decided to let 
citizens drink rather than require everyone to live any longer under 
the shrapnel cloud of liquor wars.

Alcoholics Anonymous grew to treat the victims of the resulting 
self-indulgence, who, as it turned out, were not markedly more 
numerous than before repeal.

But the United States today doesn't yet seem quite ready to repeal 
our pot prohibition. Only 44 percent of us are prepared to fully 
legalize marijuana, and this doesn't include most politicians.

They often prefer to hang on to the opportunity to demonize 
legalization's opponents as "soft on drugs."

Mexico, meanwhile, is way ahead of us. That's not a big surprise in a 
country where just one city, Juarez, counted 2,200 murders last year, 
mostly of the drug war variety. Mexico has decriminalized small 
amounts of marijuana for personal use--its citizens having suffered 
from drug-related violence. But unfortunately for them, drug 
syndicates don't in fact make their financial killings from selling 
to Mexicans.

Their serious money comes from our side of the border. Mexico is 
merely the convenient highway where massive turf battles are fought 
to control the trade route to El Norte.

Relief for burdened Mexican citizens may, however, be in sight.

Their gangs have now taken to growing the stuff on hidden farms right 
here in the United States.

California's notably remote national forests are a favorite site, as 
are lonely portions of obscure Texas ranches.

Smuggling in immigrants to do the farming is a whole lot easier and 
safer than smuggling the dope itself. Large-scale operations also 
allow for more product variety and quality control.

Indeed, quality control is one of the consumer's greatest dangers. In 
America's illegal drug economy, there's no such protection. The FDA 
isn't involved.

Thus an essentially mild product can occasionally do great harm to 
unsuspecting users, as moonshine once did in the old days. But a bad 
trip is just one of the social hazards inherent in prohibition.

Other big ones include gunshot wounds, towering incarceration rates, 
fractured families, higher taxes, destruction of the commercial hemp 
industry, denying many patients effective pain relief, and fuel for 
crime syndicates.

In this light, it would seem to make sense to treat marijuana much as 
we already do alcohol and tobacco; that is, as a widespread vice 
subject to regulation and taxation. In fact, it may well turn out 
that the promise of a totally new revenue source is what finally 
brings our nation around to reform.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart