Pubdate: Fri, 29 Jun 2012
Source: News-Press (Fort Myers, FL)
Copyright: 2012 The News-Press
Contact:  http://www.news-press.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1133
Author: John Agnew

IT'S TIME FOR SOME LOGICAL THINKING ABOUT DRUGS

In medicine, we learn, "When what you are doing is not working, do 
something different." The government, especially the federal 
government, believes, "When what we are doing is not working, keep 
doing the same thing (with more money) while expecting different 
results." By happy coincidence, that is the definition of insanity.

Years ago, Time magazine had a cover story about legalizing drugs, 
since nothing else worked or would work, and here we are today, mired 
in the same mess only worse.

The "War on Drugs," proposed by a Puritanical government run by 
libertines, has spent upwards of a trillion dollars and accomplished 
nothing except provide a lot of good jobs, with benefits and 
pensions, plus headless bodies near the Mexican border, along with 
corrupted or murdered judges, politicians, police and journalists. 
All of this is directly due to the profit motive.

By another happy coincidence, the same thing happened with 
Prohibition. As that Vietnam-era song asked, "When Will They Ever Learn?"

With alcohol as with other drugs, you can't eliminate the market for 
them by legislation. How convenient it would be if we could.

As of this writing, we have had 22 murders in Fort Myers in six 
months. If there is a common denominator, and police Chief Doug Baker 
thinks there is, it is the drug business. Turf wars, deals gone bad, 
men with short fuses and semi-automatic weapons; all are mixed 
together to form a deadly brew.

The News-Press called for suggestions, and received many: Better 
education; rallies and parades; lock the politicians in a room until 
they solve the problem; provide more and better jobs for young, black 
men, and more. But if drugs are the common denominator, that's where 
the focus will have to be. No amount of good intentions will 
eliminate the profit motive.

For men with insufficient education faced with a terrible job market, 
selling drugs is an attractive alternative (except in Miami, where 
they have turned to Medicare fraud---the profit is the same and they 
don't get shot).

Chief Baker's goal is to "choke it out completely," which he intends 
to do, probably by the same methods that haven't worked in forty-some 
years. I don't doubt his good intentions, but otherwise see paragraph one.

I'm like a Libertarian, in that I can recommend any kind of plan 
because it won't be implemented, thus I can't be held accountable for 
the results.

So here's my plan: Put cocaine in 55-gallon drums on every street 
corner. It's free. There will be no profit and no reason to shoot 
people. "But people will die!" you might say. "People are dying now," 
I would respond. "Where have you been?" That's not just from 
gunshots, either, but also from overdoses of all sorts of drugs, and every day.

What we want is for everyone to stop using drugs and lead an upright, 
productive life. That's fine, but it's not going to happen, any more 
than with alcohol. Removing the profit motive won't help, there, but 
it will remove the reason for the violence. That's simply the best we 
can hope to do, and we will have to accept it.

Before you dismiss this as silly, remember that the "War on Drugs" 
has been an expensive and unmitigated failure, with no reason to 
think this will change (paragraph one, again) so it's past time to do 
that something different.

Our drug problem is not one of morality, as our Puritanical 
government insists, but of practicality, and we should approach it 
that way. We can remove the profit motive.

And we should.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom