Pubdate: Thu, 12 Jul 2012
Source: Trentonian, The (NJ)
Copyright: 2012 The Trentonian
Contact:  http://www.trentonian.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1006

GOVERNMENT DOPE

The dope dealers of the future may be dues-paying members of AFSCME 
or CWA and have civil service protection. Or - they may be 
politically connected contractors who supply government with 
marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hypodermic needles, what-have-you. Yes, 
government is moving in on the narcotics-trafficking turf. And not to 
shut it down. To grab a piece of the action.

You see this trend developing in small ways in places like New Jersey 
where government programs are already dispensing "medical" marijuana 
and supplying needles to heroin addicts.

Such programs are in the hard-to-reverse process of becoming 
ensconced components of bureaucracy, with their own public employee 
and clientele constituencies, poised to lobby for increased 
appropriations or raise a squawk against any hint of reductions. 
These government initiatives to encroach on the underworld's 
narcotics-trafficking industry are accompanied by inflated claims of 
success, as are the claims made regarding efforts to, say, eliminate 
poverty or promote economic development.

The inflated claim of "needle exchanges" is that they are preventing 
the spread of HIV and serving as checkpoints to steer addicts into 
rehab - as opposed to merely accommodating addicts' addiction by 
making it a little more convenient for them to shoot up. Since the 
greatest dangers of injection drug use are overdoses and nasty 
injection-site infections, the next "logical" step, somewhere down 
the road, is for government to go beyond merely dispensing needles to 
providing the heroin and having state or county nurses administer the fix.

Proposals for drug legalization used to emanate mainly from 
scatterings of anti-government libertarian ideologues. Now they are 
joined by increasing numbers of pro-government liberals.

The libertarians savor the prospect of shutting down the expensive 
drug-prohibition enforcement and corrections apparatus.

The liberals are buoyed by visions of revenue gushers providing funds 
for insatiable progressive agendas.

Yes, exactly as the libertarians and liberals note, the status quo 
prohibition features vicious street gang retailers and ruthless drug 
lord wholesalers. And arrayed against them is a costly government, 
anti-drug behemoth that tends to be as inept as it is ham-handed. But 
the conspicuous flaw in utopian legalization fantasies is this: The 
drug lords will continue to enjoy all of the myriad advantages of 
free-enterprise resourcefulness and drug-licensing or drug-dispensing 
government, none of these advantages - only the disadvantages of 
bureaucratization. Legalization holds forth the uninviting prospect 
of the worst of both worlds.

This thesis may be proved, or disproved, by ongoing events in 
Uruguay, Gauatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Agentina and 
Mexico - places no more renowned for their efficiency than for their 
probity. These governments are debating moving into dope trafficking, 
starting but likely not stopping with the nationalization of the 
marijuana market.

Maybe they will be the canary in the mine for us and spare us having 
to be our own canary.

Nasty partisanship apparently is no new phenomenon. Here from an 1839 
speech is a sample of Abe Lincoln, then a Whig, giving the Andrew 
Jackson Democrats holy hell: "I know that the great volcano at 
Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns 
there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption and 
fiendishly taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course." 
- - Quoted in Ronald C. White's "A. Lincoln" (Random House).
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom