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). - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom