The War on Drugs

Recently John Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, told reporters that Afghan authorities were succeeding in reducing opium-poppy cultivation.

Really? Despite hundreds of millions of tax dollars being spent by Congress to stop the trade, a UN report in September estimated that this year’s crop was breaking all records, up over fifty percent from the 4,100 tons produced last year. Visitors to poppy producing areas in Afghanistan noticed that schools in the areas were closed as teachers and students were busy harvesting the ripened poppies. A prosecutor from the local Crimes Department told a reporter that his clerk, driver and bodyguard hadn’t made it to work as they, too, were busy harvesting. Working in poppy harvesting paid $12 a day. Wheat only pays $2 a day. With such profits to be made, it’s hard to blame those who rush to earn that cash.

Nor is it hard to grasp why the easy money attracts the young in America. Flip burgers for minimum wage, or sell dope and make many multiples. All you need to be willing to do is take the risk.

Why are the profits so high? Because dope is cheap to make, but the War on Drugs makes it expensive on the street.

It’s important to recognize, however, that the drug laws go far beyond the war on street drugs, and are vastly more deadly than even the war on terrorism.

Durk Pearson, author of the best seller, Life Extension, has been doing legal battle with the FDA for the past decade (and has won battle after battle in court). At the recent Liberty Editors Conference he pointed out that by controlling the public’s right to medications, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has blocked American citizens from drugs that could have saved over a million lives in the past year. According to Pearson, because of the FDA restrictions, more people die unnecessarily every week in the United States than died in the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11.

The War on Drugs, both recreational drugs and medicinal drugs, is a war on individual  liberty. It is one of the great tragedies of the 20^th century, and a continuing disaster as we enter the 21^st.