Turning A Corner in the War On Drugs

As braindead and useless as the American government has become, it's still an expert at two things: 1. Capturing the Number Two Man in al Qaeda, and 2. Turning another corner in the War On Drugs. And we sure have been turning corners in the War On (Some) Drugs. If we turned these corners any faster we’d get dizzy and start keeling over.

Assuming you haven’t been living on Pluto for the past few weeks, you’re probably aware of the most recent police massacre by the NYPD. A bachelor party at a bar in Queens ended up with the death of the groom-to-be and the serious wounding of two of his companions. Their party had somehow “clashed” with an ongoing police undercover operation at that particular bar.

We don't know all the facts yet since the ongoing “investigation” hasn’t been completed yet. But this bar was a strip club, so an ongoing undercover police investigation probably had something to do with prostitution, drugs or some other “crime” which has no victims. And now a groom is dead, one or both of his companions is in critical condition and his bride-to-be is a widow even before she had a chance to marry him. Are we feeling more righteous and sanctimonious now?

And this is the “corner” our government keeps “turning” in its effort to rid America of “crimes” that offend the public taste. Have we made any progress since the Puritan days when women were publicly dunked (or worse) for gossiping?

And our War On Drugs keeps getting better all the time. The government is getting further and further into debt (that’s YOUR tax money, people), and more and more non-violent/non-threatening people are getting locked up and having their lives ruined by a felony conviction. As a famous talk-show host says, “how’s that working for you?”

From the 1960s until sometime in the 1990s, the high price of Heroin was blamed for gazillions of burglaries, robberies and muggings. Then at some point in the early ‘90s (maybe earlier, I’m not sure exactly when) the price of heroin dropped. Plummeted. And the crime rate dropped. But no silver lining was ever exclaimed about.

Overnight, the headlines went from “the price of heroin is sooo high, junkies have to commit several robberies a day just to stay high” to “Oh My God, heroin is sooo cheap, everybody can afford it now. The disease is spreading!” Boy, no silver linings anywhere. The darkest hour is just before everything goes completely black. The light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. Etc.

And in the last few years the latest drug scourge is methamphetamine. But what’s the root of the problem here? The harm caused by speed? (Yes it turns you into a toothless maniac. So DON’T USE IT ASSHOLE!!!)

Or does the biggest problem seem to be caused by the laws against it? Billions of dollars’ worth of law enforcement is diverted to (previously) low-crime rural areas to fight “the drug problem.” Is this a good thing?

Rural areas always used to be the easiest police assignment. Disputes between farmers, a broken fence — big deal. Now a much higher proportion of police officers are killed on duty in rural areas. The problem — Meth. Again: is speed itself the cause of these problems? Or are the problems caused by our drug laws? Our society needs to be absolutely certain that nobody anywhere will ever be offended by somebody else’s private behavior. And the results are all around us.

Now that our government is crippled by a record deficit and every state/local government is broke, it’s time — now more than ever — to prioritize our spending. Do we want to keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars to control the personal behavior of 300 million American citizens? And do we want to spend ADDITIONAL hundreds of billions for the incarceration of millions of Americans because their private behavior might offend somebody?

If your answer is yes, please explain your reasoning in the Comment Section.