War On

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Americans are obsessed with war. Perhaps because of their perceived successes with real wars like WWI (the War to End War, which made the world safe for democracy and stamped out German dreams of conquest forever) and WWII (in which we triumphed over evildoers who would use weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations), every major undertaking requiring active cooperation is framed in terms of all-out conflict. Or perhaps this terminology was invented by politicians because it allowed them to treat dissenters as seditious traitors and deal with them accordingly. Let's examine the history of American "Wars On...":

Prohibition was created by the 18th Amendment in 1919 (combined with the Volstead Act) and repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933. For some reason (perhaps because the 20th Century was still young and naive) no one thought to call it the "War on Alcohol", but it followed a now-familiar script. First, pick a vice that requires specific materials and that is generally regarded as destructive and immoral. Then ban said materials and impose harsh penalties for their possession or use, thus creating a profitable industry for anyone willing to risk those penalties. Within a few years, the illegal industrialists will become highly organized and extremely wealthy, giving them the power to threaten and/or bribe local authorities into looking the other way while gangs fight bloody turf wars for control of the industry. When people point out that this is a bad idea and is not having anything like the intended effect, declare the issue to be a moral one in which pragmatism has no bearing: better to perish in the good fight than to turn the demon loose among helpless innocents; better to bankrupt the country than to give in. Or just finger the troublemakers to the mob. Ten years into Prohibition, the Great Depression hit, precipitated by unprincipled bankers and Wall Street traders who had somehow lost respect for the law. I'm sure there is no connection. The Depression lasted until the repeal of Prohibition or until the start of WWII, depending on where and who tells the story. Again, no connection, probably.

After the repeal of Prohibition, there were a lot of G-men facing unemployment and the great mob bosses lost their monopoly on alcohol. I'm sure it was purely coincidental that the previously harmless analgesic marijuana became a deadly illegal drug in 1937. But that's another story. Or is it?

After WWII had securely established the USA as The Greatest (richest) Country On Earth, there were more opportunities to demonstrate the effectiveness of this paradigm. In the Korean War we defeated the Communist dictatorship in North Korea once and for all. Then in 1964, during the fabulously successful War in Vietnam, President Johnson coined the phrase fragment that has been used so liberally ever since, with his "War on Poverty" (which may have been misinterpreted by some legislators as a license to hunt down and liquidate poor people). When it became clear that the idea was to help the poor, the program was relabeled by the dextral as "The Welfare State" and attacked until it lost momentum at the end of the 1960s. Maybe LBJ should have played the sedition card then, but the country probably wasn't ready yet.

Richard Nixon was the first to see the full potential of this metaphor. The "War on Drugs" was so named by him in 1969, and was so successful that he soon followed it with the "War on Cancer" in 1971, which in short order put an end to cancer once and for all.

These days we have Bush's "War on Terror" which began in 2001 when there were millions of people who hated the USA enough to engage in suicidal attacks on innocents; today there are probably at least a billion, but we have them on the run. But that's really another story. Let's get back to the War on Drugs, shall we?

The success of the War on Drugs is incontrovertible. It has created a vast new industry; small businesses have sprung up everywhere and incalculable wealth and power have been concentrated in the hands of the most resourceful leaders. Armies of law enforcement personnel are employed in a perpetual reinforcement of high prices that lesser industries like petroleum have to go to great lengths to duplicate. One percent of adult Americans enjoy free accommodation in prison, and a large fraction of these are there because they dared to traffic in a formerly harmless weed that would be essentially free if not for the New Prohibition. Virtually all young adults are technically criminals. What's not to like?

Well, now, and I'm just speculating here, maybe several generations of Americans who have secretly broken laws that would put them up for hard time if they were caught, maybe those folks have experienced a slight waning of their respect for the law. Yes, I know, they are despicable depraved devils and will burn in Hell for their secret sins, but if we can just "think 1933" for a minute, maybe this is another battle the latest Temperance League needs to lose. After all, we still have the War on Smoke and the War on Fat to satisfy that ubiquitous need to hate someone.

If young people (some now not so young) have lost respect for the law and become cynical about "morality" as a result of this ridiculous obsession, could it be that some of them became Wall Street traders, thought to themselves, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," and routinely bent the rules until it all came tumbling down? After all, these conditions have prevailed before.

Let's try to imagine a less bellicose paradigm. Instead of War on Whatever, suppose we try Wise Management of Whatever? What could we do with Wise Management of Drugs? Well, the government rakes in a significant amount of cash from taxes on liquor; why not regulate pot the same way we regulate alcohol? This won't work, because (unlike liquor) the intrinsic production costs of grass are essentially zero. Thus the price difference between government regulated marijuana and the stuff grown in your back yard would be virtually infinite; people would be motivated to break the law, and there we go again. The simplest starting point would be to reset to before 1937 and just say, "Never mind," about marijuana. From what I hear, this would eliminate about 80% of the illegal drug trade.

Cocaine, in its plain powder form, is somewhere in between; it is certainly difficult to produce in temperate climes, and thus intrinsically expensive, so it would make sense to have government cocaine stores which charge less than the drug cartels, this putting them out of business. (Duck!) If cocaine were legal, in the same sense that alcohol (which is at least equally destructive) is legal, the consequences of use would not include radical criminalization of the user, who might then be less likely to progress to the more potent crack and heroin. Or maybe not. Who knows? My impression is that people choose to use alcohol and caffeine in moderation or excess based on considerations having little to do with the law or the cost; but I might be wrong. Strict Islamic countries are much more successful in suppressing alcoholism, but are we ready to decapitate dipsomaniacs in the public square? Alternatively, we could try the "immoral" approach: treat all addictions (including "psychological addictions" to non-narcotic drugs like cannabis and caffeine) as medical conditions with appropriate treatments. This is reputed to be quite effective where practiced. Or is it cheaper to provide a year of incarceration than a year of rehab?

Time to stop. I can't figure out all the details, and I don't want to. I just want to urge everyone to wake up and think about this; in particular, I want our elected officials to be brave enough to cut the legs out from under the drug lords. Yes, they will try to kill you. But if you stand together they won't succeed. Look at the politician sitting next to you who insists that it is our "moral obligation" to pursue the War on Drugs "with whatever it takes": is he or she on the payroll of the cartels? Just a thought.