And I'll tell you, those drug cartels and the other various Mexican organized crime syndicates aren't engaged in the power struggle they are with the Mexican government to market in the ole'red white and light green, no, they're vying for their stake in the American illicit drug trade in an all out death match with any shred of legitimate, clean cut, political entity left in Mexico. The conundrum really is a testament to how successful the American Government's "war on drugs" has been. In my opinion, drugs were victorious the moment the Nixon administration coined the farcical term back in the late 60's.
Where they went wrong was in who they went after. They need to go after the drug DEALERS, and not the drug users. Just the idea of locking up every guy with 5 ounces of marry-jane in his pocket is inherently ludicrous. And if you disagree then you get the Californian penal system; you get a mass influx of soft core drug users into every "correctional facility" from San Quintin to Folsom-State Pen. A hoard of babe's in the woods locked up with hardened criminals who pulverize and proposition them to the point that they either get crushed or converted to another hardened criminal, until guess what? There's no more room! There's no correcting being done.
Drug users are victims themselves, and for the large part, they're victims of themselves. Just like those addicted to cigarettes or those suffering from alcoholism. Yeah, it WAS a choice at some point along the way, but now its a full blown addiction, they're now controlled by the drugs, and not the other way around. The other problem is, these individuals need to be rehabilitated, not corrected. A prison setting is probably one of the most hostile environments when it comes to a recovering drug addict. And lets not forget, drug usage has been around as long as we have, and unlike drug smuggling and distribution which is evolving all the time, drug usage has barely evolved throughout the course of history. You'd think we'd have figured out how to tackle it by now.
For the rest of the drug trade, the reality is, for every 1 drug manufacturer, there will always be 100 or more drug smugglers. For every 1 drug smuggler, there will always be 100 or more drug dealers; and for every drug dealer, there will always be 100 or more drug users. The illicit-drug industry, like most other industries, is a hierarchy, something America's political obsession with morality has rendered Washington blind to. The illicit drug trade and industry are also based around the age old principal of supply and demand.
Realizing and applying those above concepts to the main battle plan for the war on drugs, one has to realize that if one inhibits that one asshole at the top of the drug trade hierarchy pumping out the cancer on society that is illegal and potentially physically and mentally damaging substances, you alter the whole drug market and prevent the creation of thousands of drug users on the bottom of the hierarchy. It was this plan of attack that worked in the cocaine capital of Columbia some 20 years ago. --Those cruise missiles and drones the CIA have proved so effective in the war against terror in the treacherous terrains of Afghanistan and Pakistan --, I can't help thinking that, if applied in Mexico, I wouldn't be writing this rant.
Education is the other half of the battle, and getting information about drugs across to our children has maybe been the sole success of the war on drugs, what with successful programs like the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. However in some cases, as in the case with Marijuana, we as a society still refuse to embrace reality information has outlined. Marijuana isn't addictive, it doesn't damage, compromise or inhibit the immune system in adequate doses, so why is it prohibited? In my opinion, the logging industry hired the puritan vote to run a smear campaign against the plant as a means of exploiting the general ignorance of society to eventually ban the plant entirely, along with hemp, which in the first half of the 20th century, was poised to overtake trees as the primary source of pulp and paper.
In recent years hemp has been legalized in Canada and the United States, so why not marijuana which is as harmful and addictive as hemp? The production and taxation of marijuana would provide a large surplus to our economy which the alcohol and gaming industries have, two other sectors family values groups have campaigned against.
On a final note, why isn't the government regulating the drug dealers back at home? Of course I'm talking about the pharmaceutical companies. I hear all these monetary figures being thrown back and forth between the right and the left, well have you seen how much pharmaceutical companies charge for even the most wildly produced pharmaceuticals? The United States is the only first world country that does not regulate how much pharmaceutical companies can charge for their products. It comes down to what do you believe, --People before profit? Or profit before people? Is health care a human right, or is it a commodity?-- though these days I'm thinking more and more that it really comes down to what you are paid to believe (by pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington).
