Drug-War-Caused Violence: The Only Answer That Will Work

by D. M. Mitchell

                  Prohibitions based on the personal moral and/or religious beliefs of some, that violate the rights of non-violent, consenting adults to use whatever has been prohibited can, and quite often does, lead to violence.  That is what happened with the prohibition of alcohol in the early part of the last century, where gangsters found out that they could make millions of dollars providing the prohibited substance, and were willing to kill competitors and innocent people to grow their businesses.  The prohibition of the presently illegal drugs has caused an equal rise in violence, for the same reason: money.  Only now it is billions of dollars.

                  Drug-related violence is always lurking about in the news somewhere.  Here are some examples from the first part of 2008.  On March 2, 2008, I read “Bloody drug war engulfs border towns.” [1].  At that time in the City of Juarez, Mexico—across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas—there had been 72 drug-related killings, six policemen among them.  (In the first four months of 2008, there were over 200 murders in Juarez.)  The Mexican Army is now policing that city trying to stop the slaughter.

                  In the same article, it was reported that in the town of Nuevo Laredo—across the Rio Grande River from Laredo, Texas—the drug gangs have killed politicians and reporters, as well as other drug traffickers.  They don’t like people who oppose them or who report about how evil they are.

                  Then, on March 30th I read an article about military-type training camps in Mexico.  “Cartels operating training camps,” [2] read the headline.  The drug gangs—or, cartels, if you wish—“go to great lengths to prepare themselves for battle.” [2]  Some of these camps are “located along the 1,000-mile-long Texas-Mexico border.” [2]

                  On April 27th, it was reported that there had been several gun battles between drug gangs in Tijuana, Mexico. “13 dead in Tijuana street shootout,” [3] was on the front page of my Sunday paper.  One witness to one of the battles stated that “the ground appeared to be ‘paved’ with spent shells after the shooting ended.” [3]

                  And, finally, in the same Sunday paper, under international news in Section A, the headline read: “Brazil shootout kills 11.” [4]   The short article was about the police in Sao Paulo, Brazil looking for a “drug lord” in a slum area

of the city.  Supposedly, 10 of the 11 killed were “suspected criminals”. [4]   The other person killed was a 70-year-old woman. [4]  (Many innocent people have been killed by the police in the United States also, in botched “drug” raids.  For example, go to www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293156,00.html, or type “Fox News, Drug War Crime Kill, Incarcerate Innocent” in your search bar.)

            The March 2nd article told about two of the most murderous towns in Mexico: Ciudad Juarez and Nuevo Laredo.  Those two towns are major staging areas for moving  illegal drugs north, into America.  There are billions of dollars at stake. The drug cartels fight to see who will control the movement of those drugs.  As with any highly lucrative illegal business, the gangsters doing the fighting don’t have a problem  murdering others to get what they want.  That is exactly what the prohibition of alcohol caused in the U.S. in the 1920’s.  The murder rate jumped to an all-time high. [5]  The “gangland” murders were a daily occurrence.  However, after the repeal of prohibition the murder rate declined quickly.  From the late 1960’s well into the 1990’s the murder rate in the United States, due to the so-called war on drugs, rivaled that of the Prohibition Era. [6][7]  It is lower now [7], but could the violent Mexican drug cartels cause it to increase once again?

            This year the drug-war-caused violence in Mexico has escalated and it is spilling across the border into the United States. I can think of only three ways to stop the violence related to drugs:  (1) Stop the growing, manufacture, and sales of drugs.  (2)  Stop people from using illegal drugs (no illegal drug market, no violent drug gangs).  (3) Re-legalize drugs.  

            I can hear you now, screaming at me: “Legalize drugs!  Are you crazy?”  No, I’m not crazy, and if you will bear with me, you might see the logic of what I am saying.  (And I said re-legalize.  But more on that, below.)

            The first option, above, has been tried for the last 90 years, since the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, but to no avail. [8]  We keep throwing money at the problem, billions and billions of your tax dollars, but the drugs are still here (nearly 16 billion so far this year, and nearly 50 billion in 2003 [9]), as are the prohibition-caused murders and corruption, and easy access to those drugs by minors.  This option has never worked, and it never will work.  Per se drug use is a morals issue.  The mere use of a drug does not intrinsically violate the rights of others like murders, rapes, or robberies do.  When millions of people are willing to behave in this way, even if the majority of society thinks it is wrong, you will not be able to stop them by passing laws prohibiting that behavior. 

            Without any users of illegal drugs there could be no providers of them, so the second option sounds workable.  Except for a small problem—it’s just plain

crazy!  Even if we could identify, arrest, and incarcerate all the users of the presently illegal drugs (approximately 35 million people [10]), how could we afford to pay for their incarceration and where would we jail them . . . fence off Kansas?  

             Someone wants to smoke a “joint” (marijuana is still the most popular of the illegal drugs [11]) and you would put him in jail . . . along with several million others.  His behavior doesn’t harm anyone.  He sits in his house having a smoke, relaxing, and not violating the rights of anyone else by doing so.  And there is the rub: Rights.

              According to the Founding Father of this nation, there were certain areas of activity by  citizens that the government just couldn’t prohibit.  That was not something left to democracy.  It couldn’t be voted on.  They called them inalienable rights.  Strangely, For all the years that this nation has been a nation, neither Congress nor the U.S. Supreme Court has ever defined what an inalienable right is.

             If I had to guess at what such a definition would be, I would guess that if a person wasn’t violating the rights of anyone else and wasn’t a direct and immediate threat to anyone else or their property, and if that person wasn’t disturbing the peace or creating a public nuisance, especially if that person’s behavior was done privately and on private property,  that would be a person’s inalienable right.  Of course, I am referring to consenting adults only.

            Under such a definition, no matter how immoral you and I might believe a person’s behavior to be, we—and therefore the government—just don’t have a legitimate right to interfere with that person’s behavior.  If my neighbor is smoking a marijuana cigarette, and not polluting my air, or if he is using some other drug (alcohol and tobacco included), especially if he is in his own house, then his peaceful, consensual adult behavior would not violate any of my rights.  I might not like it, but it’s none of my business, nor yours, and especially not the government’s.  The so-called war on drugs is actually a war on the inalienable rights of consenting adults.

              No one forces another person to use any drug.  And no drug is instantly addictive, regardless of government propaganda.  If a person is addicted to a particular drug—or merely uses it recreationally—so  what?  If a person’s behavior is not violating the rights of others then you, as a private citizen, have no legitimate power or right to interfere with that person’s behavior.  You can offer help but you can’t force that person to accept your help or adopt your moral beliefs.  And, since a legitimate government derives its power from the people (according to the theory of this nation: The Declaration of Independence), if the people don’t have that power then the government can’t get it from them, therefore the government doesn’t have the legitimate power to prohibit such behavior.  If the government did have such power, wouldn’t it be logical to use the resources and money to first prohibit the two most dangerous and harmful drugs in America?  Those being alcohol and tobacco.  (Oh wait!  We did alcohol before.  It was just as successful as the present prohibition of the presently illegal drugs.)

            Prior to 1914 and the Harrison Narcotics Act, drugs were legally available and there was no criminal justice problems associated with their use. [12]  Why can’t it be that way again? Were there drug addicts?  Of course, but they weren’t a threat to society. [13]  The drug addicts then didn’t have to use a large portion of their time, energy, and money to obtain the drug to which they were addicted.  Also, as people then were becoming more aware of the addictive nature of certain substances, especially after the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 made manufacturers label the contents of their products, addiction rates were not growing. [14] 

            If we really want to do something to make America a safer and better place, we would end the war on drugs and let adults have their full inalienable rights back.  If the stupid or ignorant become addicts ( and I really don’t believe there would be any more of them than now, and most likely fewer once the novelty wore off) then so be it.  It would be their lives.  As adults, they should own the property of themselves and, as such, should be able use that property as

 they wish, just so long as they do not violate the rights of others.  People really do have a right to make bad decisions about their lives, even if it destroys them.  (And the sooner they do, the sooner they remove themselves from the gene pool.)  If that is not true, if we don’t own ourselves fully, then there are no such things as rights, only privileges given to us by a paternalistic government—which the so-called war on drugs makes rather obvious to anyone who is really paying attention. 

            I wish to make clear that I am only talking about consensual adult behavior, and that re-legalized drugs would make it harder for minors to buy them since those drugs would be sold through legal, legitimate businesses upon proof of age.  As it stands now, anyone with the money can buy any illegal drug he or she wishes, regardless of age, as the whole market is illegal.  Most of the sellers of those drugs only care about money.  They have no good standing to lose in the community—like, say, a store owner that legally sells tobacco and alcohol—should they sell to a minor.  

            Once re-legalized, drugs would be inexpensive, produced by legitimate businesses, and sold through regulated outlets.  Most drug users today moderate their use, including those using alcohol. They would continue to do so.  Drug addiction problems would be minimized, not presenting as big a problems as alcoholism does, which we live with day in and day out.  Besides, we don’t arrest alcoholics for their drug use, only for their behavior if it violates or threatens to violate the rights of others.    In a truly free and liberty-loving nation, ruled by a secular, not religious, government, that is how it should be, regardless of whether you think drug use is moral or immoral . . . a religious concept.

            Re-legalizing drugs would put the violent drug cartels out of business, cut off the major (if not only) source of income for violent street gangs, make it harder for minors to get those drugs, reduce the overcrowding in prisons and the courts systems and, being inexpensive, no one would have to steal or prostitute themselves to support his or her habit.  Any drug addict who wanted help to kick his or her habit wouldn’t have to worry about running afoul of the law by admitting to their addiction. Re-legalization would also stop a major source of funding for  the Islamic terrorists who want to destroy America.  All that and a savings of untold billions of tax dollars per year, not to mention the billions that the government would take in by taxing those re-legalized drugs.

             But it will never happen.   Regardless of the fact that adults have a right to use drugs if they wish—alcohol and tobacco for instance, the two most harmful drugs overall—re-legalizing the presently illegal drugs is logical.  The so-called war on drugs is driven by emotion: religious or pseudo-religious moral outrage that some people would dare pollute their bodies with a mind-altering, possibly addictive, possibly dangerous substance (alcohol and tobacco

notwithstanding, of course).  Besides, there is a whole “prison-industrial complex” devoted to the continuance of the war on drugs to provide them with a living . . . at the expense of your tax dollars.  Those people so employed would fight tooth and nail to stop the logical and right thing from happening.

            Re-legalizing drugs is the only option that will work to stop the drug-related violence in America, Mexico, and worldwide—the only one that will make the world, and especially America, a better, safer, place to live, with our full adult rights intact.  It sounds radical, but it isn’t, because, once upon a time the presently illegal drugs were legal, and because they were, there was little to no violence or other criminal activity associated with their use.  It could be that way again.

One last note: There is also the possibility that with re-legalization the economy of Mexico could collapse—no more billions of narco-dollars to support it. The Mexican government could fail and civil war and anarchy would rule, which could be another reason why the U.S. Government really doesn’t want to do anything serious about fixing this easily fixed problem. Of course, with all the corruption, violence and drug-related murders happening down there now, would we, in the U.S., notice a difference? I believe that the only logical thing to do is to re-legalize full adult rights in America and let the Mexicans take care of Mexico.

Sources:

1.  The Fresno Bee, Sunday, March 2, 2008, A14.

2.  The Fresno Bee, Sunday, March 30, 2008, A10.

3.  The Fresno Bee, Sunday, April 27, 2008, A1.

4.  The Fresno Bee, Sunday, April 27, 2008, Section A, International News.

5.  Cato Institute Policy Analysis #121, May 25, 1989, “Thinking About Drug