We Told You So

We, the people opposed to the War on Drugs, told you that your civil liberties would be lost and nothing would be gained. We warned you that each assault on drugs would just make things worse, not better. You didn’t believe us. In fact, you said we were a bunch of druggies that just wanted to be able to smoke dope. And you went right ahead with your drug war, convinced of your righteousness.

When your drug war turned Marijuana into California’s largest cash crop and our National Parks into playgrounds, you said we needed to fight harder. When your war led the drug blackmarket to create crack, a cheaper and much more addictive form of cocaine, you used it to justify more cops, more swat teams, more invasions of our civil liberties.

And now we have reached the point of inanity. In Georgia, in the fight against drugs, we have made it illegal to sell someone bhutane, cold medicine and matches to the same person at the same time. Silly, you say? Well, it is one of the consequences of your War on Drugs.

In most states you must show ID to purchase pseudo-ephedrine because it is used to make meth. By Federal law you can only purchase a specific, very small, amount of pseudo-ephedrine per week. This leads to extreme silliness. And we told you it wouldn’t help, as Radley Balko discusses in his Fox column this week.

Critics like me complained that the laws wouldn’t solve the meth problem, they would only invite new suppliers into thse communities – all while inconveniencing consumers. These measures might dry up homemade labs – and admittedly, they did – but they would create a market for purer, more potent meth from Mexico, along with the attendant crime that comes with an international, black market drug trade.

Yeah, I remember saying such things and being told I was silly, it was all part of our grand War on Drugs. We had to do it for the children, you said. Well, there was an interesting outcome.

Sure enough, we now see in early-adopting states like Oklahoma that meth is as prevalent and available as ever. In fact, it’s more potent, which means it’s creating more addicts. And as predicted, police are tracing the new stuff back to Mexico. So instead of some loser mixing up a personal supply of meth in his basement, the state’s now flush with a more toxic for of the drug, pushed by international smugglers.

Oh good, we contributed to the trade deficit, another of your bogeymen. More importantly, we know that terrorist groups are using drug sales for financing. So, we took money from basement meth labs and handed it to international cartels and, in turn, to terrorist organizations. Beautiful.

In the words of the A Team’s Hannibal, “I love it when a plan comes together”.