RSS 2.0 FeedThe Drug War Turns 100
by Doug MataconisApparently, it was one hundred years ago today that the War On (Some) Drugs officially began:
Tuesday marks the centennial of a fateful but forgotten watershed in state history: the start of California’s war on drugs.
On March 6, 1907, Gov. James Gillett signed amendments to the Pharmacy and Poison Act making it a crime to sell opiates or cocaine in the state without a prescription. The act made California a national leader in the war on drugs seven years before Congress enacted national drug prohibition with the Harrison Act.
Many Americans don’t know there was a time when people could freely buy any drug they wanted, including opium, cocaine, cannabis and other so-called narcotics. For most of the nation’s history, there was no such thing as an illegal drug. That began to change after the turn of the 20th century, when an alliance of Progressive Era bureaucrats and moral crusaders began to push for prohibition of narcotics and alcohol.
The rest, as they say, is history. So, here we are 100 years later and what do we have to show for it. Cocaine, heroin, and other drugs are more prevalent today than they were at the start of the 20th Century and they are controlled by networks of drug gangs and drug runners who use the profit they make to buy the weapons they use to intimidate society.
Yea, sure sounds like progress to me.
After 100 years, it is hard to escape the conclusion that drug prohibition has failed. In recent years, Californians have begun to show second thoughts, approving initiatives to re-legalize medical cannabis and to send drug users for treatment rather than to prison. As the state with the longest historical experience with drug laws, it is fitting that California should be exploring new directions out of its 100-year war on drugs.
Hopefully, California will take the lead again and save us from another century of this nonsense.\
H/T: Lew Rockwell.com
How can you say drug prohibition has failed? It has been extremely successful, enriching the winners who the current status quo benefits. Answer me this: with hundreds of billions of dollars in profits (drug money, drug-interdiction money, and penitentiary expenditures) why would the powers that be allow a change in the status quo?
Similarly with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: “big mistake” say some (rather innocently tender hearted in my opinion.) How is it a mistake, if those who pulled it off are being enriched to tune of hundreds of billions of dollars?
To understand the forces behind the status quo, I would suggest you read “Narcodollars for Beginners” by C. A. Fitts at http://drugwar.com .
http://www.drugwar.com/fittsnarco1.shtm
Many other articles by Fitts and others
at http://www.drugwar.com/howmoneyworks.shtm
For the basic economics of war, examine “War is a Racket” by Smedley Butler. Older, but still relevant today.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
So all of you griping, “When will all this nonsense stop?” listen up: it will stop when there is no longer money to be made. It would be wonderful if we all could organize and change society. In general it doesn’t work this way. We work at jobs for 40 hours a week, and _maybe_ organize with our friends and neighbors to change society for a few hours on weekends. Answer me this: does the 40-hour employer, and the businesses where you spend your piddling salary on … do they support the status quo, generally, or are they attempting to change the world, to bring about some kind of popululist or anarchist revolution?
I wish I were wrong, and all the hand-wringing and scandal-outing might be some help, but I question whether (regardless of any MLK’ish charisma and zeal I might have) the anti-drug pro-war status quo of the last hundred years will change.
Comment by Duality Rules — March 6, 2007 @ 3:55 pmWell, maybe if we are either too broke to carry it on any further or that the masses finally have had enough and rise up to beat it. That’s the only way it is going to happen; they said that reconstruction would never be beaten and, after almost a century, it was because we finally rose up.
Comment by Watercloset — March 7, 2007 @ 2:55 amLOL. Well, the drug war at the expense of the taxpayers does enrich a few. How much does it cost the taxpayer to put someone in prison for a couple ounces of pot? Here, where I live, it is $209 a day and the cops are really out to get them. It balances the budget and they get their quotas.
Comment by Watercloset — March 7, 2007 @ 3:19 am