no third solution » Drug War Rants
People Deserve to Be Shot to Death For _______
If you were to ask a thousand (or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand) people to complete the sentence, “It’s OK to kill people for ________”, or “People deserve to be shot to death for _______” I’d wager that less than 1 percent of them would complete the sentence with “doing drugs.” Keep that in mind, as the post below unfolds… The Houston Chronicle reports some details of a drug raid that took the life of 29 year old father, Joel Alfaro (who was essentially killed for doing drugs), and threatens to take the life of a 54 year old police officer, Richard Salter. Both men would be alive and well today, were it not for a senseless war on personal freedoms drugs. As usual, witnesses to the raid say that … Read entire article »
Filed under: Drug War Rants, Legalese
End the War on Drugs
Praising the drug war, Bret Stephens at the WSJ blames the bloodshed in the war on drugs (9,000 dead Mexicans in the last two years alone, and counting) on teh bad people. It’s an old story. At bottom, the problem isn’t the drug cartels per se. Much less is it — and here I can sense the collective blood pressure of the Cato Institute rising — America’s drug laws. The problem is Mexico’s record of corrupt, weak and incompetent governance, which has created the environment in which the cartels have hitherto operated with impunity. The same might be said about other countries in Latin America: These states did not become basket cases on account of the drug trade. It is the fact that they were basket cases to begin with that allowed … Read entire article »
Filed under: American Politics, Drug War Rants, World Politics
Legalize ALL Drugs
Last week I had a discussion about the legalization of drugs with a friend, who remained convinced that the legalization of drugs would cause an instant and damaging spike in the incidence of use/abuse despite what’s generally accepted as a relatively inelastic demand curve (and despite centuries of evidence to the contrary with alcohol) and that this spike in use/abuse would lead to an increase in violent crimes. Strangely enough he that Big Leaguers should be allowed to Roid Rage whenever they want, but that ordinary people shouldn’t be able to do lines of coke in their own living rooms without the fear that some Stasi Jackboot might kick down their doors, kill their Labrador retrievers, and haul them off to prison. There are countless flaws I could … Read entire article »
Filed under: Drug War Rants, Legalese, Seen and Unseen