Some times dumb thoughts hit me. And this may be one of my dumbest. We have been fighting a war on drugs for the last twenty thirty, fifty? Years, and we are losing. For every means of detecting their traffic, they come up with a better means to sneak stuff in. They have made tunnels that could compete with the New York subway system, submarines that are befitting an emerging world power, aircraft that are nearly undetectable, and they are better armed then Saddam Insane was.
Sure, we pop an occasional mule. We pop a lot of mules, but the supply doesn’t seem to be diminished in the least. We have thrown our brightest and best, our toughest and bravest, and they still keep coming. The drug thugs are capitalists through and through, they are all about profit and money. When a few dealers in a region get smacked, the price goes up. Supply and demand at its best, or worst. They still make money, in fact, they make more return on the dollar then when the drug war aint happening.
So how do we win? The bottom line is we don’t, The war on drugs, like the war on terror is more about stripping individual liberty from Americans then it is stopping a few stupid people from wrecking their own lives.
So what's my plan? Catch and release. Sure, that's what they are doing now, they catch a dealer and put him out on probation and he continues to deal drugs, but now he has to have a job to stay out of jail so he works at Burger King where his customers have better access. Yup, that’ll show em.
That's not what I was talking about though, I mean catch and release the drugs themselves. Huh? Are you mad? Just give it back to the dealers? Not exactly. Instead of the cops burning piles and piles of weed coke etc., distribute it to the users. Limited quantities, put a cap on purchases so to speak so it does not get redistributed, but put the product back into the system. The users are gonna get their junk come hell or high water.
When the cops shut down the Manhattan area dealers, the users just went shopping to Topeka, Salina and Wichita. The ones who won were the gas suppliers. Instead, rather then burning the pot and coke, redistribute it at a cut rate price. By the time it is processed as evidence and the trial is over, new suppliers are in place, so a flood of the market with cheap product would hurt the dealers. It additionally would provide cash infusions for struggling state and local governments.
California and other states are decriminalizing the shit. The people who use it are ruining their lives, but they would do that no matter what, so rather then drug money going to Mexico and Columbia, keep it at home. I think that would hurt the cartels worse then anything.
Am I crazy? Yeah.......
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5 comments:
I see your logic, but didn't they try something similar in Canada by pandering to their drug culture by offering gov't supplied clean needles and taking over vacated businesses to be retrofitted as safe havens to shoot up which became known as "shooting galleries"? As I recall Kate at Small Dead Animals reported the "shooting galleries" were pretty much avoided due to the druggies preference for public parks and playgrounds where used syringes were found to be the largest litter nuisance.
As I said, I see YOUR logic, but you're offering to cater to a group that in a lot of, if not most cases aren't firing on all 8, i.e. theory has a greater difficulty meeting reality.
Now if in order for them to purchase they must purchase only at the local police station and go through the same process that those going through the process of purchasing a gun go through, well, I think that's workable. Although I doubt druggies would find it palatable.
Free stuf fails because it gets taken advantage of. if the vops make it a 50% off sale they could undermine teh dealers and create chaos, much like Obama did with cash for clunkers which ruined the US auto Market for a year or more.
Basicly, when the government gets into something, it fails. Heck, they can't even run a whore house in Nevada.
I think that the druggies would find a way to sue the govt for 'ruining their lives'...or, contributing to the ruin. And they would probably blame it on the conservatives. Other than that, I think that it is a good idea.
Greg, thats one of the things that would need to be worked out. I am of the opinion that any one who gets lung cancer in this era should not be able to sue the tobacco companies. There has been ample evidence of the dangers for decades, so in my opinion, people are making a conscious choice to harm themselves, and self inflicted injury should not be allowed to be a for profit venture.
Too bad our courts are so whacked out, maybe they did drugs for too long. maybe they should have.
I too, am very disappointed in our courts. I guess we let too many hippies get educated in the 1960's..They have never let go of their anti-America philosophy.
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