The War that we can’t Win

No, not the one in Iraq. There’s another war going on beside that one. It’s been going on a very long time, longer than I can remember and it’s unwinable. It is a war that we tend to forget about but from time to time we are reminded that we still are at war. When there is a huge drug bust, or when a promising high school or college student dies from an overdose, or several are killed in a drive by shooting, or another drug lord is arrested in Columbia, or another patch of marijuana is found in a National Forest, or another meth lab in a neighbor’s basement is destroyed. Then we are reminded that we are engaged in a daunting, frustrating, war that‘s impossible to win. The War on Drugs. But fight on we must. It’s the right thing to do.

Right?

Wrong!

Who says we have to keep beating our heads against the wall? I know this is unpopular but the hand writing is on the wall, we can’t win, so I’m advocating the extreme solution. Let’s put up the white flag and say ok drug pushers you win! Let’s surrender. Let’s legislate the thugs out of business. Let’s legalize drugs. Can it be any worse than it already is?

Okay, the cat’s out of the bag. I’m a nut, a loon, but let me explain my rational. Reportedly some seven million Americans are already addicts with another ten million as users of varying degree. That’s almost six percent of us. Add another twenty million casual (occasional) users for another seven percent for a total of thirteen percent. For me is mind boggling. True, legalizing drugs probably isn’t going to reduce the addicts and it may even increase them a little, but the benefits are overwhelming.

Government figures state that something like eighty percent of violent and one on one crime is drug related. Why is that? I suppose we could assume that five or six million of the hard core addicts do not have jobs that are capable of supporting the cost of their addiction, so they are forced to mug, rob, steal, burgle or whore toward this purpose.

Make no mistake this is a growth business like any other business, the workers (pushers) are encouraged to bring in new addicts who are also encouraged to turn on friends, addicting them and so forth. The profit potential for sellers on up side is enormous. The cost of the product sold on the streets is about one hundred times the production cost and that is the reason that, despite the intrinsic dangers, the astounding profit potential keeps enlarging the pool of participants.

But what about the Downside?

What downside? If you’re talking about the availability of hardcore drugs to your kids, think about it. Right now it’s easier for a twelve year old to get crack than beer. Why? Because beer isn’t sold on the streets. You have to go into a store or a bar and buy it. If drugs were sold in stores, wouldn’t your kids have to go into a store to buy them as well. Can you see a teenager going into a store and buying a lid of weed or a vial of cocaine? Especially if you had to have a permit to buy there and a video camera would record every transaction.

True, we would be encouraging existing and future addicts to make a direction of life decision. Do I want to lead a normal life or do I want to be a speed freak for the rest of my life? Probably fewer than you think would choose the latter and for those that did, they would no longer have to rob and steal to feed their habit and that’s the big bonus to legalizing drugs. Crime would fall up to eighty percent and the country would save billions and billions a year on law enforcement, courts, prosecutors, public defenders and prisons.

And here’s the best part. By letting them win, we win and they lose. Legalizing drugs would put the drug cartels out of business. The drug scumbags from the drug lords on down to the street pushers would have to find another and most likely less harmful scam, for no one in their right mind would buy illegally on the street when they could buy legally from a licensed store.

Can it be that easy?

I know it’s not that simple. That there are a lot of nuances and intangibles but I’m not talking about a plan. This is an idea. Let the legislators work out the nuts and bolts. As far as I can see, legalizing drugs would be a ridiculously easy solution to the rampant crime that exists today and remember, it wasn’t that long ago (approx. a hundred years) that illegal drugs were legal and since narcotics were made illegal their use, on a per capita basis, has increased and crime has gone through the roof.