The War on Drugs

Once upon a time, there was this guy named. . .oh, George will do.

George was a pothead. He loved nothing more than to smoke a bowlful of reefer of each day. The consequences of those choices were that he hurt the society at large by laughing a lot and consuming large quantities of Lay's potato chips. He did not even have to steal to support his drug habit since he was growing his own down in the basement with some special lights, a can of carbon dioxide, and some Miracle-Gro. However, he was known to steal some Dorito's from a friend's house, but the friend declined to press charges.

One day, George gets busted. The cops raid his place, find the weed, and lock his society menacing ass up in jail. While in jail, George rolls a couple of fatties from some weed he bought off some guards and smokes them.

What are we to make of this story? First of all, why is this shit illegal if no one is getting hurt? Secondly, how can this war be won when even the prisoners of that war are still able to use?

The War on Drugs is a fucking joke. It can't be won. If you can't keep drugs out of prison, you certainly won't keep them out of our very porous borders. In fact, a couple of drug sniffing dogs are certain to find some contraband on Capitol Hill. Even during Prohibition, the House of Representatives had a stash of liquor.

If you want to see the future of the drug war, look no further than Prohibition. That was a joke. Violent crime increased dramatically as gangsters took over the hooch business. Some people stopped drinking, but the overall toll to society was enough to make the people repeal this law. It was a failed experiment, but the US is still committed to repeating it.

So, why are dugs illegal anyway? Much of it comes from the fact that Mexcians, jazz musicians, and black people liked to use them. It was merely a clever way to harass these people that upstanding whitefolk didn't much like in the first place. Toss in hippies, young people, weird people, rock stars, etc., and there you have it. These are the "bad people," so it is justified to give them a hard time over their choice of drugs while these meat eating types sit back sipping on their scotch-and-sodas.

Drugs don't hurt anybody but the people using them. Drug opponents will make the argument that drugs lead to other crime such as theft. Well, that may be true. But I recommend locking those people up for theft instead. This seems way more just. We could take this logic and declare that food should be free because hunger drives people to commit crimes. But the reality is that such an action would be a greater crime than the theft by hungry people. The same is true with drugs.

This country spends billions investigating, arresting, prosecuting, incarcerating, and treating people for drugs in an effort that is almost a total failure. Yet, many of these addicts could hold down jobs and still function in society. Don't believe this? William Rehnquist did it for seven years while sitting on the SCOTUS. Rush Limbaugh did it. Ray Charles did it for 13 years, and he never missed a show or a recording session because of it.

Don't get me wrong. I hate drugs. I have never touched them and never will. I think drugs are stupid but not nearly as stupid as the efforts put forth to try to get people to stop using them. The best thing to do is let these people either kill themselves or straighten themselves out. This is a problem that will fix itself at a price we can all afford--FREE.

My position on drugs is simple. Legalize them. And when I mean legalize them, I don't mean decriminalize them and replace prisons with state funded treatment centers as many on the Left propose. Studies indicate that treatment, AA, and NA are no more effective than if people clean up on their own. About 5% of addicts voluntarily choose to quit each year. This is the same amount of success that AA has.

The other thing I oppose is regulating and taxing the hell out of drugs. This amounts to a softer form of Prohibition. People seem to think this is a good way to soak these addicts and feed off their addictions much like they do with alcohol and tobacco and gasoline. This is really theft on a grand scale to support the public's real addiction to government. Fuck these fools.

Finally, people will say that we need to have compassion on those poor addicts. I find this shit amazing. Thse fuckups voluntarily choose to destroy their lives with this shit. And many of them will voluntarily choose to straighten up. Tough love and soft love are both ineffective in changing these people, and why should we feel guilty about letting people reap the consequences of their own actions?

But none of this is about protecting society or the individual. The bottom line is that people simply want to control the lifestyle choices of other people. This shit applies to other victimless crimes such as smoking, prostitution, porn, gambling, driving automobiles that burn fossil fuels,etc. Such blatant tyranny can't be tolerated, so people dress it all up with some tenuous argument that these behaviors hurt others or that we have a duty to help these people and keep them from hurting themselves. As we see, almost anything can be the subject of legislation and incarceration. It is goddamn sickening to see people do this shit, and nothing makes me want to stomp the shit out of someone more than their inability to mind their own fucking business.

That's what it all boils down to. MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS. If some guy wants to fire up some hash in a pipe, leave that fucker alone and mind your own business. What is so hard about that? What is he doing to you to make your life so awful? And how do you justify running other people's lives when they aren't doing anything to you?

We are a nation of busybodies, and it is time that people got their noses out of our bedrooms, our living rooms, and off our dinner plates. If you want to lock up some people, lock up these idiots who can't mind their own fucking business. This probably means you.

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