IPFS News Link • WAR: About that War
IPFS News Link • WAR: About that War
So irrational and empirically false are the justifications for drug
prohibition, and so costly is the War waged in its name, that it is
difficult to imagine a more counter-productive policy than this (that's
why public opinion is inexorably realizing this despite decades of Drug War propaganda and the absence of any real
advocacy for decriminalization on the part of national political
leaders). In that regard, and in virtually every other, the War on
Drugs is a mirror image of the War on Terror: sustained with the same
deceitful propaganda, driven by many of the same motives, prosecuted
with similar templates, and destructive in many of the same ways.
...
It's the perfect deceit. These wars, in an endless loop, sustain and
strengthen the very menaces which, in turn, justify their continuous
escalation. These wars manufacture the very dangers they are ostensibly
designed to combat. Meanwhile, the industries which fight them become
richer and richer. The political officials those industries own become
more and more powerful. Brutal drug cartels monopolize an unimaginably
profitable, no-competition industry, while Terrorists are continuously
supplied the perfect rationale for persauding huge numbers of otherwise
unsympathetic people to join them or support them. Everyone wins --
except for ordinary citizens, who become poorer and poorer, more and
more imprisoned, meeker and meeker, and less and less free.
[more...]