Just Another Drug War Rant
Thursday, July 17th, 2008When I tell people in meatspace conversations that I’m opposed to drug prohibition, I frequently get a look of utter astonishment: “You mean people ought to just be able to take crack, or meth, or whatever, whenever they feel like it?”
Well, the point is they can already do that right now. If you look at countries like the Netherlands, where pot is for all intents and purposes legal, and private possession and use of the hard stuff is virtually decriminalized, the actual rates of drug use are probably at or below those in the United States.
So essentially, we’ve allowed our country to be taken over by gangs and organized crime syndicates fighting to control the black markets in illegal drugs. We’ve created lawless, militarized police forces that view us as an occupied enemy, sadistic bastards who taser people in diabetic comas to death for “resisting arrest,” and murder 92-year-old women in their sleep in botched SWAT team raids. We’ve gutted the due process provisions of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, which are now kept around mainly as examples of good penmanship. We’ve got the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world–greater than Communist China–and a massive prison-industrial complex using slave labor. We are literally at the mercy of beasts of prey in SS chic uniforms. We’ve corrupted our society to the core. And we’ve done it all for nothing.