THE DRUG WARS: WORSE THAN THE DISEASE

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
Socrates

Well, it's official. The Fraser Institute has declared that the War On
Drugs has been a big fat waste of time. The Institute, for those who don't
patrol the far-right fringe on the political tundra, is a collection of
bigdomes who pronounce regularly on the vagaries of government and social
policy. The Fraserites hang their mortar boards and three piece pin stripes
in British Columbia, but ideologically they are Alberta Incarnate.

They never met a right wing initiative they didn't want to French kiss. Or
a socialist policy that wasn't the first knell in the collapse of Western
civilization.

And here they are, in a series of policy papers, announcing that the
billions and billions of dollars and man-hours that stolid, right-thinking
North American law enforcement types have spent trying to shut down the
drug trade might as well have been flushed down the toilet.

That's an observation to which - since we started with Socrates - it is
suitable to add something Homeric (as in Simpson).

Which is to say, "Well, DOH!" Where have these geniuses been? What have
THEY been smoking for the past half a century? Anybody who didn't have his
head up J. Edgar Hoover's fundament could have seen the War on Drugs has
been the biggest farce since Samson asked Delilah for a trim. OF COURSE the
War On Drugs is abysmally stupid. It always has been.

Unless you're a drug dealer. Or in law enforcement.

They are the only people who make a profit from The War On Drugs. For the
rest of the world, it's been a disaster. Innocent bystanders around the
world have been murdered and maimed, caught in the cross-fire between the
aforementioned principals. Peasants in Colombia have had their farmlands
poisoned because it 'might' be harboring cocoa plants. Kids in Texas are
serving life sentences for possession of miniscule amounts of a weed that
grows behind barns.

Canada, of course, fell right in lockstep with the FBI paranoia parade.
Emily Murphy, an Edmonton magistrate (who, God knows why, is currently
lionized as an icon of Canadian feminism), made a name for herself in the
'20s by demonizing marijuana in a sleazy expose entitled The Black Candle.
I quote: "Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to
pain S While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to
kill or indulge in any form of violence, using the most savage methods of
cruelty without S any sense of moral responsibility S". Ms. Murphy was
clearly a bit of a raving maniac herself, but an influential one. Her
fervid fulminations meshed perfectly with what would become the official
government line - and the prevailing public attitude - for the rest of the
twentieth century.

This past summer, the magazine The Economist (bedtime reading for Fraser
Institutionalists) declared flatly that "the laws on drugs are doing more
harm than good."

Last spring, 70 years after Murphy's slavering histrionics, the Canadian
Medical Association declared "there are no reported cases of fatal
marijuana overdoses" and the "real harm marijuana users experience takes
the form of lost educational, employment and travel opportunities due to
the criminal record they acquire."

In other words, the war on drugs has done more damage than the drugs
themselves.

Me? I don't care much about drugs - including marijuana. Aside from
caffeine, red wine and the odd single malt scotch, I don't do them, and
have no intentions of glorifying them. But let's get it straight: smoking
up may or may not be expensive, narcissistic, non-productive, foolish and a
colossal waste of time.

But what it isn't, is criminal.