US WAR ON DRUGS IS INSANE, INJUST AND IMMORAL

There are many issues about which it is important to do a lot of thinking -
the distinctions are murky and the policies ambiguous, so it takes a lot of
figuring to get it right. Just how far should the military go in its
efforts to defend the country? Should 14-year-old kids be prosecuted as
adults for grave crimes? Is abortion a rights violation or would its
prohibition be? Does the Second Amendment's reference to "people" mean
individuals or groups?

Yet there are issues over which I have stopped debating and now just feel
sad and angry. George W. Bush's re-ignition of the miserable and shameful
war on drugs is such an issue.

I have written my heart out arguing against this policy over the years.

I have debated state attorneys general and professors of chemistry, and by
now I am just angry with anyone who thinks the government or anyone else is
authorized, morally and politically, to force people to go to jail for
engaging even in the most "abusive" drug consumption and trade. How can
anyone with the slightest sense of justice tolerate this damnable approach
to trying to deal with drug abuse?

First, it is mostly self-abuse - drug abusers do not force anyone to take
drugs. Second, even the sale and distribution to adults of the harmful
drugs cannot be anyone else's business aside from family and friends -
certainly, clearly, not to the extant that others somehow gain moral rights
to physically, forcibly interfere!

Who on earth are these folks who take it upon themselves to bully their way
into other people's lives to rescue them from themselves in the most
uncivilized way that people can interact, by means of the gun! Yes, they
are drug czars -- and doesn't that clue folks into just how evil they are?
For at the end of every legal edict there has to be guns, and when the
edict is unjust, these guns will have to be used unjustly whenever
compliance isn't forthcoming.

Over the years, ever since I lived through the wild '60s, I have witnessed
this vain effort to force people into sane behavior, at first mainly by
conservatives but later by too many in the mainstream, even as some
conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr. have come to their senses
about the matter. The only consistently wise prominent voice on the topic
has come from the Nobel Prize-winning economist - go figure - Milton
Friedman, who has been calling for decriminalization for decades.

Nothing justifies this horror to which millions of Americans are put and
which confronts, most visibly, the likes of actor Robert Downey Jr. who are
in the public eye. Perhaps because of the resentment many feel toward
celebrities who risk their careers and talent so flagrantly by indulging in
drug abuse, the general public seems to have no sense of the gross
injustice of whisking these people off to court over and over again.

Yet it is the millions of unknown "criminals" who are forced to linger
lengthy stretches of time in jail who are shown the most severe neglect and
abuse with the injustice perpetrated against them when the soldiers of the
war on drugs carry out their vile mission. Folks should be in an uproar
over this.

Instead of commentators and political leaders fretting about PC-related
injustices - using the wrong words for blacks or Indian terms for baseball
teams - it would be so gratifying to see all those who speak out in columns
and other places in the media to mount a serious assault on the insanity
that is the war on drugs.

But somehow the spirit of justice seems to have left the bulk of the people
of this country. Not even the shameful fact that America - "the leader of
the free world" it used to be called - is now reputed to be a Western
nation with the highest number of its citizens in jail ( mostly because of
the insane war on drugs ) seems to move folks to quit this war.

One thing is for sure: On this score there is no difference between the
liberal and conservative political leadership. George W. is not a bit
compassionate when it comes to those who engage in drug abuse and the
distribution and sale of the substances - never mind that alcohol kills far
more people than even the hardest of drugs and never mind that
... . Well, I am just too nauseated by this feature of our society to go
through all the arguments again. Not that I have any sympathy for drug
abusers, anymore than I would for those who peddle yellow journalism or
sell sex or ruin their lives - I had to walk out of "Leaving Las Vegas"
because I couldn't stand how the Nicholas Cage character drank himself to
death!

But none of this is the state's business, not when it is clear enough that
those running the state have no moral authority to impose upon others their
will, no matter how much support they have!

A free society puts up with sleaze, as it does with trash and pornography
and other undesirable stuff, because in such a society all men and women
are supposed to be equal under the law! And the law must be confined to the
securing of our rights instead of being perverted into an instrument of
morally obscene paternalism.