WHO'S TO BLAME FOR DRUG VIOLENCE?

Last week during her official visit to Mexico, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, on behalf of the U.S., accepted shared blame for the
barbaric violence perpetrated by Mexican drug cartels. The
conventional logic here is that because the great demand for illegal
drugs comes from the U.S., along with the weapons used by the cartels
to inflict the continuing carnage, America is to blame.

Such self-flagellation is typical of those Americans prone to guilt
about-well, about being American. These folks blame America for the
current economic pandemic; for global warming; for third world poverty
(we use too much of the world's resources); and now for the drug
violence in other nations.

In the case of drug violence in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America,
Clinton is correct, America does share a great deal of the blame, but
not for the reason she gives.

If Clinton considered the real causes of Mexico's escalating drug
violence, she did not mention them. One of them is the ease with which
we have allowed our southern border to be habitually compromised.
Clinton made no public statements critical of official Mexico for
encouraging its desperately destitute populations to sneak into the
U.S. and take advantage of the bounty el Norte, including free
education and welfare programs.

Drug smuggling is facilitated by this invasion of illegal immigrants.
In fact, the drug cartels are now taking over the trafficking in
illegal immigrants, and, increasingly, forcing them to transport drugs
across the border into the U.S.

The other and, by far, the main cause of the drug violence and
corruption is America's stubborn insistence on waging a war on drugs-a
futile effort that mostly only benefits the cash flows of those
fighting it, namely law enforcement and the illegal drug industry.

This foolish debacle continues, with all of its death, imprisonments,
collateral damage, and annual expenditures of tens of billions of tax
dollars because America seems to have a penchant for accepting false
premises maintained by popular myth, junk science, and hypocritical
moralities that ignore and betray the founding principles of the
nation-principles expressed and guaranteed by The Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution.

Most of the drugs prohibited by federal law are no more addictive or
dangerous than are the many legal drugs prescribed for various
physical and psychological pain. Because people as prominent as Russ
Limbaugh, Betty Ford, and Bret Favre became addicted to prescription
drugs has not resulted in those drugs being banned. Because tobacco
and alcohol have proven to be more addictive and bigger health risks
than has marijuana, has not resulted in a ban on tobacco and booze.

America's war on drugs is a war on freedom where the only crime is
choosing a particular anodyne that government has forbidden for
reasons that cannot be justified either by logic or under the founding
credo of this nation. The fear and misinformation that feeds beliefs
that freedom of choice in drug use will lead to savage anarchy has,
ironically, caused that very thing in Mexico and parts of the U.S. It
is because of the prohibition of the drugs, not because of their
intrinsic danger that the butchery and corruption occurs.

The unfounded hysteria over illegal drugs and the myths that justify
it have historical precedent in America. Similar aberrant national
psychology led the nation to betray its credo with the hypocrisy of
slavery and the subsequent vicious discrimination against
African-Americans. It did so again with the disenfranchisement of
women. Both of these nonsensical national hypocrisies were sustained
by false beliefs and irrational fears that granting full
Constitutional freedom to certain folks would jeopardize social stability.

Overcoming these official social tyrannies required long, hard, and
sometimes dangerous struggles. And here we are again with personal
freedom being suppressed and criminalized because the nation cannot or
will not examine the facts, think logically, nor support its own
founding principles as regards the choice of drug use.

The daily carnage in Mexico and in many neighborhoods here in America
is the product of America's abdication of reason, and the selfishness
of those forces enriched by keeping certain drugs illegal. Our packed
prisons, our increasing violent crime, our drain on beleaguered public
treasuries, and our suppression of freedom are the true and continuing
costs of drug prohibition. Demand for drugs will never be quenched by
anything but the most repressive police state-and then we will have
lost America.

For all his promise as a man of reason, for the millions of inquires
he received on his White House web site regarding a more sensible
approach to drug policy, President Obama has said he does not consider
legalization to be a wise approach. I urge him to restudy our
founding principles, examine the facts about drugs, and work to end
this irrational suppression of freedom.