'BAD TRIP' DESCRIBES VIEW OF NATION'S WAR ON DRUGS

Current Events

America's "war on drugs" is futile and socially corrosive, undermines the
Constitution and chips away at individual liberty, says conservative writer
and editor Joel Miller in "Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying
America" (WND Books, $24.99).

"By its intervention in the drug market, the State sets in motion an
economic and political domino-collapse that exacerbates crime and
corruption, gnaws away at privacy and property rights" and "endangers
people's well-being," Miller says.

He disputes allegations that narcotics use spawns lawbreaking, asking,
"If drugs cause crime, then how can millions of Americans who use
drugs without committing crimes be explained?" Most of the drug crime
that fosters anxiety in society is "a direct result not of the
pharmacological effects of dope, but of the distortion of drug markets
by laws," the author says.

The illegality of narcotics inflates their prices, prompting drug
users to "turn to crime to generate the necessary greenbacks" to buy
the product, Miller says. Crackdowns on drug users and peddlers "mean
more shortages," which generate higher prices, triggering more
property crimes.

Prohibition "creates crime and violence ... corrupts the very public
servants we trust to protect our lives and property ... wreaks havoc
on the Constitution ... provides government the right to rob people of
their property, militarizes the police, and expands the size and scope
of the state to frightening proportions," he writes. The "war on
drugs" adversely affects homeland security, too, because insurgents
"finance their illegal activities with the drug trade."

The author prefers "cultural controls and social sanctions" to
statutory bans on drugs. As for the odds that drugs will be legalized
anytime soon, "privatizing Social Security seems a picnic by
comparison," he concedes. At the very least, he suggests, the drug war
should be de-federalized and left to the states.