DRUG WAR BENEFITS CRIMINALS, TERRORISTS

In recent months, the United States government spent $10 million of our tax
dollars for its latest anti-drug campaign. Its new pitch: If you buy
illegal drugs, you're supporting terrorists because terrorists are
intimately involved in the production, sale and distribution of drugs. I
agree. People who buy illegal drugs do support terrorists. But here's what
the government leaves out: By making drugs illegal, the government is
supporting terrorists even more.

Have you ever wondered why terrorist groups get involved in the illegal
drug market and not, for example, in the legal market for Coca-Cola, soap
or envelopes? The inaccurate answer that many people give is that the
profits in dealing drugs are incredibly high, which attracts criminals. But
profits are not incredibly high, once you adjust for risk: People in that
trade have a nasty tendency to die or go to prison, and they insist on
being compensated for that risk. Besides, if high profits were what
attracted criminals, why don't those same high profits attract normal
investors?

No. The reason terrorists get involved in illegal drugs is that they are
criminals; once a market is made illegal, the high risk-adjusted prices of
the illegal goods reward those with "criminal skills." One such "skill" is
the ability and willingness to murder people. That's why organized crime
took over the liquor industry during Prohibition - and quickly exited when
Prohibition ended.

Moreover, the U.S. government is effectively supporting left-wing
terrorists in Colombia. How so? Say you're a Colombian coca producer trying
to make a peso. Working against you are Colombia's military and police,
pressured by U.S. government subsidies and threats and aided by U.S.
military personnel and equipment. The first thing you want is protection,
and the place to go for protection is to antigovernment people with guns
who know how to fight. Two such groups are the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, or FARC, and the National Liberation Army, both revolutionary
leftists. You don't have to be a left-wing ideologue yourself to decide to
pay them protection money, which is just what many coca farmers and cocaine
producers do.

By one estimate, the revenue to FARC from drug-related sources is more than
$600 million a year, which would make it the best-funded terrorist group in
the world. Thus, the war against drugs strengthens the position of the
leftist insurgents.

These insurgents have terrorized Colombian society. Between 1981 and 1986,
for example, drug traffickers murdered more than 50 Colombian judges,
including 12 Supreme Court justices. Colombian citizens are also
terrorized: More than 1 million of them emigrated in the past five years.
If a similar percent of Americans did the same, we would lose 14 million
citizens.

A more informative ad line from the U.S. government would be: "When you
support the drug war, you're supporting terrorists."