ENDING THE WAR ON DRUGS WOULD HELP END RELATED VIOLENCE AND CORRUPTION

To counter Office of National Drug Control Policy ads blaming teens
who smoke marijuana as financiers of terrorists, a recent USA Today
advertisement from the Libertarian party showed America's Drug Czar,
John Walters saying, "This week, I had lunch with the president,
testified before Congress and helped funnel $40 million in illegal
drug money to groups like the Taliban." The ad said it's the drug war
that enables terrorists to raise large amounts of money.

Subsequently drug war advocate Dexter Ingram of the Heritage
Foundation tried to refute this argument: "Like it or not, drug-users
in America do help finance the terrorists who attack us. The sellers
rely on volume for their profits; as long as we continue to purchase
and use in bulk, they can count on steady and expanding profits as
far as the eye can see."

There is another way to view the situation. Harry Browne, financial
consultant and Libertarian presidential candidate in 2000, asks, "If
a large volume for a product is sufficient to finance terrorism, why
don't terrorists raise money by selling computers or aspirin or a
food product?"

He answers: "Those products generate very small profits per sale,
while drug profits are astronomical. Whenever the profits in
computers, aspirin or food increase, the supply of the item expands -
pushing prices and profits back again to levels similar to those of
other products."

Why are illicit drug profits astronomical? Only because they are
illegal. If drugs were legal, if Smith Kline, Eli Lilly or Wyeth-
Ayerst could sell such drugs - prices would be so low that the profit
would be no larger than in computers or food. So how could the
terrorists make big money in such a business?

Answer: The black market in drugs. When the government interferes
with a product in wide demand - through price controls or outright
prohibition - a "black market" develops. A black market is a free
market existing in defiance of the government. Because it's illegal,
a black market attracts only people willing to defy the government
and risk going to prison. Since they're already outside the law,
these people generally are quite willing to use violence to keep
competitors out of their markets. The violence-imposed monopolies
cause prices and profits to be much higher than those in a legal,
free market.

So the drug war creates a logical way for terrorists to raise money.
The drug war also encourages corruption - as some of the oversized
profits subvert policemen, prosecutors, politicians, bankers and
judges who will look the other way. Trying to stamp out a popular
product is like trying to hold back the tides. And so prohibition
inevitably leads to more aggressive law-enforcement, violations of
civil liberties, police raids that kill the wrong people, civil asset
forfeiture, and sentences way out of proportion to the "crimes"
committed.

Thus government interference in drugs leads easily to violence, the
killing of innocent people, corruption, tyranny and injustice.

That's what happened with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. That's
what's happening with drug prohibition today.

The drug warriors try to scare us by pointing to conditions in
today's illegal market and claiming they'd be even worse in a legal
market: "If you think drugs are a problem now, imagine if they were
legal - with pushers on every street corner harassing your children."
But when drugs were completely legal in America, there were no
pushers. When people could go to the drugstore and buy Bayer heroin
off the shelf in a safe, measure dosage (for pain relief, as a
sedative or because of an addiction), the price was so low that no
pusher could succeed selling drugs of unknown origin on the street.

If you haven't studied the history of drugs to be aware of how much
safer (and less often abused) they were when completely legal, I can
understand why you're afraid of re-legalizing them. Addiction rates
today are about four times greater with prohibition than when all
drugs were available legally.

You should know that the government uses self-serving propaganda to
expand its own power. As the saying goes, "truth is the first
casualty of war." That applies to the war on drugs and, yes, the war
on terrorism.

If you want to end the dangers of drugs, the violence, corruption,
tyranny and injustice, we have to end the insane war on drugs.

Do the terrorists sell drugs to finance their operations? I don't
know. But I can be pretty sure of one thing: Terrorists are not
selling computers, aspirin or food to finance their operations.