Contributed by: filbert Saturday, September 05 2009 @ 02:12 PM CST
The drug war has been a debacle both domestically and internationally. In the United States, it has overwhelmed our prisons (indeed, the entire criminal justice system) caused many urban neighborhoods to become combat zones, and eviscerated the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In the drug-source countries of South America, it has created a bonanza of corruption and helped bring to power such populist demagogues as Bolivia’s Evo Morales. In Afghanistan, the counter-narcotics mission has alienated tens of thousands of Afghan opium farmers and, even worse, tribal leaders and other important political players — key U.S. allies who rely on the drug trade to fund their power bases. The war on drugs there, in short, has undermined our far more crucial mission to defeat al Qaeda.
And I say that as a person with no interest in any drug stronger than Jack Daniel’s.