Saturday, March 07, 2009

Are anti-drugs crusaders on drugs?!

I sent the following letter to the WSJ today concerning a column (by John Walters) stating that drug legalization isn't the answer to the latest wave of murder and kidnapping perpetrated by drug traffickers in Mexico and America.

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John Walters said “narco-terrorists want power, not control of the drug trade” and “the drug trade is a tool, not the cause of these violent criminal groups.”

No. Narco-terrorists want money, and the illegal drug trade is their tool, their means. When we legalize drugs, the outlaws will lose the competitive edge to savvy businessmen – and the outlaws will lose their power or money or whatever you want to call their motivation.

But let’s put aside psychoanalysis and rationalizations. America has had its 100-years war with drug traffickers, and America still hasn’t learned its lesson: The minute you outlaw a commodity is the minute that the scum of the Earth set up shop and begin murdering people.

Like every other major opinion writer on the drug issue, Mr. Walters eschews fundamentals. The real issue here is liberty. People have a right to do with their bodies as they please, including the ingestion of harmful substances – and live with the ramifications of their often-irrational actions.

And as long as the rationalizations continue for a “drug war,” we will continue to see hundreds of innocent people (including the valiant officers who carry out such horrendous laws) lying in pools of their own blood.

Let’s stop the puritanical insanity.

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