I need to rant. I need to type. I need to get shit off my mind. I am filled with an anger that for some reason has ballooned inside me to the point where I feel I have no escape but to burst. I just saw the new movie with Mark Walburg and that Phoenix dude who will always be Johnny Cash to me and got absolutely pissed by watching it. It wasn't that it was a bad movie; I thoroughly enjoyed the acting especially and thought the film was very well done (except the best climax came an hour into the film, and there was an hour left to watch). I got pissed because I went to the movie with my mother, and we came away with completely different interpretations of the movie. Without going into detail, she felt at the conclusion of the film a new hatred for the evils of drugdealers, while the film confirmed my belief that the war on drugs creates much more harm than good in any culture. What Phoenix and his entire family went through in the film was horrible to a degree that I could not even imagine (and I'm pretty good at relating to people), yet the blame is not to be placed entirely on the Russian mob.
The blame for a large amount of crime in America lies in the same people that pledge to end it. The legislators. The police departments. There is blood on their hands! As the war on terror is blatantly teaching America, you cannot wage a war on a common noun. You cannot stop terror, it is an inherent factor of any society that has ever been on Earth. You cannot stop drugs, it is an inherent market of any society ever created. You cannot stop actions that are inherent in human nature, you can only attempt to control them.
For the past 70 or so years our government has attempted to stop the flow of drugs into America, and the failure of its attempt is mindblowing. Crime has risen, drugs have become more dangerous, jails are overcrowded to the point of absurdity, and the lives of millions of police officers have been put in danger for a cause that is completely unworthy of such priority. Making drugs illegal does a couple things: It creates a black market completely void of regulation, it creates an opportunity for organized crime to control and profit off of this black market, and it puts otherwise law-abiding citizens in prison for actions that they have the constitutional right to partake in. America is founded on freedom! Telling me what I can and cannot put in my body is not freedom, it is hypocritical to the very morals our founding fathers fought so hard to preserve in our great country.
One of my mother's arguments to my reaction was a logically and well-founded, "People shouldn't do drugs! We have to at least attempt to stop people from doing drugs." The bottom line is this, PEOPLE LIKE DRUGS! Every person you know likes drugs. Every person in history likes drugs. Did you have a sip of coffee this morning? Take an Advil lately? Have a beer? The market for drugs is never going to disappear, and it will obviously never disappear through the use of force. This is not to say that the drug market cannot be controlled. Education is the key to control, not criminalization. I know that heroin is a dangerous drug that can easily ruin my life and health, I would never do heroin. The fact that is illegal doesn't change my mind. I'm not saying that by making drugs illegal the government doesn't control a percentage of the population into abstinence, but it will never control enough of the population to make the 7 billion dollars of taxpayers money the federal government alone spends on drugs each year worthwhile. In fact, there is proof it is doing quite the opposite. Though this argument is very general (due to the film dealing with hard drugs) my personal anger stems through the failed war on marijuana. A drug our government has claimed to control through law enforcement is easier for high school seniors to get than alcohol, according to a study by the same government that still stands by their current laws. Marijuana is the number one cash crop in our country, yet our police forces are still under the impression that they can remove the market. The market has grown, demand is at an all-time high. Any economist will tell you supply will match demand, especially when the profit outweighs the risks. By making marijuana illegal, the price for a pound of pot has ballooned to 2,000 to 4,000 dollars a pound! It is the literal economic value of gold. While this is not the government intention, it is the truth. It is the god damn truth. And if a disturbed twenty year old kid like me can realize it, then there is no excuse that the rest of America can't.
With all of this said, there is a simple and proven solution to the problem. It would get drugs out of the hands of children. It would disintegrate organized crime networks. It would empty our prisons of citizens that want to contribute and be productive members of society. It would make our government billions of dollars. Anyone who would not support a plan with these kind of guaranteed results has to be insane. Or am I the crazy one? The solution I speak of is regulation. That’s it. Regulation. Treat drugs in America like any other legitimate business that provides a good that consumers demand. It's simple. My mother would say, "But drugs are bad for you!" She's right, which makes my proposal even more logical. Even though some drugs have been proven to be of medical value and much less dangerous than force-fed government propaganda would have you believe (marijuana), lets say that drugs are as bad and evil and dangerous and destructive as could possibly be. Well, before we do that, we have to come to the logical conclusion that no drug is without some sort of benefit to the consumer. If smallpox strains were available at 7/11 for personal consumption, noone would buy them. Noone wants to buy something that has no positive value to them. Because it is obvious that people DO want the available drugs on the black market, we can automatically conclude that there is a positive value lying somewhere in the midst of its dangers. No drug is without side-effects. No over-the-counter drug comes without warnings on its label. It's through this analysis that we allow consumers to assess the risks and rewards of the product and make a personal decision as to whether they want to buy it. Cigarettes are a perfect example. Some people think cigarettes are too dangerous to use, others feel the benefits outweigh the risks. My entire point is this; It is not the job of the government to make these decisions, but rather to provide the necessary information so that consumers can make an educated decision themselves. This is only achieved through regulation. What is the most amazing part about this whole argument is that it proves to do exactly what those against it fight for. Since cigarettes have been regulated and the public has been thoroughly educated on there dangers, and tobacco use in America has plummeted. In simpler terms, drug use went down due to regulation and education. Its common sense! Its simple. Its logical. If the government tried to make cigarettes illegal because of there dangers, I am a firm believer that usage would go up, and the dangers of using them would also rise. This phenomenon has also been proven during Prohibition. There was no doubt alcohol was creating a problem in America, but rather than passing stricter regulations and educating the American public the government decided to make alcohol illegal. The results were disasterous. While the campaign had immediate success, the laws of economics and crime soon set in. Organized crime expanded to a level America had never seen due to the newly created black market, potency went up because profit prevailed over consumer safety, and usage soon rose to a level never before seen, even prior to prohibition. These are the lessons of history, and any political scientist is a firm believer that history matters. Why our leaders and citizens today fail to assess and learn from the past is one phenomenon that I haven't figured out, and one that has instilled an anger in me that will not easily die.
The government will never remove the risk or market for drugs; it can only limit the risks and educate the markets.
