If the government’s goal really was to reduce supply and demand of illegal drugs, there are no words to describe the magnitude of the failure of their stormtrooper approach. Last November, the Montgomery County coroner warned heroin deaths were on the rise. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine called heroin deaths in Ohio an epidemic despite all the bullets, bombs and jackboots targeted at the American people. DeWine promised to steal another million dollars a year from taxpayers to fund more invasions of grandmothers’ houses by paramilitary police. By January, Dewine had created a new heroin task force to solve the problem, but in March, heroin deaths hit a record high. In April, they were still on the rise.
Apologists always demand we give the government more time, as if 100 or 43 years, take your pick, hasn’t been long enough, but surely Dewine’s task force should have produced results by August. It didn’t. The Dayton Daily News reported in August, “Montgomery County coroners performed autopsies for suspected heroin overdoses on two area residents during the day Friday and were expecting another arrival that night, bringing the heroin death toll for the past week to 18, officials said.”
Granted, that was an exceptional week. Only three people died of heroin overdoses in Montgomery County the next weekend. The coroner called that a “good weekend.” I call it tragic. My heart breaks for the families of the victims.
Government’s stormtrooper approach can never succeed at achieving its proclaimed goal. Prohibition of alcohol failed. Repealing it dramatically reduced crime, violence and deaths. The same will happen when we end prohibition of all drugs.
And our rulers know this. Plutocrats, top politicians, and top bureaucrats aren’t stupid. They know their drug policies are killing Americans. They just don’t care. They profit from the pain caused by prohibition, so they continually ratchet it up.
Of course, they can’t let the American people know that. They always blame somebody else. Media has run a number of articles linking heroin to Mexico recently. For example, USA Today claimed: “Nearly all of the heroin fueling a U.S. resurgence enters the country over the 1,933-mile Mexico border, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.” The implication is clear: it’s the Mexicans’ fault. But this seemingly in-depth article lies by omission. It intentionally fails to inform 92 percent of the world’s opium, from which heroin is made, is produced in Afghanistan, encouraged by US policy.
Before the US invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban had virtually eradicated opium production. Our rulers, after invading Afghanistan, reinstituted it because US rulers benefit from opium and heroin trade. Global Research explains, “The multi-billion dollar laundering of drug profits supports the Western banking system and the world economy. As explained by Michael C. Ruppert in Crossing the Rubicon, ‘the CIA is Wall Street, and drug money is king’. Drug money, in Ruppert’s analysis, is the steroids of the financial world.” Under US rule, Afghanistan reported record opium production in 2013.
Illegal drugs are second only to oil in international trade value, and like oil, they are traded in dollars. Just like selling oil in dollars bolsters the world reserve status of the dollar, so does selling illegal drugs in dollars. Protecting the dollar is the number one priority of US foreign policy from the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria to Ukraine. Protecting the dollar is the reason the US is allied so tightly to Saudi Arabia and other totalitarian oil producers and against Iran.
Our rulers don’t want to stop the drug trade. They’re intentionally driving up prices and profits for illegal drugs so more suppliers produce them, flooding the streets with dangerously concentrated drugs to further reinforce the dollar. And they’ve been wildly successful. So while our rulers in Washington and Wall Street party on billions of ill-gotten drug gains, scores in Dayton and around the country are dying of heroin overdoses or having their doors kicked in by stormtroopers then being caged if they survive.
The war on drugs also highlights the hypocrisy of self-professed limited government conservatives. Government’s power to control what one puts in one’s body and to kick in doors, throw bombs and shoot people to enforce it is irreconcilable with limited government.
Ryan McMaken derides prohibitionists, “These are the same people who ask the ridiculous question: ‘Are you prepared to deal with the consequences of legalized cannabis?’ If by ‘consequences’ they mean fewer non-violent husbands, mothers, fathers, and teens rotting in government cages, then yes, I am prepared to deal with those ‘consequences.’”
It also means greatly reduced crime, violence and deaths. The same applies to all drugs. There was no heroin problem before opium was banned. There will be none after it’s decriminalized.
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