15 Benefits of the Drug War — for the State

Kevin Carson ignores the public interest rhetoric and gets right down to the benefits of the drug war for the state and its clients. A sample:

1. It has surrounded the Fourth Amendment’s “search and seizure” restrictions, and similar provisions in state constitutions, with so many “good faith,” “reasonable suspicion” and “reasonable expectation of privacy” loopholes as to turn them into toilet paper for all intents and purposes.

2. In so doing, it has set precedents that can be applied to a wide range of other missions, like the War on Terror.

3. It has turned drug stores and banks into arms of the state that constantly inform on their customers.

4. Via programs like DARE, it has turned kids into drug informants who monitor their parents for the authorities.

Carson ought to have noted that even on its own terms, DARE has been a complete failure, and possibly even counterproductive. DARE has been about as authoritatively debunked as any program could possibly be, and on it goes.

Jp

The drug war is bad but kevin carsons a marxist.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Roddis/707435410 Robert Roddis

People on the free market can establish private neighborhoods, streets and schools where not only drugs, but druggies, thugs, MTV and popular culture are banned contractually. Laws against “discrimination” and property taxes for schools people don’t want to attend impede this process. Right now, small private subdivisions could be built and established for these purposes if these “progressive” impediments were not in place. Of course, you also could build and establish a neighborhood where everyone smoked and worshiped weed and Snoop Dog but neither group would ever have to engage the other.

I’ve been pushing this idea since 1974 but libertarians seem to prefer selling the public on “legalizing” drugs with nothing more, so that crack heads can move next door (and maybe get welfare for their illness) while their kids will attend public school with your kids. That sales scheme has gone over so well with the public it has led us to the tissue paper constitution.
George

I don’t think the message has been brought to the masses in the US in any major way. It is largely squelched or perverted.

With that said, the Portuguese seem to get it:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-after-decriminalization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

Bob, I have sometimes tried this approach. It works with regular people but, revealingly, not so much with some libertarians, who seem to want to force anti-bourgeois lifestyles on the unwilling more than they want liberty.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Roddis/707435410 Robert Roddis

That’s been a concern of mine since like 1983. I remember when they first invented drug testing in the 80s and I thought that
would be a great libertarian argument against the drug war. No business would ever need to worry about hiring druggies ever again. Or at least that alternative should be mentioned with every mention of “legalized” drugs. Isn’t it obvious that on a free market, you might have to pay higher insurance premiums or be denied insurance altogether if you take drugs? How many private road companies with no chance of a bailout from Uncle Sugar are going to allow people to drive stoned? Churches in the inner city could buy up the “mean streets” and vet whomever is allowed inside.

Bill O’Reilly compares Ron Paul with Jerry Sandusky because Ron Paul wants to “legalize narcotics”. I’m convinced that’s why southerners avoided voting for Ron Paul in droves but most libertarians seem to hate religious and pious people more than they love liberty.

I’ve always been loath to criticize other libertarians but maybe it’s getting to be that time.