The perverse damage that federal and state drug prohibition policies impose on American citizens and our neighbors has been a frequent topic on this blog over the years.
In this must-read Reason.com article, Radley Balko reviews how Americaís drug prohibition policies are increasingly being used as a basis for conducting Gestapo-like raids on American citizens:
Last week, a Columbia, Missouri, drug raid captured on video went viral. As of this morning, the video had garnered 950,000 views on YouTube. It has lit up message boards, blogs, and discussion groups around the Web, unleashing anger, resentment and even, regrettably, calls for violence against the police officers who conducted the raid.
I’ve been writing about and researching these raids for about five years, including raids that claimed the lives of innocent children, grandmothers, college students, and bystanders. Innocent families have been terrorized by cops who raided on bad information, or who raided the wrong home due to some careless mistake. There’s never been a reaction like this one.
But despite all the anger the raid has inspired, the only thing unusual thing here is that the raid was captured on video, and that the video was subsequently released to the press. Everything else was routine. Save for the outrage coming from Columbia residents themselves, therefore, the mass anger directed at the Columbia Police Department over the last week is misdirected.
Raids just like the one captured in the video happen 100-150 times every day in America. Those angered by that video should probably look to their own communities. Odds are pretty good that your local police department is doing the same thing.
Meanwhile, after suggesting on the campaign trail that drug prohibition policies needed to be changed, President Obama has cynically and hypocritically retreated and now supports the federal governmentís drug prohibition policy. Meanwhile, the enormous costs of the dubious policy continue to pile up.
Americaís War on Drugs is lost. It is way past time that we require our leaders to acknowledge that and end it. Their war has now become a war on us.
Update: Scott Henson has more.
The war on drugs long ago ceased to be about limiting the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. At this point, the “war against drugs” employs a large number of individuals whose main goal is to perpetuate their own employment, not to serve the interests of the taxpayers. Much like the TSA, these people are not judged on the success of their efforts, but rather on whether they put on good public safety theater. Dressing up in SWAT gear for TV cameras, issuing press releases and talking a good game about wanting to make the public safer is what the drug enforcement agencies are paid to do. If you want a good metric to guage their effectiveness, just look at the price of cocaine on the street today. Its cheaper today than it ever has been. Supply and demand set the price. Supply today is plentiful.
I’m not saying Balko is wrong this time, or that he’s always wrong. But I don’t rely on his “reporting.” I’ve found too many occasions on which he’s been intellectually dishonest, typically by ignoring or distorting facts that don’t fit his narrative. There’s always “another side to the story,” but Balko mostly doesn’t acknowledge or deal with it. I simply don’t find him to be credible, and I’m unwilling to double-check all of his assertions in order to find out which ones are justified and which ones have been, well, Balko-ized.
The large number of special interest groups which profit handsomely from narcotics laws, combined with
the “needs” of intelligence services to have copious amounts of cash to fund black operations, interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, and the need for a means to control and suppress dissent here at home, means that the decades-long tyranny of their War on Drug Users will not end before we shuffle off this mortal coil.