The American war on drugs — both domestically and abroad — has always been a sham, a pipe dram if you will fueled by the arrogant notion that we can control people’s consumption behavior while also ignoring massive inequality and poverty under which our economy operates.
The equation seems fairly simple to me: criminalize drugs — pot, liquor, even poppies — and you drive the price up. That increases the potential profit, which in turn offsets the extreme risk involved. The upshot is the pseudo normalization of the drug trade even as we expand our crackdown and use increasingly brutal methods.
Consider this comment from today’s New York Times by an otherwise mainstream Afghan farmer:
“Now I am desperate, what can I do?” said Mohammed Amin, a poppy farmer in Tirin Kot in Oruzgan Province, who harvested only one kilogram of opium poppy this year compared with 15 last year. “I don’t have any cash now to start another business, and if I grow any other crops, I cannot make a profit.”
The poppy crop offered a livelihood, which has been damaged by the crackdown, leaving him in deeper financial straits that make it impossible for him to get out of the poppy business.
Not that he would, as he told the Times. There are risks, but poppy farming offers a better and more stable return than other crops.
“The poppy is always good, you can sell it at any time. It is like gold, you can sell it whenever and get cash.”
In the United States, we’ve ignored our own history, using law enforcement — federal, state and local — to attack what should be treated as a public issue. The money spent on our ever-more militarized police forces could be better spent on treatment centers, with money raised through a tax on decriminalized substances.
There is movement on the margins on this — the medical marijuana movement and pot decriminalization pushes, for instance — but this nibbling does little to redirect the larger mindset. That means the failed model on which we have relied will remain in place and we will continue to waste billions on a drug war that cannot be won.
Hank Kalet 