White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

Changing Direction in the Drug War

February 10, 2009 by Llewellyn King Leave a Comment

 

 

Mexico is being torn apart by drug gangs, often wrongly called cartels. Cartels are created to uphold prices. In the case of Mexico, it is law enforcement and the prohibition of drugs that upholds prices–and makes drug dealing irresistibly profitable.

 

All along the drug chain there is death, from the campesino in the jungle who runs afoul of a drug lord to the overdosed addict.

 

The libertarian solution is legalization. It was endorsed by the late conservative William F. Buckley Jr. and by The Economist magazine. This would work if not one new user were to come into the drug culture. But drugs are aggressively proselytized.

 

The British learned this the hard way. In the early 1960s, they thought they had the hard drug problem licked with a form a legalization that worked. Heroin addicts—and there were few, just 27 in London–were under the care of a doctor and they would line up at pharmacy, waiting to get their prescriptions filled. This was fairly easily managed because heroin is a legal medicine in Britain, used as a pain suppressant for the terminally ill. The British were so proud of how they handled the hard drug problem that they liked to lecture Americans on how it should be done.

 

Then it all fell apart. An addict broke into a storage unit and introduced a wide range of people to heroin. The speed at which heroin addiction spread frightened the authorities. From a little over two dozen addicts, the number in London jumped to over 250. The government was shocked by the dependence and the proselytizing effect. Additionally, immigrants were pouring into Britain and bringing with them a culture of drug use.

 

The flood gates were open. Britain is now overwhelmed with drugs and no solution to the problem is in sight.

 

Here is a modest proposal: legalize marijuana. It is widely available and is used at every stratum of society. The economy of Mendocino County in

California is dependent on it and the Florida Keys are awash in smuggled pot. The Royal Canadian Mounted police told me they believe there are more than 10,000 grow houses around Toronto. They cannot compete with the growers.

 

The horticulture of marijuana is improving–the latest advance is cold light and hydroponic tanks. More the active ingredient, THC, is getting stronger and plant yields are way up.

 

The war on marijuana cannot be won because society does not take the consumption seriously. I have seen it smoked everywhere by journalists, musicians, a publisher and a Wall Street analyst. Sometimes, you can smell it in the park across from the White House.

 

I never fancied it myself. I tried it but I did not get high or develop the munchies. A stronger drug, alcohol, has been my downfall. I would have got in less trouble with pot.

 

Stabilized, taxed and supervised marijuana would be an advance on today’s hodge podge of tolerance and intolerance. Federal law is intolerant and state law can be quite lenient. Some states tolerate personal use but cultivation is frowned on. This prohibition is expensive, ineffective and contributes to the woes in Mexico.

 

Pot has been legal in Amsterdam for decades. The Dutch prefer those seeking a changed state to smoke a joint rather than use a hard drug or get falling-down drunk.

 

We also can do something about hard drugs. Considering the British experience, it has to be done with care. However, there is a road map. The French banned absinthe, a liquor distilled from wormwood, because it caused such damage to drinkers—the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec comes to mind. But rather than driving the fierce spirit underground, they introduced a substitute, Pernod. No underground bootleg trade resulted.

 

Therefore, we ought to throw science at the two big imported tropical drugs, heroin and cocaine, with a view to neutering them. If you cannot, as you cannot, end the human desire for changed states, make drug use safe—that is non-addictive but enjoyable.

 

So there are two possibilities for winning the war on drugs: unbundle them, and take marijuana out of the mix, and throw science at the dangerous drugs. There are other wars to be fought and won. Winable wars.

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: drug war, heroin, marijuana

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
Psychiatrist Would Abandon Research on Long COVID and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Psychiatrist Would Abandon Research on Long COVID and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Llewellyn King

The knowledge that the National Institutes of Health will be spending $1.15 billion on Long COVID was music to the ears of people who suffer from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, also called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and often linked in the acronym ME/CFS. Long COVID is affecting people who had the virus, had seemingly recovered from it, but […]

Alternative Energy Hailed as a Megatrend, Disrupting World Order

Alternative Energy Hailed as a Megatrend, Disrupting World Order

Llewellyn King

Glance up and around and you’ll know the horizon is changing. From Canada to South Africa, Brazil to China, windmills and solar panels are telling a story of change. In the United States, the landscape is collecting a kind of 21st-century raiment. Wind farms, solar farms, and just stray windmills and solar panels on roofs […]

The Great American Reset Is Underway and Will Change Everything

The Great American Reset Is Underway and Will Change Everything

Llewellyn King

It is underway. It has huge momentum, and it will change everything we do — work, leisure, health care, education, use of resources — and, as a bonus, how the world sees us. It is the Great American Reset, where things will be irreversibly changed. It is a seminal reset that will shape the decades […]

How China’s Rare Earths Monopoly Controls Our Destiny

How China’s Rare Earths Monopoly Controls Our Destiny

Llewellyn King

A world commodities rebalancing is underway, and China is in a position of dominance. Take lithium, where China is a major processor and battery manufacturer; cobalt, where China has dominated the supply chains; and rare earths, where China has an almost total monopoly. Taken together, these three commodities are key to the future of alternative […]

Copyright © 2021 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in