The Drug War at 40: Fascist and a Failure

Drug Policy, Police Statism
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Nope, still not workingThe War on People Who Use Drugs, colloquially known as the “drug war”, turns 40 next week.  Although the U. S. government has criminalized various substances used for medicinal or recreational purposes for nearly a century, the modern drug war began during the Nixon administration, with his announcement that the U. S. government would actively prosecute a “war on drugs”.   This followed the passage of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970; Nixon then established the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973 to oversee all of the government’s interdiction efforts.  Since then, the drug war has consumed more money, and more lives, than any of the drugs which the state has aimed to eradicate, and has completely failed to achieve any of its intended goals.  Drugs are more available than ever before, and although usage has gone down for some drugs (and increased for others), it can be attributed as much to changing tastes in recreational drug usage as to the state’s interdiction efforts.

And at what cost?

Even as the evidence piles up against the effectiveness of the drug war, the statist media continue to foment hysteria over the next grave danger facing American youths.  In the 1980s, it was crack, as alarmist government-led propaganda created a moral panic that raised crack’s profile and possibly fueled its rapid proliferation throughout American inner cities.  These days it may be salvia.  Or nutmeg.  You never know if your spice rack holds the gateway drug that enslaves the minds of your children.

This is not a “war on drugs”.  It is a declared war on the people by their government.  Even if one believes the state, at a minimum, is necessary to protect life, liberty, and property — a sentiment I don’t share but recognize that many libertarians do — once it begins attacking, killing, and imprisoning its own citizens for the non-crime of voluntarily selling or using plants or chemical substances, the state loses any moral authority to govern.

And now Russia is declaring a “total war” on drugs.  Either the Kremlin has developed highly selective amnesia, or just hasn’t paid attention over the past 40 years as other countries have tried, and miserably failed, to stem the flow of illicit drugs.  But given Russia’s historic tendency to totalitarianism, this just proves that the drug war isn’t about protecting innocent people from the evil purveyors of narcotics, but about extending and entrenching state power over everyone’s lives.

Until we assume responsibility for our own actions, and reject the state’s authority to rule over us, the drugs, cash, and blood will continue to flow unabated.

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The Tyrant Rehabilitation Party

The Right, Totalitarianism, Vulgar Politics
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Aside from his legacy as one of the giants of the Austrian school and modern anarcho-capitalism, Murray Rothbard was for a time a political activist, one of the founding members of the Libertarian Party, which got its start in the basement of David Nolan’s home some 40 years ago.  Rothbard’s radicalism kept the LP honest for a time, but eventually it began to behave like most other third parties, softening its principles to make its platform more appealing.  Eventually Rothbard, following a split with “low tax liberals” such as Ed Crane (founder of the Cato Institute) and David Koch (a Cato benefactor), left the LP, and took with him most of its radical heart.

No doubt Rothbard would be doing barrel rolls in his grave to see what’s become of the LP lately.  The most recent candidates for the party’s Presidential nomination, Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root, both former Republicans, have been hard at work promoting not so much personal liberty but the kinder, gentler sides of former and current members of the U. S.’s stable of tinpot dictators.

Jean-Claude Duvalier returns to Haiti
Espinoza/AP

First, there’s Barr, now a lawyer based in Atlanta, representing Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the former “president for life” of Haiti who now stands accused of ransacking his country’s treasury.  Barr attempted to defend his client by favorably comparing his reign to an earthquake:

Speaking to CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield, Barr did his best to defend his client’s tainted legacy, noting that, while Duvalier “is very well aware of the personal risk that he faced coming back to Haiti,” that “paled in comparison to the needs of his people.” Barr was tight-lipped about the details of Duvalier’s return and what he wanted to accomplish, other than to say that he wanted to “see funds made available to help the relief effort which, by any reasonable estimate here, has not progressed well.”

Then Whitfield hit Barr with a tough question on his integrity: after all the American government had done to clean up Duvalier’s mess, as a former Congressman, did he see any conflict of interest? Barr seemed to take offense, arguing that the American government had not helped much and, that, in fact, “the country is in worse shape now than it was at the time Mr. Duvalier was president.”

Hosni Mubarak and George W. Bush
AP/file

Well, at least Barr isn’t representing the LP in his capacity as Baby Doc’s defender.  I wish the same could be said of Root’s mash note for Egypt’s embattled president Hosni Mubarak, which was not only written by a sitting LP committee chair but was published on the party Web site:

I just got off the phone with a longtime friend- a successful Egyptian business leader. He believes that several hundred thousand people in the streets do not represent the 80 million citizens of Egypt. They represent anarchists, communists, and Islamic extremists- all with an agenda and axe to grind. He says if you polled the people of Egypt today, the majority would support Mubarak. He says that the backbone of Egypt- the business owners, small business community, and middle class still support Mubarak and the military. They are horrified by the mobs in the street and are shocked at Obama’s tepid response to the riots and the one-sided portrayal of the situation by the U.S. media.

Because, you know, video footage of protesters being beaten and shot by Mubarak’s hired thugs can’t possibly mean that…Mubarak has sent hired thugs out to beat and shoot protesters.  And besides, they’re anarchists, the filthy little upstarts.  Totally asking for it!

It is shameful that the party of Nolan and Rothbard has become the party of apologists for dictators, but I can take comfort in knowing that as the Libertarian Party’s radical core has dwindled to nothing, so too has its relevancy to libertarianism in general.

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Angels and Fools

Vulgar Politics
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There are many responses one might consider for the vile and hateful Westboro Baptist Church, which plans to picket the funeral of Christina Green, the 9-year-old girl murdered along with five others in Saturday’s shootings in Tucson.  My initial thoughts, admittedly not in keeping with my philosophy of non-aggression, involved swinging a baseball bat.  Hard.

Fortunately I am nowhere near Tucson, and cooler heads have prevailed; one good approach, as organized by resident Christin Gilmer, is a so-called “angel action” — people wearing tall “angel wings” who surround and block out the Westboro slimeballs so that mourners will be able to grieve and say farewell to Christina in peace.

There are also not-so-good ways to handle this, as the Arizona legislature has demonstrated by attempting to restrict the Westboro picketers, who nonetheless are free to carry on their disgusting crusade in public areas.  (The worst thing you can ever hear a politician say is “I’m gonna fix this,” as state senator Kyrsten Sinema did.)

If roads and parks were privatized this would not be necessary; I doubt many property owners would want to be associated with such demonstrations, and no cemetery owner with any respect for the dead would allow them near the entrance.  But so long as the state monopolizes roads and other rights-of-way, we have to put up with these fools.  Better to have them shunned and blocked from public view by private citizens than to have them silenced by the state.

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A Drug War Mutiny

Anti-Statism, Drug Policy
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“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

— Henry David Thoreau, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”

Of all the injustices perpetrated by the state, the war on drugs is one of the most outrageously evil.  Kidnapping and throwing people into cages for the non-crime of consuming disapproved substances, or for selling them to others, should be condemned by anyone with a sense of justice and morality.  It is the prime reason for using jury nullification: to acquit those accused by the state of violating an unjust law, regardless of the facts; to reject the law itself and the authority of the state to prosecute lawbreakers.

Typically nullification takes place during deliberation, when jurors simply refuse to convict, unconvinced by the prosecution’s case.  But it can be difficult to gain a seat on a jury if one’s intent is to nullify; prosecutors and judges are well aware of the growing nullification movement, and will take steps to screen out potential troublemakers.  Even though juries have a right to nullify, the state will do everything it can to empanel only those citizens who will remain “unbiased” — so long as they promise to convict the defendant if the facts warrant it.

But what if the entire jury pool refuses to hear a case?

A funny thing happened on the way to a trial in Missoula County District Court last week.

Jurors – well, potential jurors – staged a revolt.

They took the law into their own hands, as it were, and made it clear they weren’t about to convict anybody for having a couple of buds of marijuana. Never mind that the defendant in question also faced a felony charge of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs.

The tiny amount of marijuana police found while searching Touray Cornell’s home on April 23 became a huge issue for some members of the jury panel.

No, they said, one after the other. No way would they convict somebody for having a 16th of an ounce.

In fact, one juror wondered why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, said a flummoxed Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul.

District Judge Dusty Deschamps took a quick poll as to who might agree. Of the 27 potential jurors before him, maybe five raised their hands. A couple of others had already been excused because of their philosophical objections.

“I thought, ‘Geez, I don’t know if we can seat a jury,’ ” said Deschamps, who called a recess.

Note carefully how the county prosecutor characterizes the jury pool’s action:

“A mutiny,” said Paul.

What is a mutiny?  A rebellion against authority.  Paul, like any other faithful agent of the state, arrogates to himself power that rightly belongs to the people he supposedly serves, and is taken aback by any challenge to his authority.  Jury duty is an obligation, and if the facts demand it, then one’s duty is to convict, and justice be damned.

The residents of Missoula County, some of them anyway, think otherwise.  They recognize the sheer absurdity of prosecuting someone for possessing a tiny amount of a plant that has been cultivated and used by humans for thousands of years.  Would they have convicted the defendant of the more serious charge he faced, distribution of a “dangerous” drug, itself a risible claim, particularly as it applies to marijuana?  People seem to have trouble accepting the idea that if it’s all right for someone to possess a drug, it must be all right for someone else to sell it to him.

But I will take the small victories, and hope for more like them.

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Enjoy Snitchin’? There’s an App for That

Police Statism, Technology
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If you suspect your neighbors are cooking up meth or fertilizer bombs in their basement — or maybe you just want those damn kids to get off your lawn — “help” from the government is as close as your iPhone:

The PatriotApp links your phone to American security and law enforcement agencies via the Internet and allows you to report anything you want at the touch of a button.

By simply pressing the relevant icon, users can sound the alarm for terrorism, ‘suspicious activity’, a health pandemic or an environmental safety issue.

The $0.99 app, named after the controversial Patriot Act brought in by the U.S. government after 9/11, is designed to ‘encourage active citizen participation in the War on Terror and in protecting their families and surrounding communities’, its makers Citizen Concepts claim.

Not a lot of imagination is needed to come up with all sorts of scenarios for abuse of this app, although creator Charles Reinighaus “truly believes that 99.9 percent of people are good and will not misuse the technology”.

It is truly a wondrous society we live in, that the state need not lift a finger to create a surveillance network, when its own citizens will happily provide one.  Even the Soviets and East Germans weren’t so lucky.

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