At long last, the ruinous, decades-long War on Drugs is starting to wind down. This insane “progressive” social engineering scheme to “improve” the human race by giving governments control over everything individuals might choose to ingest started in the United States, and from the beginning was deeply tied to eugenics and other racist pseudoscience. But though its twin sister eugenics fell into disgrace due to certain goose-stepping Europeans using it as an excuse for genocide, prohibition thrived and was eventually imposed via treaties and bullying on every corner of the globe. The carnage inflicted by the evil dogma that consensual behavior can be “illegal” is incalculable, and while politicians are still attached to it like embedded ticks, backlash against the drug theater of the greater World War on Human Rights has been brewing for some time, and many of them have come to realize that their countries can simply no longer afford its devastating costs in both money and lives. The madness’ native land was the first to begin rejecting it; cannabis is still fully criminalized in only six US states, and momentum is building to legalize or decriminalize other drugs as well. The plant is also legal in Canada and Uruguay, and both Mexico and Israel appear poised to follow suit; before much longer it is likely the the drug war treaties will collapse, and criminalization (especially of psychedelics) will become the exception rather than the rule. Alas, this does not mean the end of prohibition as a concept; it is too useful an excuse for police-statery for power-mad sociopaths to give up, so while drug prohibition is losing popularity, many other kinds of prohibition, from guns to plastic drinking straws, are gaining in popularity. And chief among these is the War on Whores, which as I pointed out long ago is the new War on Drugs; it is no accident that even as support for the criminalization of plants was dying in the US, propaganda justifying police violence against people interested in consensual sex was increasing. Canada’s legalization of cannabis was separated by only a short span from its imposition of Swedish-style criminalization, and the exact same thing can be said of Israel (except that the gap was even shorter). The winding down of one front in the great war on liberty is indeed something to celebrate, but only if those who have been fighting against this one form of prohibition recognize that we still have a very, very long way to go.
Winding Down
November 23, 2020 by Maggie McNeill
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I love the map. It will be interesting to watch it change. Unfortunately, I agree with your view on power hungry politicians who will be a problem for a long, long time.
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I certainly agree that cannabis prohibition is declining due in no small part to the reason you proffer: that governments are realizing they cannot “afford its devastating costs in both money and lives”.
But there is also a phenomenon that supported the war on drugs that does not exist in quite the same way in the war on whores.
The phenomenon is colloquially known as “Bootleggers and Baptists”. You will find a page for that in wikipedia by searching for the phrase. From that article I quote the general description:
Alcohol prohibition and subsequent wars on drugs are in large part supported by a coalition of bootleggers and Baptists. Both groups profit from prohibition even though on the surface the groups appear to oppose each other. Bootleggers profit from higher booze prices, and Baptists profit from money contributed by religious zealots.
I don’t think that whores generally profit from the war on whores like bootleggers profit from the war on booze or drugs. But antagonist true believers do profit, from funding for “rescue” organizations, the Swedish model, and other claptrap they offer to “win” the war. That difference might offer an opportunity to hasten its end.
In short: a coalition of whores and large organizations of religious believers to end the war on whores might succeed in ending it.
Already the World Health Organization, Amnesty International, and other large secular organizations have called for decriminalization. That may provide moral support for large religious organizations to also support decriminalization. The task is to find and persuade those religious organizations.
Well said, and you would be surprised that various priests and rabbis in the late ’60s-early ’70s actually supported legalizing abortion, contrary to what Rush Limbaugh and Steven Crowder believe. Yep, religious leaders and second-wave feminists realizing that criminalizing abortion doesn’t work and has catastrophic effects on women.
That map of the states is irritating: there are supposedly three shades of green representing three different stages of legalization, but I can only see two shades of green in the map. Have the people who made it never heard of colors other than green??
Regarding the thrust of the column: absolutely agree. It’s none of the government’s business what substances I choose to put into my own body, and any government criminals who try to assert otherwise are asking to get shot.
I’m glad that the War on Drugs is getting shit-canned. This isn’t the ’90s anymore, and it is time to flush it, as well as the outdated notion that “Marijuana has no medical benefits” down the toilet of history. I also find it funny that there are “educated” people in my age bracket who believe that the Democrats have always opposed the War on Drugs. The irony is lost upon them, and the groups that have actually always opposed the Drug War are libertarians and objectivists.