My two-cents on this one. If one looks at the "who benefits" aspect of US
drug laws one almost suspects that the secondary effects are the motivation:
1. the "war on drugs" acts as a conduit for military and sometimes
humanitarian aid to a range of countries, most notably at the moment
Colombia, shoring up regimes that would otherwise probably fall to
insurrectionists of various stripes. Note that it's very hard to get aid
packages designated as such through congress.
2. it acts to destabilize large parts of the globe, thereby making US
control easier to maintain.
3. imnagine if the drug laws were suddenly repealed and the street price
of opiates, pot and cocaine fell to production cost plus reasonable
profit. Instantly large sectors of the economies of much of the third world
would collapse, resulting in massive instabilityt and probable
regime-changes not controlled by the US.
4. The drug laws act as protective tarrifs. Pot has for many years been the
major cash crop for California, and it rivals tobacco in North Carolina.
If pot became legal rural economies in both states would collapse.
Mark
At 11:18 AM 5/4/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>Chris
>
>your analysis of the drug trade as support of capitalism rings true, of
>course, but add to it (as the US government racks up the sound in its fear
>& loathing (& willingness to set up some more border policing) of the
>Canadian government's suggestion that it will, not legalize, but
>decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana), the huge
>business of privatized prisons in the US, the fastest growing there. The
>CEO's of which prisons are massively supportive of the Bush government,
>which intends to have more built, but then you have to find the material,
>ie, prisoners, so drugs must remain illegal, & arrests be made, & the
>prisons filled.
>
>another aspect, which adds to the validity of your argument I think.
>
>doug
>
>Douglas Barbour
>Department of English
>University of Alberta
>Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
>(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
>http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> he said the President said
> he would not kill anyone
> anymore and the way he would not kill
>
> would be to let the killers kill
> and then he would not be a killer
>
> Eli Mandel (circa 1970)
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