Status Update On The War On Drugs - Still Losing

Keep in mind the acts of stupidity and insanity we have discussed over the past two days as we go through our status update on the war on drugs. Remember, President Nixon in the late 1960s declared war on illegal drugs. Forty two years later that war is still unwon by the political class and is probably in a perpetual losing state:

- An article by Radley Balko in the August issue of Reason magazine, talked about a drug raid gone bad in Missouri. In a nutshell, police were given bad information about drug activities at a residence, raided the house, fired seven shots (even though a 7 year old child was present), shot and killed one pet dog, wounded another pet dog, and ended up finding a tiny amount of marijuana, not enough for more than a misdemeanor possession charge that was later dropped.

The unique thing about this raid is that it was caught on video and has been viewed more than a million times on the Net. This gave many Americans a real life perspective in the war on drugs, where militarized police break into a home, guns afiring, based on shaky intelligence. According to Mr. Balko, this type of raid occurs somewhere between 100 to 150 times a day in America. Without a comprehensive and effective illegal drug strategy, this is the type of America we live in today: police breaking down doors thousands of times a year. Mr. Balko correctly points out that it is not the fault of the police relative to these raids. It is the fault of the political class that cannot come up with a strategy and approach to illegal drugs that would eliminate these government sanctioned home invasions.

- In an Associated Press article from July 4, 2010, it was reported that Ecuadorian police had raided a shipyard in the jungle and came across a 100 foot submarine that was going to be used to smuggle illegal drugs into the world, including the United States. Details of the article and the submarine include:

• The submarine was big enough to have twin propellers
• It was a fully functional submersible ship that could do transoceanic voyages.
• It had a cunning tower, periscope and air conditioning system.
• It would have been able to carry 19 tons of cargo and could support a crew of five or six people.
• It likely cost multi millions of dollars to build.
• It was mostly likely to be used by drug traffickers in Columbia, the source of 90 percent of the cocaine sold in the United States.

Think about the amount of money that is flowing out of this country in the illegal drug trade. Enough money for the foreign drug traffickers to design and build a multi million dollar, modern, fully functional submarine. This is what our country's lack of a cohesive and effective drug strategy has caused to happen. Unsavory characters building such ships because it is a good multi million dollar investment. Two questions were not answered by the article: was this the first and only submarine to be built or is there already a fleet out there operating in the ocean, secretly bringing tons of illegal drugs into the country? Second, imagine the potential to smuggle terrorists into the country. The submarines were probably built with the intention of smuggling drugs into the United States, but I am sure if the price was right, the traffickers would have no problem smuggling humans from terrorist cells into the country. Thus, our lack of a drug strategy could result in a hole in our terrorist protective net.

- In late June, the Associated Press reported that more than a dozen Americans living in New Mexico and Texas have been identified to exist on a murder hit list of a Mexican drug cartel. While this type of behavior has existed in Mexican towns and cities along the border, this was the first indication that the drug cartels would target Americans, on American soil, for assassination on American soil if they got in the way of the illegal drug flow. On Fox News today, a county sheriff officer in Arizona reported that he has been receiving death threats as a result of his vocal support for the Arizona anti-immigration law. According to Fox, law enforcement sources from outside of Arizona have investigated the threats and have found them credible. The source of the death threats is likely from the same type of drug trafficking organization that the Associated Press reported on in New Mexico and Texas: the sheriff was a potential impediment to the flow of illegal drugs coming over the porous Arizona borders.

So forty two years or so after Nixon got the Federal government involved on the war on drugs, domestic law enforcement officers are under siege by Mexican drug lords, our own police are required to break down the doors of Americans homes as a result of no effective national drug policy and strategy, and the runaway illegal drug problem could result in a new way for terrorists to enter the country. There can be no doubt in most rational people's minds that we are losing the war on drugs despite the brave efforts of our police forces and other front line people in the battle.

And what does the political class do in the face of this overwhelming problem? They file a lawsuit to overturn the recently passed Arizona immigration law. They do not improve the safety of local law enforcement officials who are on hit lists. They obviously are losing the smuggling battle, given that the drug traffickers now have the capacity to build a true submarine smuggling operation. They allow American homes to be invaded thousands of times a year. And they offer a token force of less than 2,000 National Guard troops to guard an almost two thousand mile border, or one Guardsman per mile (assuming that the Guardsman works 24 hours a day - if the additional troops each work eight hours shifts, then each troop would guard three miles of border. Not every effective.)

Now remember the types of people in Washington that are supposed to solve these problems:

• One Congressman believes that islands in the ocean can tip over.
• A Congresswoman believes that the higher unemployment rises, the more jobs are created.
• The country's Attorney General files considers filing lawsuits over a state law even though he has not personally read it.

Pretty scary. Runaway drug addiction problems, porous and dangers borders, holes in the terrorism shield, and less than stellar brain power sitting in Congress and elsewhere in Washington. That is why Step 26 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is so important. We need to commission a panel of smart Americans from multiple disciplines to do a thorough, ground up review of the illegal drug situation in this country and come up with a set of alternatives in order to remedy the current untenable situation. The political class has had the ball for forty two years and has not been able to solve the problem. The problem has now morphed into a tri-headed problem of illegal drugs, illegal immigration and terrorism. We cannot afford to wait another forty two years to act. With our luck, in forty two years the same ineffective politicians will still be in Congress.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com
/http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/