Twenty five years from now, where will our society be, given the ever expanding, persistent and destructive invasion that harmful illicit drugs are imposing on us? Will drug-clattering minds become the dominant impression indelibly stamped on our ethos for the ages? This infectious disease is affecting our families, our newborn, our businesses, our homes, our personal safety, our productivity, our creativity and all of our social constructs, plus it is delivering homelessness, spreading infectious diseases, and straining emergency rooms. Does anyone have the will to act?
International estimates on dollar value of the illicit drugs business range from $500 billion to over a $1 trillion dollars, with the U.S. being the biggest market. Does it really matter what the exact number is? No. It matters not. Bottom line is that it’s not just enormous, it is a ruinous plague that has invaded every community.
With seizure rates at the border roughly estimated at 10%, stemming the tide washing over our shores is an ephemeral dream. The evidence is crystal clear — there is no real will to end it. There is no political will, no policing will, no judicial system will and no financial will to stop imports. There is also no strong will to stop the pusher.
We have allowed, even enabled the legal system to corrupt the judicial process. When billions of dollars are in play and ruthless criminals control the game, the pressures on the system are understandable. A bloated judicial system, lawyers, agents, police and jails are all part of a juggernaut feeding copiously from the taxpayer trough. And yet, drug use continues to increase day after day, year after year. If only there was the Will in Washington. No one has bigger guns, so . . . why?
Oh, but wait, what about the war on drugs launched in 1971 by Richard Nixon? Has that been a ‘war won’? Its success can be measured quite easily in the eyes of the misery that has proliferated over the past 44 years. The ‘War On Drugs’ term is a rationalization for the progressive build-up of a bloated infrastructure which has achieved absolutely NO cogent or even compelling results — 10% annual intrusion on inflow of drugs isn’t a result. Bloated government bureaucracies each chasing, rarely catching different tails of the dragon at a total cost of over $1 trillion, and no results other than the incarceration of bottom feeders — low life lackeys of the drug game.
We are not gaining. We are sliding backwards. Mexicans are in charge, having recently perfected a purer meth with chemicals from China and producing a new ‘black tar’ heroin, which is replacing cocaine as the drug of choice in the U.S. — the Mexican cartels operate directly in 1,200 cities. The cartels have also perfected the art of inflicting fear, competing with ISIS in beheadings, political assassinations, children elimination, teacher killings, village control, as well as police and soldier killings. All coming to a neighbourhood near you, bestowed on you by a feckless Administration.
Chasing drug addicts and users, then herding them into jail cells is not an answer. The judicial system should be provided broad latitudes for investigations and laying charges, as well as the very strictest of guidelines for punishment, not vague approximations for sentencing. Focus on the pusher, and use tools more intended with protecting society, than on protecting criminals.
In a Nation of laws, why are banks so easily able to hop, skip and jump through the drug money laundering pastures without even a reprimand? Banks are not mindless blobs floating on the heaving waves of our weaknesses and wants. Banks are vehicles managed by human beings making decisions. Are those bankers being pilloried for aiding and abetting the illicit drub business by laundering hundreds of billions of dollars? Hmm, not much. Why? Let’s look at HSBC.
Consider what Lanny Arthur Breuer, Obama’s Assistant Attorney General, working under ‘Fast-And-Furious’ Eric Holder, demonstrating an abject failure of ‘will’, had this to say, . . . HSBC had “stunning failures of oversight – and worse, that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries”, including money banked for terrorist organizations in the Middle East. So this guy Breuer and his boss Obama literally gave HSBC executives a complete pass. No one went to jail. Why?
Oh you’ll love this one, . . . HSBC is too-big-to-fail, apparently. Such a criminal prosecution and scandal might “topple” this criminal enterprise and would threaten the stability of the financial system. What a mindless excuse. How much was that one worth to this Admin? Where in any universe of sanity does this make sense? They would have looked less idiotic if they’d said, “We’re just not in the mood to charge them.” Perfect, isn’t it? Not to worry, Obama stands at the gate, protecting the HSBC criminality, ensuring the criminals are not inhibited on their road to putrefying our society. Enforcing laws? What for? Is the Nation’s moral fibre holding firm? Not if one considers this head of state’s actions. There is no ‘will’.
With Obama at the helm, not only is there no will, he stands on guard, protecting those criminally supporting the worse vermin humanity has to offer, involved in the business of disintegrating our society from the inside. Drug pushers and terrorists as well as their bankers are grateful. What should the penalty have been? Life sentences for every clown remotely involved with any bank decisions on these numerous crimes, . . . without parole, and that is after you have appropriated everything they own. Period. And for this crime-supporting Administration? Sigh.
Stupidity is not a defence for this non-action. Something much worse and purposeful is going on, hastening the degeneration of a great Nation. Obama makes the rest of the Democratic party’s “soft-on-crime” and “anti-cop” rabble rousing, look downright hawkish.
And about that border and all entry points? Where is the will to close them to criminal elements and products? Somewhere we must find the will to close the doors to the ruthlessly motivated and determined toxic intrusion on society. Donald Trump has started the process, announcing plans to build a wall. That will not on its own be a solution, but his wall is a symbolic demonstration of an attitude which will hopefully become widespread rather than slip into our rear view mirrors as a summer notion. There is an urgent need for attitude and will to act.
So far, Trump is the only candidate that has spoken enthusiastically and forcefully on the subject. We know he doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink and doesn’t do drugs. We need more of his attitude toward this infestation that the unprincipled political class, funded by morally bankrupt bankers and politicians seem much too satisfied with.
Let’s find some attitude and some will to reverse the degrading trend inflicted on America by illicit drugs, and let’s return it to a healthier, safer, principled, free, and productive Nation. That requires a leader.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.
The unwillingness of our administrations to deal with the illicit drug trade, leaves little doubt that laundered money has been financing and directing our politicians for decades.
We point the finger at the corruption in Mexico, but at least they are more ‘honest’ about their corruption.
The violence of Northern Mexico is spilling across the border, and we are supposed to ignore the violent crime and act as if it is our duty to accept the flow of drugs as part of our penance for being successful in the world.
Years ago, I asked an African if there was pot in Africa. He told me it grew naturally and was everywhere. I asked if a lot of people smoked the weed and he said, “Just the old people, to help them cope with the aches and pains of old age.” I believed him. It made sense and it still makes sense today. However, we have people of all ages who don’t seem to be able to cope without something to ease the pain of life. I’d like to take them to work with me a few days, maybe their life might not seem so tough.
@Skookum: #1
The MSM refuses to give this fact any real exposure. Much like the story of Europe, which DrJ just posted an article on — thefts, rapes and child abuse are rapidly rising wherever these immigrants rampage.
@James Raider: JR are you reluctant to comment of the possibility of laundered drug money influencing our national politics?
I know it would be catastrophic for a politician to accept drug money and to think of politicians being influenced by this evil. However, when an ineffective campaign is waged to intercept only 10% of the contrabando, there is reason to wonder at the inefficiency.
How high does the money go? It is big money and big money doesn’t want to buy little cheap politicians.
Time to re-read Brave New World to see that the government WANTS a certain proportion of the populace drugged out of their minds.
@Nanny G: A drugged addled society is more complacent and less likely to resist tyranny and corruption.
It is one of the reasons we sedate the inmates in mental institutions; the drugs calm the violent patients and makes everyone easier to deal with. Take their drugs away and you have chaos. Perhaps we are living in a giant mental institution. We can self-medicate, but if you make a mistake, you will be put in prison. Take as much as want, just don’t be a problem.
@Skookum: Didn’t I see yesterday that Clinton attended a fund raiser sponsored by a convicted cocaine dealer?
I worked for a guy, a Director, who would not imbibe in anything, including coffee. I figured, he never wanted to not be in full control of his faculties and, thus, at the mercy of someone else… or prone to a mistake. While the extreme example, this is what those who use illegal drugs and, thus, keep the violent, immoral, destructive illegal drug trade alive and thriving, fail to consider; what they are doing to themselves.
It is, for me anyway, a contentious struggle to rationalize the government ban of harmful drugs with the free will to do (or not do) whatever an individual wishes. But some of these drugs are so harmful, they should not be allowed into the country.
@Randy: Mina AR ? — anyone? The whole klintoonista regime and crime family was and is financed largely by drug money as well as most of the demo-COMMUNIST Pottie, Booschies too probably — choom gang? — “wee-weed up”? — come on folks — remember how the media played that up – pretending not to understand thereby implying that it was so over everyone’s head — ?
@Skookum: #3
Skook, you raise a good point and a critical one. I thought I’d sledge-hammered that one with the example I used in the article, but perhaps not, although it wasn’t the goal of this article, I should have been more explicit.
HSBC, a major world-affecting bank, evidently doesn’t care who’s money it moves. Crime lords provide excellent sources of excess handling fees. Goldman and others have done the same.
Wall Street, as I’ve often written, owns this Administration, and has owned endless politicians. Legally earned cash or blood money, profits buy influence, and no one buys influence better than Goldman.
The cash doesn’t need to go directly from a “Guzman’s” hands to a pol’s coffers — if it goes through the banks hands first, it’s the same thing as far as I am concerned. We live in an age when the “buying” pressure on the political system is greater than at any time in the Nation’s history and the amounts of cash have reached insane levels.
The HSBC example, and there are plenty of others, just shows how corrupt an Administration can get, IMHO, not laying a single charge on any employee is ample evidence and excusing the fact with pathetic excuses just makes the guilt that much more conspicuous.
Prohibition empowers both the drug cartels and the extensive bureaucracy that resists them. What it doesn’t do is reduce the levels of substance abuse. It never has and never will.
Marijuana, at least, should decriminalized. Its national prohibition has never made the least degree of sense. Its Schedule I classification makes a total farce of the entire scheduling scheme, which has never been anything more than a means of dodging Congressional responsibility and constitutional issues.
If we’re going to spend billions of dollars per year on a “War on Drugs,” we should at least have the intelligence to focus efforts on drugs that actually pose a real and significant danger to individuals and society. Marijuana doesn’t. Those who want to use it are going to do so whether it’s illegal or not, exactly as was the case during the years of alcohol prohibition. Government might as well save the wasted enforcement costs and trade them for a significant and reliable revenue stream.
That, by the way, is more a libertarian point of view than a progressive point of view.
An interesting side note is that much drug abuse presently involves legally produced and distributed prescription medications. Most of the 100 daily deaths-by-overdose involve misused prescription medications—mainly synthetic opioids. A cynic might view prohibition of a far more benign natural substance such as marijuana as part of a battle to maintain the corporate market share.
@Greg: It doesn’t help when the Obama administration supplies guns to drug cartels.
@Bill: For someone who doesn’t drink alcohol or coffee–smoke or do drugs he’s sure got a nasty mouth.
Do you think he can insult his way to The Presidency?
@James Raider: Thank you for the clarification. Reading in the middle of the night has its disadvantages.
@Randy: Yes, but in fairness, once you have paid your debt or paid your victim $800,000, you are no longer a rapist or a drug dealer; you are a former drug dealer, convicted felon, or a rapist who wants avoid bad press.
The Clintons are like strippers, they dance for whomever lays their money down.
@Rich Wheeler: You hardly ever hear of anyone being arrested for being over the limit on coffee nor do you hear of a coffee addled society.
@Rich Wheeler: So did my director. But he was effective, competent, experienced and commanded respect. He was direct and honest.
Honest and capable. What a refreshing change THAT would be.
The so called, “war on drugs” has done far, far more damage to society than the drugs. It’s really simple folks, cut off welfare so those who stay stoned and can’t work starve. And stay armed to shoot them if they come to steel from you.
But prohibition is NOTHING but a racket to put money into the pockets of lawyers in and out of government.