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.