More Success in the War on Drugs...it pumps money into the coffers of the Muslim terrorists

This weekend Anderson Cooper's report entitled Narco State (or maybe The Narco State) was aired on CNN. I haven't seen it yet, but from the ads for it, I believe it is showing us how well our government is doing in prolonging the war on terrorism. Yes, the war on drugs is helping Bush II to beat the drum of war ever louder. Thank God for politics.

One estimate, from Alcohol-and-Drug-Guide.com (http://www.alcohol-and-drug-guide.com/heroin-use-usa.html), says that the U.S. is spending 50 billion dollars a year in the war on drugs. Back in the early nineties, I read an article in which the writer (for the New York Times Magazine) claimed that the total cost of the war on drugs, at all levels, local, state, and federal, was 100 billion a year.

So what are we getting for this mere 50 to 100 billion dollars? According to the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) report for 2003, there were slightly over 164,000 emergency room reports involving heroin. According to Alcohol-and-Drug-Guide.com 1.3% of all Americans have ever tried heroin in their lifetime, 0.2% have used in the last year, and 0.1% have used in the last month. (That would be 3.9 million, 600 thousand, and 300 thousand, respectively.)

Okay, 300 thousand monthly users is quite a few people, but when you consider that alcohol is 1) a true narcotic drug, 2) there are several million users, and 3) that alcohol use causes the deaths of nearly 100,000 people every year, then that many heroin users is not really that big a deal. According to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, March 10, 2004, Vol. 291, No. 10) [t]he leading causes of death in 2000 were tobacco (435000 deaths; 18.1%
of total US deaths), poor diet and physical inactivity (400000 deaths; 16.6%), and
alcohol consumption (85000 deaths; 3.5%). Other actual causes of death were microbial
agents (75000), toxic agents (55000), motor vehicle crashes (43000), incidents
involving firearms (29000), sexual behaviors (20000), and illicit use of drugs
(17000). (www.csdp.org/research/1238.pdf)

But the good news is that the war on drugs is helping to fund the terrorists who are determined to destroy our nation and culture. (See the Anderson Cooper CNN report.) How is this good news? Because it allows the politicians to continue to fight a holy war against the unholy heathens. You see, if the government stopped the war on drugs; made all presently illegal drugs legally available to adults, then several things would happen.

First, the price of heroin (as well as all other drugs) would plummet. Then the narco-terrorists, Muslim extremists included, would lose a huge money cow that they have been milking to fund their war on us. And, incidentally, the violent drug cartels and violent street gangs would be out of business too. Another consequence is that by leaving the laws against drug use by minors in place, it would become much harder for minors to get their sweaty little paws on those drugs.

But, the down side would be that the politicians wouldn't have big drum to beat, with a loudspeaker blaring out how tough on crime (insert "drugs") and tough on terrorists they are. Well folks, if 300,000 heroin users and a small percentage of the 17,000 drug-related deaths are worth between 50 and 100 billion dollars a year, and a whole lot more war from well-funded terrorists, then we will just have to bite the bullet (no pun intended) and keep up the success in the war on drugs.

Oh, by the way, many studies have confirmed that alcohol is highly related to heroin overdose deaths. (http://skeptically.org/recdrugs/id24.html). That means, of course, if the drug alcohol was prohibited (yeah, right, snicker, snicker) then heroin deaths would drop substantially. But again, the politicians really want to help us and therefore must protect us from ourselves by keeping alcohol legal and heroin illegal. Besides, what would politicians use to relax if they made alcohol illegal (again)?