Alcohol

"I never gargled, I never gambled, I never smoked at all. Until I met my two good amigos, Nick Teen and Al K. Hall." So goes the opening lyrics of an old Rolf Harris song. It's a humorous song, of course, but there is little that is truly humorous about alcohol for the approximately 14 million Americans who are alcohol abusers or alcoholics.

Alcohol is a true narcotic drug. It's use and abuse causes more harm, damage, disease, and death than all the presently illegal drugs combined.

We are fighting a multi-billion dollar war on other drugs, ones that cause less harm than legal alcohol. If the government has the legitimate power to save us from ourselves--to dictate what we can or cannot smoke, drink, inject, snort, or otherwise use in our own bodies--why then is the government not fighting a war on alcohol also?

Conversely, if it is legal for adults to use or abuse alcohol (where they do not violate the rights of others), then the presently illegal drugs should be legalized because their mere use is demonstrably less harmful than the use of alcohol.

Do your government representatives--local, state, or federal--preach for the continuation of the futile and wasteful war on drugs? Do they drink alcohol, the number one violence-causing drug? If so, then they are complete and absolute hypocrites and should be voted out of office. They are not tough on drugs. They are tough on the drugs that they don't like. Drugs that are less harmful, overall, than the drug they use.

It is a fact that nearly all of the violence associated with the presently illegal drugs is caused, not by the use of the drugs, but their illegal status. If you want to reduce drug-related violence, then they must be relegalized to consenting adults. After all, if a person truly owns the property of his or her body, then that person has a right to use his or her body anyway they wish just so long as they do not violated the rights of others. That's called inalienable rights.

In conclusion, it seems quite obvious, that alcohol should be considered drug enemy number one. Of course, we fought that war once, with disastrous results. Now, we are doing the same with other, less liked, drugs, but with no less disastrous results.

Rick Perry's Drug War Political Nonsense Comment

Presidential hopeful, Texas Governor Rick Perry, recently said sending U.S. troops to Mexico to fight the drug cartels would be an option if he were to be elected President. That's just political rhetoric.

Besides the fact that Mexico wouldn't allow it--their constitution forbids it--what would be the result of shutting down the Mexican drug cartels?

Well, first, we could do the logical thing and just legalize all the presently illegal drugs just like alcohol and tobacco are legal now. That would shut the violent drug cartels down without firing a shot. It would raise a whole bunch of tax revenue, too. I have studied the issue for many years now and it is my strongly held belief that to re-legalize* the presently illegal drugs may cause a small, temporary rise in drug use. After that, however, drug use would go down. There would be no rebellious or counter-culture cache to it. Being a druggie would just be like being a wino or alcoholic now. Besides, the major illegal drug of choice is marijuana, and government study after government study, starting with the British in 1899, have all said that marijuana is, all things considered, less harmful than alcohol.

But, our politicians are either not logical or they are cowards (politcal suicide to propose the logical thing), so if we sent in enough troops and smart bombs and forced Mexico to let us do it, we might, just might kill all those drug cartel people. But that would just push the problem to somewhere else and drugs would still get into the U.S. in large quantities.

I like the first scenario, of course, because I'm a Libertarian and I want so very much for our government to re-establish the principle of inalienable rights. That would include the right of adults to own, and own completely, their bodies and minds and do with them as they pleased, just so long as they did not violate the rights of others when they did. It is a verifiable fact that the mere use of the presently illegal drugs causes little to no violence or criminal behavior in general. It is the prohibition of them that is the cause of nearly all drug-related violence and crime.

But now, to my real point. If we legalized drugs or were able to put the drug cartels out of business by force and, somehow, stopped the drug flow from Mexico to the U.S., then we stand a very good chance of causing Mexico to collapse financially and fall into anarchy and revolution. Billions of dollars flow south to Mexico. It has been estimated that Mexico gets 35 billion dollars from the illegal drug trade. That is approximately 18% of Mexico's G.D.P. Eighteen percent is nearly one-fifth. What would happen in the U.S. if we took nearly one-fifth of the money out of the economy, one out of every five dollars? Well, it would be a whole lot worse in Mexico.

U.S. economists and political analysts know the potential of an economic meltdown in Mexico should they stop getting the drug money. Rick Perry has people around him that know it too. Therefore, his get tough talk is just that, talk.

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* Note: I use the term "re-legalize" because about 100 years ago the presently illegal drugs were legally sold and used in the U.S. and there was no criminal justice problem associated with their use. But Christian temperance groups found their use to be immoral, therefore they lobbied Congress to make them illegal--the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Basically, they got their version of religion passed into supposedly secular U.S. law. That would seem to be a violation of the "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment.