The Real Narco-terrorists?

On December 5, 1933, after 14 years of violence, civil disorder, and loss of respect for law and order, our ancestors wisely ratified the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, repealing attempted Alcohol Prohibition, and thus indelibly marking that classic fail.

Note for later contemplation: Beginning in 1920, the attempted prohibition had likewise been put into effect Constitutionally by ratifying the 18th Amendment. Where are the Constitutional Amendments outlawing marihuana, cocaine, etc.?

Jump forward 92 years to 2025.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), sixty-five percent (65%) of U.S. prison inmates have an active Substance Use Disorder (SUD) and 35% are actually using while in the slammer. TRANSLATION: Although behind bars, 35% of inmates are still getting their illegal drugs.

For the wider context, Ronald Reagan’s Surgeon General C. Everett Koop pointed out that of all drugs, including cocaine, heroin and marihuana etc, alcohol is the most damaging and nicotine is the most addictive.

This is more current – – –

“Our research supports the theory that high-fat/high-sugar foods stimulate the brain in the same way that drugs do,” Prof. Joseph Schroeder said…. –Why Oreos Are As Addictive As Cocaine To Your Brain – Forbes

So let’s switch this locomotive to the correct track: You absolutely cannot control drugs, “illegal” or otherwise, with force. PERIOD.

History and modern experience both prove that trying to use the state apparatus to contain a perfectly good but arbitrary bunch of possibly-dangerous-if-misused substances makes a self-destructive fool’s errand a slam-dunk.

The 88+ year history of attempted Federal marihuana prohibition is the rock-solid template.

Such laws, by making these substances a path for individuation and a symbol of resistance to the establishment — not to mention a path to riches — seriously spread their use instead.

After unsuccessfully attempting the War on Drugs for over 80 years, Drug Tsar Barry McCafferty, in a weak moment, surrendered. “War’s over. Drugs won.” he confessed which of course got him in trouble.

So, even with the $47 billion per year price tag, the very best you can say is, they’re fighting a long ago defeated rear-guard action. And creating an incredible amount of useless and inexcusable chaos and death.

For example Trump’s “Department of Defense,” appropriately renamed “War Department” — and using the D.O.A. excuse of protecting us from our chosen substances — is setting a very bad world-wide precedent by illegally, immorally and ill-advisedly murdering folks in small boats in the international waters of his renamed “Gulf of America.”

And now Trump, the Peace President, is prepping what he regards as his military apparatus in a hopeless attempt to control a very small percentage of some of these arbitrary substances by illegally attacking the men, women and children who live in Venezuela. And now he’s threatening Colombia too.

And, in case you had hopes these fools actually know what they’re doing, Mike Waltz, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, asserted, right in front of the latest emergency U.N. Security Council meet on Venezuela, that the U.S. was hijacking those oil tankers in international waters because selling oil was how Maduro was financing drug trafficking.

Maybe you can come up with an appropriate analogy for this latest phase of the current fool’s errand?

So the real question is, as per the title to this piece, Who are the REAL Narco-terrorists?

Are they the entrepreneurs who take advantage of the incredible profit margins created and maintained by governments making an arbitrary group of substances — currently not including alcohol, tobacco and Oreos — illegal? Or is it the governments themselves which, by passing laws history proves they can’t enforce, make substances illegal, and so cause “trafficking” them to be ridiculously profitable?

What’s your opinion?

And what are you going to do about it?

HERE For updates, additions, comments, and corrections.

AND, “Like,” “Tweet,” and otherwise, pass this along!

The Best of L. Reichard White