Reason Magazine talks to Joel Miller about his book Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America.
Reason: Several members of the Bush administration have pushed the line that if you buy illegal drugs, you're funding terrorism. Is that true?
JM: The answer is yes—partly—but it's their fault. The laws against drugs are what create the market in which drugs are so incredibly profitable. There's no other reason a coca bush should be worth more than a privet shrub. Without prohibition, terrorists could no more profit from drugs than from growing bananas. They'd have to turn to other sorts of funding.
Reason: Such as?
JM: Well, FARC in Colombia has made a fair bit by kidnapping people, and before the Soviet Union fell, terrorist organizations were funding themselves through subsidies from Communist governments. But today nothing is so lucrative as drugs; kill prohibition and you hit their bottom line.
Edward G. Robinson and his rival gang leader in Key Largo reminisce about how great prohibition was. They blame themselves for the gang wars that got it repealed. They promise each other that when prohibition returns they’ll work together. Instead of getting the old prohibition back they just took advantage of newer ones.
Didn’t we pass Campaign Finance reform in this country in order to keep millionaire politicians from being corrupted by political money? Yet we pretend that middle class cops surrounded by millions of dollars worth of drugs can be perfectly trusted and poor kids on the streets won’t choose to sell the stuff if we send a harsh enough message.
Communism that controlled every part of people’s lives couldn’t stop a black market and yet our free and open society can? Maybe it’s mean of me to say, but I care less about the fools who want to ruin themselves with drugs than I do about the damage this prohibition is causing. And self destructive people won't be stopped anyway..
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