The “cause,” (continued…)

As that last post on “causation” reminded me, anything can be said to have caused anything.

Especially when it comes to the war on drugs. Anything caused by the war on drugs can be and is said to have been caused by the drugs themselves. This includes insanely high prices, murder, corruption, terrorism, whatever. It is absolute flimflammery, and I cannot believe so many people fall for it.

A major reason the drug war will not go away anytime soon is that illegal drugs are powerful. Certainly much more powerful than legal drugs. By attributing “power” to them I do not mean that the drugs themselves do anything especially powerful. Rather, I mean that their illegality is a huge source of power for those whose lives and fortunes revolve around their continued illegality.

Illegal drugs mean fortunes can be made, and vast power acquired. Not only by criminals, but by enforcers. It creeped me out to read about a massacre of troublesome student protesters in Mexico. Not so much because they were murdered by drug cartel thugs, and not so much that they appear to have been burned alive. Rather, what bothered me is the way the police simply sicced the cartel hit men on the students.

MEXICO CITY — The search for 43 missing college students in the southern state of Guerrero has turned up at least 60 clandestine graves and 129 bodies over the last 10 months, Mexico’s attorney general’s office says.

None of the remains has been connected to the youths who disappeared after a clash with police in the city of Iguala on Sept. 26, and authorities do not believe any will be. Prosecutors say the students were turned over to a drug gang that killed them and incinerated their bodies in a case that has put attention on the huge number of people who have gone missing in Guerrero and other Mexican states where drug violence is widespread.

That’s power. And while we are told that the power derives from drugs, it actually derives from the war on drugs.

Try explaining that to a drug warrior.

Or to Hillary Clinton, who opined that we cannot legalize drugs because there’s too much money involved.

(Too much power might be more accurate.)


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22 responses to “The “cause,” (continued…)”

  1. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    Warren Drugs is too big to fail.

  2. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    “Or to Hillary Clinton, who opined that we cannot legalize drugs because there’s too much money involved.”

    Actually, I think that may be one of the few totally true things she’s ever said. (Whether or not it was something of which she approved.)

  3. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    Old and not very happy song about the future. I wonder sometimes, if they may be right. (Albeit a bit optimistic about how long the fall will take.)

  4. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    Thank you! I love that man’s music/humor/satire.
    I play his Christmas Carol, quite religiously, I assure you, every Christmas season.

    His return to mathematics was a great loss. I don’t believe his mathematical genius is equal to his musical satire genius.

    (Ok – you can be a serious doomsayer, and I’ll love it if you do it with humor!)

    Excuse me, I’m going to go poison some pigeons in the park now. Or maybe do a masochism tango.

  5. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    Economics 101 – if you try to ban something that people want you create black markets. The black marketeers are already outside the law, so it will attract violent criminals who have a distinct advantage in lawless situations.

    btw, this is a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend story, but the rumor is that what’s left of the old Italian Mafia is appalled by the level of violence from the newer foreign gangs, MS13, Jamaicans, etc. and regrets getting involved with drugs in the first place, should have stuck with gambling, loan sharking and prostitution.

  6. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    There’s more than you might think left of the old Italian Mafia, and, IIRC, they were feeling that way back in the middle 80’s. So, there’s some backup for that story.

    Not so much that they were violent as that they were – how do I put this – gang warring rather than picking targets for lessons? Like the 1930’s Mafia wars… they didn’t want that back.

  7. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    The big sitdown with Lucky Luciano settled territory to a great extent, at least among Mafia and related gangs. The newcomers don’t recognize any established boundaries, and just plain like killing and don’t care.

  8. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    Exactly.

  9. c andrew Avatar
    c andrew

    You’re welcome!

    I remember reading that Tom Lehrer left his satirical performances because he found that the New Left was entirely devoid of humor. And apparently strenuously objected to his less-than-serious approach to their sacred issues.

  10. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    I heard an interview with Tom Leher ca. mid 90’s. He seemed a little surprised people still cared, he was fully involved as a math professor at Harvard, the songs were just something he did when he was young.

    I hadn’t listened to these in years, he really was a talented musician.

  11. CapitalistRoader Avatar
    CapitalistRoader

    I also don’t believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn’t do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, I have powders. If you put up three, four thousand dollar investment, we can make fifty thousand distributing. So they can’t resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable.

    [He slams his hand on the table and raises his voice.]

    But I don’t want it near schools! I don’t want it sold to children! That’s an infamia. In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds. They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.
    The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola (1972)

  12. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    The funny thing is Mario Puzo is on record saying he just made up all those fine old Cosa Nostra customs, (he was going through a messy divorce and needed cash, so he farted out a quickie bestseller where he just faked it) and gangsters were studying the book to learn what their rituals were.

    This could be fun, mob inition scene, “OK Guido, repeat this ancient Sicilian oath after me “‘baruch ata adonai Eloheinu melekh ha?olam’”

  13. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    I lived in a mafia town (NJ) as a kid. Not one the mafia “ran”, one the mid-level mafia LIVED in.

    I assure you that I could (and did) as a pre-teen wander the streets anywhere and everywhere – without any fear. There were 2 police cars in the town. But very little crime. I’m fairly sure the crime rate in that town when I lived there was about .005%. (Probably some domestic disputes, etc.)

    The mafia really do NOT approve of crime on their home turf.

  14. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    It can help to know a few guys whose names end in a vowel. Whatever did happen to those two scumbags who broke into my house?

  15. CapitalistRoader Avatar
    CapitalistRoader

    “OK Guido, repeat this ancient Sicilian oath after me “‘baruch ata adonai Eloheinu melekh ha?olam’”

    Klaatu barada nikto.

  16. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    Potrzebie!

  17. Man Mountain Molehill Avatar
    Man Mountain Molehill

    Anybody else ever read “The Syndic” by C.M. Kornbluth? Plot about how the Mafia becomes the de facto government after the federal one collapses, and how further change is making the Syndic obsolete. Kornbluth, along with his little buddy Fred Pohl were Marxist or at least Hegelian,(and it shows) but still entertaining writers.

  18. chocolatier Avatar
    chocolatier

    When I hear politicians on TV who support the war on drugs, I often wonder if they understand that the expression ‘the war on drugs’ is just a euphemism, a figure of speech. Some of them sound like they don’t understand that you can’t really make war on drugs. Marijuana plants don’t have armies and navies.

  19. Randy Avatar
    Randy

    @chocolatier

    Precisely. As James Bovard and many others have pointed out, the war on drugs is a war on people.

  20. Simon Avatar

    Potrzebie!

    Haven’t seen that for a while.