Saturday, May 26, 2007

The War on Addictive and Harmful Drugs: the only war worth fighting

In any case where a species of animal becomes so well evolved that it is at the top of the food chain and may run rampant and overpopulate its environment, it begins to civilize immediately. Civilization is most basically defined as a large community that develops social rules as guidelines to our actions. Government exists to define where to set the guidelines and when it is ok to cross them (you kill a serial killer because he is crossing the agreed-upon guidelines). Similarly, we need government to regulate the flow of addictive drugs so that they are expensive enough that people have to ration themselves, thus keeping society from destroy itself. Should we let people have cocaine for very cheap so that they don't end up homeless? The answer is no, because that would cause a large portion of people to be strung out and crazy. Society would completely deteriorate and we would have a world of strung out drug addicts. This is what necessitates and justifies the war on drugs, although we did go a little overboard with sending troops into Colombia.

For a real-world example of what happens when a government fails to regulate the sale of a highly addictive drug, head over to Wikipedia and read up on the First Opium War, which resulted from the United Kingdom severely damaging Chinese society by shipping huge quantities of cheap opium to China, whose government and military proved to be incapable of fending off the lucrative and powerful British drug-fueled invasion. From the article:
The conflict began a long history of Chinese suspicion of Western society, which still lingers today in East Asia.
Colombia, Afghanistan, and local methamphetamine makers, could very feasibly cripple American society through this proven tactic of distributing cheap addictive drugs unfettered. I believe that a war on drugs is the only war worth fighting. In closing, consider a statement that puts the U.S. in China's historic position and Afghanistan in the U.K.'s historic position.
The conflict began a long history of American suspicion of Afghani society, which still lingers today in Western society.


Think about this and feel free to comment, whether your thoughts are in agreement or discrepancy.

1 comment:

John Wulff said...

"In any case where a species of animal becomes so well evolved that it is at the top of the food chain and may run rampant and overpopulate its environment, it begins to civilize immediately."

In any case? Immediately? While this quote is not very important to your point, I'd still like it justified in some way.

Also, citing the case of the Opium wars as evidence that our country would be greatly affected by an influx of cheap and addictive substances is suspect.

It could easily be argued that a plethora of cheap, addictive, and harmful substances are very easy accessible now to the majority of the populace. This has not resulted in the downfall of our society.

I do very much agree though that drugs should be regulated by the government from a perspective of cost and safety. If "drugs" were made legal, regulated, and could be dealt with in the open I believe that we would see a more healthy populace in general.

Arguments supporting this can be found here and here.