Professor Froward's Slough of Despond

Proud purveyor of flawed generalizations and vacuous tautologies.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Drug war in Mexico

Drug war in Mexico, saith Power and Control. 600 people killed this year.

He thinks legalization is the answer. You mean legalization in the US? For starters, yes, but it seems to me our suppliers would have to legalize too, for it to mean much. Are they keeping drugs illegal only because of us? If so, we're at fault for everything, but if we legalize and they prefer not to, we'll be even more at fault for even more of everything (Simon at P&C isn't saying that; somebody would). Are we the only nation on Earth to whom it ever occurred that drugs are bad? Dunno. Nor do I know whether legalization is as wonderful as all that anyway. It was a good idea with alcohol, but heroin isn't alcohol. It's heroin. I'm suspicious of the theory that anything which is good in principle must necessarily be good in practice, and drug legalization is a classic libertarian application of that theory. We did get through the 19th century okay, but I'm not sure we can go back there again. The law of unintended consequences applies to libertarians, too.

600 people killed this year.

The problem would probably diminish if demand did. Realistically, demand isn't going to change. You, as a customer of drugs imported from Mexico (if you are one), might have to work out with your own conscience whether you want to help fund this mess or not. Personally, I don't believe I'd want to.

Side note: In some of the quoted text it says that if Canadians go along with Americans on legal matters, that's "appeasement". If we go along with them on anything, saaaay the death penalty, that'd be something more like "America belatedly and shamefacedly admits to being invariably wrong, evil, and just plain bad". Yawn, snore.