Colombia Governors Question U.S. Drug War Bush administration officials held an elaborate press briefing yesterday to tout the interim success of U.S.-funded efforts to eliminate drug crops and boost development in southern Colombia, even as four Colombian politicians from the targeted region were touring Washington to criticize the programs, according to The Washington Post . The elected governors from the four southern Colombian states most affected by the aerial spraying of herbicide on fields of coca and opium poppy charged that as much as half of an estimated 70,000 acres of crops destroyed since late December were legal food crops. They are hurting people. They will debate the U.S.'s continued involvement in Colombia's civil war. According to the Marietta Daily Journal , Kennesaw, Georgia, the city that passed a controversial 1982 law requiring people to keep guns in their homes, has enjoyed an 89 percent drop in crime, compared to a ten percent decline for the rest of the state.
Conscientious objectors are exempt from the law, making it mostly symbolic.
Kennesaw lawmakers may have taken to an extreme the adage that an armed society is a polite society, but evidence suggests their law could reduce crime more than measures that restrict gun ownership. Sign-up and get the Cato Institute's Daily Dispatch in your email every weekday morning.