Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America
Many see the war on drugs as one of the best examples of government policy run amok, which makes it a natural target for libertarian polemic. WorldNetDaily.com columnist Miller’s vigorous denunciation approaches the issue as a problem in economics. Given insatiable demand for drugs, he says, government attempts to strangle the supply simply raise the price and make trafficking enormously profitable. Criminalization therefore generates irresistible incentives to break the law, and is itself the cause of the crime and violence for which drugs are unfairly blamed. Junkies steal and hook to get money for a fix. Drug profits fuel murderous turf battles to control the black market, which is a cash cow for the gangs, guerilla armies and terrorists who dominate it. Interdiction efforts are more than matched by the ingenuity of traffickers, Miller says, and the police themselves are often corrupted, either by involvement in the trade itself or by the increasingly intrusive, violent and militarized methods they must use to suppress a "crime" in which all parties are willing participants. Miller’s well-researched, bitingly written account paints a panorama of irrationality and abuse: well-funded, innovative drug lords who regard seized shipments as a cost of doing business; broad drug-courier "profiling" criteria that could finger virtually anybody; forfeiture laws that allow police to seize property and savings with no pretense of due process; drug raids in which law-abiding citizens are gunned down in their homes. Miller’s libertarian leanings, supported by quotes from conservative icons like Adam Smith, Barry Goldwater and Ann Coulter, occasionally carry him past drug policy into jibes against the New Deal, Social Security and all things governmental. But when he sticks to drugs he delivers a formidable challenge to the reigning prohibitionist orthodoxy.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.