I wish that was the only reason for the drug war, but moralizing is probably a relatively minor factor. I claim the bigger reasons are:
1) The prison-industrial complex is large and politically powerful, and it needs drug "criminals"
2) Many recreational drugs make the working populace less productive. They'd be blowing lines of coke and screwing each other all day or giggling at Spongebob after smoking a bowl instead of diligently churning out more boxes at the packing plant. Drugs that make you more productive are perfectly legal and widely prescribed (Adderall etc).
3) Many popular drugs are easily produced at home in quantities appropriate for individual use. You can trivially grow enough weed at home to support a serious habit. The man hates that and prefers drugs that are only amenable to production on a vast industrial scale, such that monopoly, taxation, and centralized control of production are easy. Tobacco and the aforementioned psychostimulants are the ne plus ultra industrial-only drugs; it's no cooincidence that they're quite legal.
Politicians continue to support a war effort which has murdered millions in the ME, they continue to turn a blind eye to torture, and hold the innocent in jails without trial.
So yeah, all three groups are about as bad as each other.
That's like saying "The fall of moral civilization has always been brought about by those who "eat food on a regular basis"".
Nobody would use "I was just eating food on a regular basis" as a defense against blame for misdeeds, which the GP's quote (referencing the Nuremberg defense and similar things events of disavowing blame for evil acts) would be commenting upon.
How much harm do we cause the enviroment by eating the food we eat on a regular basis?
How many people are killed and lives and futures destroyed by people that ard perfectly justified in doing their jobs?
Evil isn't just for comic book super villians, nor does it require any sort of ill intent at all. Look around at your life, and the choices you and others make and ask (honestly) "who is being hurt", the answers can be suprising and unnerveing.
edit: clarity
> Smugglers want to get drugs to the lucrative American market. > Border Patrol are told to stop them cause drugs are bad. >Politicians enact more border patrol regulations to counteract our strict drug policy.
I'm inferring that OP wants border patrol to be political activists and fight for better drug laws instead of just "doing their jobs".
- Thomas Paine
When the drug landscape changes they will continue in all their other endeavors.
I read the other week they were even fighting over the rent mining companies pay Mexican towns to mine "conflict free gold".
Mostly the result of outdated laws preventing legal prostitution.
By no means do I intend to defend cartels, but if you remove their financial incentive to exist, they will shrink or disappear altogether.
We've had legal brothels in my city (Brisbane, Australia) for decades and Wikipedia's estimating 90% of prostitution there is unregulated or illegal. It just co-exists alongside a legal market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Australia#Quee...
Regulating something so that you may as well make it illegal isn't really the same as decriminalizing the activity. Countries with reasonable prostitution laws are tremendously safer for those turning tricks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Netherland...
But let's say you are right. Prostitution globally is completely legalized and somehow there is no illicit demand for boys and girls, cheaper rates etc. How does that stop the cartels from making money in hundreds of other ways? It is just one line of business, they have plenty more and can always invent new ones.
That said, painting the Mexican cartels as some sort of group of "freedom fighters" trying to bring drugs to the impoverished, oppressed masses is hopelessly naive.
This thing is so big, it creates problems of its own.
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/americas-dirtie...
It's pretty much proven we can't control the flow of drugs. The cost of attempting to do so is too high. We should just stop.
Legalize drugs, then the Cartels just say, "Oh, you guys legalized all the drugs were smuggling into your country? I guess we better quit our gang get day jobs now."
Just like we saw when marijuana was legalized here, the cartels simply diversified and started smuggling more heroin, coke and meth and less marijuana. Did their violence subside? Nope. Did it really have a huge impact on their business? Hardly.
Not every cartel will go out of business immediately, but if you cut off a big source of illegal funds it absolutely will mean less illegal activity.
- Losing marijuana business, Mexican cartels push heroin and meth -https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/losing-mar...
- Marijuana Legalization Sparks Heroin, Meth Trade Increase with Mexican Cartels - https://www.thefix.com/content/marijuana-legalization-sparks...
- Drug Cartels Turning to Meth, Heroin After Pot Legalization in U.S. - http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/05/19/drug-cartels-turning-m...
- Have Changing Marijuana Laws Led to an Increase in Heroin & Meth Smuggling? - http://lighthouserecoveryinstitute.com/have-changing-marijua...
Also, marijuana was never much money for the cartels, the real money has always been in heroin and meth. It's much cheaper to produce and the profit margins are much better than weed.
If you want to cut off their biggest sources of illegal activity, you're not only going to have to legalize some pretty serious drugs, you're also going to have to legalize kidnapping, murder, blackmail and racketeering. The idea that the only way cartels make money is on drugs is terribly myopic.
See also the amount of counterfeit and smuggled cigarettes in the UK.
If you don't trust that comparison, how about looking at the actual real world effects seen recently in Western countries such as Holland and Portugal that have tried this.
UK customs agents seize about 1m cigarettes per day. There are about 10m smokers in the UK, so if they smoke about 20 a day that's about 200m cigarettes per day. 1m isn't much compared to that. But it's still there.
(But I do strongly support legalisation of drugs. I just think there's some stuff to be learnt from UK)
> But the politicians supporting drug control are the bad guys.
How's that drug war working? Drugs are very illegal, yet there are many people dying from overdose. The US imprisons millions of people, yet drugs are still easily available and very cheap.
Also, the article you link talks about prescription drug deaths - many of these are legally prescribed, legally owned, not being abused, meds that the owner accidentally overdoses on.
"There has been a dramatic increase in use of prescription drugs as physicians have become more liberal in prescribing them," said Paulozzi, adding that the bulk of drug-related deaths stems from accidental opioid painkiller overdoses. "
And while prescription drug abuse constitutes about half of overdose deaths,[1] that leaves over 20,000 deaths a year from non-prescription drugs, and many of those deaths from prescription drugs would not have happened if those drugs were used as prescribed.
IOW, how many people overdose because they get a batch of 90% pure heroin when they are used to 25% pure? This probably would be solved if they were not getting the drugs illegally.
The politicians supporting prohibition are the bad guys, for this and other reasons, such as continuing to waste taxpayer dollars on a failed drug war. The same drug war that feeds the pockets of the drug traffickers. The same drug traffickers that require militarized police forces to fight against. The same militarized police forces that require tax payer dollars to pay for. The same tax payer dollars that could be used to treat addicts and reduce the overdose statistics.