Best-Of Advice

On the drug war

What are your thoughts on ruthless violence of the drug cartels in Latin America? That shit is almost entirely funded by our greedy demand for and mindless consumption of cocaine. I just spent two weeks down there and got a much better sense of how grave the crisis really is. I’ve now decided to kick the habit and stick to good ol’ California-hippie-grown pot from now on and I think you should hop on board.

Just sayin’…

Two whole weeks? Wow, you’re like an honorary Latin American or something. I guess I should really listen to you. You’re like an expert. I bet you even know how to ask for bottled water in Spanish.

Listen, when you’re done patting yourself on the back for supporting your local pot farmer, maybe you could set aside your smug sense of self-appreciation for going on a field trip and take a hot minute to learn the basic principles of a black market economy.

When it comes to cocaine, it’s not our greedy demand nor our mindless consumption that’s causing the ruthless violence. It’s prohibition. The law is to blame. The illegality of cocaine is what vastly inflates its price above the cost of production creating an artificial price bubble worth hundreds of billions each year. That money is the ultimate cause of all the violence.

If the United States ended the war on drugs tomorrow and the DEA became strictly a regulatory agency, the market price of cocaine would collapse and the cartel violence would end almost immediately. Not only that, but the demand and consumption of cocaine wouldn’t really change all that much. It’s not like the drug war actually keeps people off drugs.

You’re an idiot if you think there’s any moral superiority in saying no to blow for political reasons, because as a citizen of a country waging this kind of war on drugs, you’ll always have blood on your hands.

Just sayin’…

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