The Drug Question. What again?

A few days ago a headline in the New York Times caught my eye. We the US of A is proposing to aerial spray the Afgan farmers’ poppy fields to eradicate their opium production. Wonder why we are hated in places like Afghanistan? We are pissed because we’ve got to many cocaine addicts in the US. So what do we do? We punish the Afghan farmer. Am I cuckoo or what? Why don’t we spray the users who create this market instead of the suppliers who are just good capitalist businessmen?

As a nonagenarian (thats what I am), I have tried to calculate how much money we have spent in our “war against drugs”? I have run out of the billions, so that means I am in the trillions. And what have we to show for all that? Obviously not much as it appears that every year we seem to start over again, like now with the Afghanistan problem. Before that it was Columbia. And before that it was the Asian crescent. And before that China, and on and on. Some smart economist observed, “it’s far more lucrative to grow poppies for opium than, for instance, avocados or cantaloupes.” No kidding.

I must admit I am a beneficiary of poppy growth. I have an ongoing back pain problem for which I take Oxycodone or Oxycontin, both opiates derived from Opium. So how come they can make and sell these drugs for the benefit of a lot of people who suffer all kinds of physical pain? Ah, the dirty little secret. These poppies are legally grown in Turkey and sold to American pharmaceutical companies to be manufactured into pain relievers. They are taxed and legally marketed. So what have we learned from that? Nothing.

There was a piece on 60 Minutes about the “Medical Marijuana” experience in California. It turns out that doctors have been very casual in writing prescriptions for “pot.” Now of course the Feds are moving in to put a stop to this egregious behavior. It would be a lot more intelligent to take an overall look at what has been the effect on the general population as a result of this loose use of marijuana. We might learn that smoking pot does not necessarily lead to “Refer Madness.” Which brings me to my experience as a young child during Prohibition.

I was supposed to be delivering “olive oil”, but of course it wasn’t. I first figured that out by the large tips I was given for delivery to a lot of fancy addresses on the upper east side of Manhattan. I was actually delivering either Gin or Whiskey or both. Then came repeal and the song “Happy Days Are Here Again.” And they were happy because now people who enjoyed a drink before dinner could have one that wasn’t made in somebody's bath tub, from which people often died. Once it was legal, it was taxed and created substantial income for the various levels of government.

Why haven’t we learned from the Prohibition experience? I believe there is simply to much money being made in the illegal drug market--from the growers to the wholesalers to the street peddlers--for them to easily give it up to legalization. Talk about a powerful lobby. I learned about the “street sale” at Mobilization for Youth, the Lower East Side New York program to get delinquents into the job market. The kids in the program would often tell me, “Mr. Schrank, in one night I can make more money on the street than I can make in a month in that fuckin’ mattress factory you want me to work in.”

We could do in Afghanistan what was done in Turkey--legalize it, tax it and control it. That’s what is done with my Oxycodone. But the Warlords in Afghanistan would have no part of that. And all those who profit from it here at home will support the Warlords. One final observation. Since we live in a market economy, haven’t we learned that as long as there is a demand there will be a supply? Obviously we haven’t, for if we had we would be arresting more of the demanders right here in the good old USA instead of being the world’s jailer of narcotics dealers from Columbia, Mexico, Panama and anywhere else we can catch a dealer.

PS - How much did it cost the US taxpayer to keep Noriega in jail for umpteenth years? Why not bill Panama? That’s where he was dealing?


Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.