Retired army general Barry McAfree
has announced that he is now retiring from his position as
America’s drug czar. If only he would take the war on drugs with
him.
Of all the domestic wars that the U.S.
government has waged in the last several decades, the war on drugs has
got to be the most immoral and destructive of them all.
The drug war has constituted a
frontal attack on individual liberty. It has provided an excuse for
government officials to trample the Constitution, especially the
provisions of the Fourth Amendment. It has caused death and destruction
of innocent people, not only here in America but overseas as well. It has
provided a means by which racism has been able to raise its ugly face in
an innocent guise. And by everyone’s standards, the war on drugs
has failed to accomplish its own purported goals despite at least 30 years
of warfare.
What does it mean to be free? At the
very least, freedom entails the right of every adult to sit in the privacy of
his own home and do whatever he wants, as long as his conduct is peaceful
and nonabusive. Drink beer. Smoke cigarettes. Snort cocaine. Watch dirty
movies. Listen to music with obscene and violent lyrics. Read smutty
books. Have sex. Eat fatty foods. Cuss. Even criticize government officials.
If a grownup is subject to being
punished by the state for engaging in any of this conduct, then no one in
society is free. And it doesn’t matter whether you yourself never
engage in any of it. If the state has the power to punish anyone for doing
it, then that’s a society in which tyranny is reigning for everyone.
The drug war enables and encourages
the police to peer into your windows, examine your trash, monitor your
bank accounts, turn your children into stool pigeons, and haul you into
court and send you to jail for engaging in what public officials consider to
be personal, immoral conduct within the privacy of your very own home.
Is this the kind of country you want
for yourself and your family?
Look what they’ve done to our
Constitution, which our ancestors intended to be an impenetrable barrier
against unreasonable searches and seizures. Whether you’re in your
car, at the airport, walking down the street, or even in your own home,
you’re subject to being accosted and searched by the drug police and
their drug dogs, especially if your skin happens to be dark.
What better way to wage bigoted
wars against racial minorities than the drug war? Does anyone really
believe that it’s only a coincidence that federal and state
penitentiaries are filled with blacks and Hispanics who have violated drug
laws? That racial profiling takes place because cops have a good-hearted
concern that blacks and Hispanics are ingesting harmful substances?
Ever since President Nixon declared
war on drugs (and antiwar protestors), U.S. officials have invaded foreign
countries; had drug lords extradited to the United States; killed innocent
people in drug raids; barged through doors all across America; executed
countless search warrants, many of them based on perjured testimony;
arrested, indicted, and incarcerated tens of thousands of nonviolent
people; confiscated millions of dollars in private assets, much of it from
innocent people; invaded the privacy of thousands of financial
institutions; expanded the ranks of law-enforcement; and spent hundreds
of millions of dollars.
What do they have to show for it after
30 years of warfare? Good intentions?
Through it all, they’ve never
answered two fundamentally important questions with respect to the
issue of individual liberty. Why should the state have the power to punish
adults for ingesting harmful substances? Doesn’t the very essence
of human liberty entail the unfettered right to engage in self-destructive
behavior?
For more than three decades, the drug
war has assaulted our liberty, invaded our privacy, trashed our
Constitution, increased our taxes, and provided an innocent cover for
government bigotry. It’s time to put the war on drugs out to
pasture.
Mr. Hornberger is president of The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org.) and co-editor of The Case for Free Trade and Open Immigration.
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