Who Are the Drug Lords?

The administrators and enforcers of the smuggling cartels live lives of luxury in Bogotá, Kabul and Mexico City. The upper echelon, the enablers, live in Washington, D.C., Moscow and London. Who are the real kingpins? They are bankers, pharmaceutical house CEOs, weapons manufacturers and a thousand other corporate interests whose gross profits depend on violence, hatred, distrust and deception. The prohibition of drugs is the ideal mechanism to continuously increase the rhetoric of fear and to incrementally diminish our rights and freedoms.

The farm gate price of these "illegal drugs" is less than $5 billion per year. In the US alone, we spend in excess of $65 billion per year, attempting to squelch the flow of drugs, in housing a half million drug war prisoners and in arresting 1.9 million more, non-violent US citizens each year for baggies of plant products in their pocket or purse. The UN estimates the worldwide commerce in these "prohibited" drugs is now $300 billion per year.

Who are the drug lords? They are every politician who lives and breathes war, drugs, terror or otherwise. They are the corrupt corporate heads, malicious media barons, venomous judges and cretinous cops, who, knowing full well the truth, choose to follow their nose to riches, to embrace a lie, to feed their evil cornucopia with the lives of their fellow man.

The pharmaceutical houses and the medical associations decided in the early 20th century that the American people should be denied the right to decide for themselves what to put into their own bodies. We were forced to give up our liberty to choose our own medicines in 1914, in exchange for supposed security regarding our health. In 2009, we are being forced to give up additional, unstated liberties in exchange for unknown, never-to-be-clarified protection. Our slide into this abyss is facilitated by the fear engendered by 100 years of prohibition and the mechanism of deceit that allows the drug war to flourish despite decades of miserable failure.

We are at a juncture where we can choose liberty, truth and justice or we can slide into the arms of big brother, admitting we are powerless over our own lives and are willing to take whatever the drug lords are offering.

* Our latest radio program features an interview with Ryan Grim, author of:
This is Your Country on Drugs - The Secret History of Getting High in America.
100's of programs with judges, doctors, scientists & more at http://www.drugtruth.net

Comments

[scottportraits]

Dean Becker, you are a real journalist, in an era where most news-people are caving in and churning out milquetoast, pablum commentary - at least in the mainstream news-medias. They do, after all, fire and blacklist you if you work at FOX (or some such), and later 'defect' from the standard unfair and imbalanced reporting that is every day passing for 'news' and 'journalism'.

Keep up the excellent work. You've hit the nail on the head when you point out that it's corporate giants and the politicians in their pockets causing most of Mexico, Latin America, and domestic America's humongous problems with respect to the "drug wars" and modern-day "prohibition".

I will bookmark this newspaper and look for your column every day. Keep up the great work. You are a splendid writer and a keen observer of our national (and international) predicaments. More of the same, keep it coming....

Your fan,

-scottportraits

[Dean Becker - Huffpost Blogger]

Scott,

Wow. Truth be told, your response makes my day.

I will be posting another blog after my Wednesday show with Jack Cole, the director of Law Enforcment Against Prohibition. It's my last Wednesday show, (moving the show to as yet undefined time slot next week) you can tune in at 11:30 central at www.kpft.org or later on my site www.drugtruth.net.

Seriously, Thank you!

[Colleen McCool]

Dean, you tell it like it is!

Big government lies to us and plays on our fears to make us more agreeable to their waste of our precious lives and resources. Perhaps some of you thought Uncle Sam was a benevolent spirit but the truth is throughout history, big government has caused more harm than good; often hiding tyranny under the guise of good intentions.

Our Founders knew big government would always mean a gang of evildoers and were not into forcing people to be good, they were into self-government and instituted the people are grand and government is small plan! They separated church and state to keep the government out of moral issues. Yet, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of '76 is still our true north.

Unless the medication is approved by a physician within federal guidelines, drug warriors are against anyone feeling good, being at ease, being pain free. The people believe in self-government and self-medication. Warriors can get their adrenaline rush making us all safer, catching violent predators! Harassing the sick and dying is an un-American activity.

[suegar]

There is a huge need for morphine in the less affluent countries that could be cheapl;y filled by buying up the opium and refining it for distibution by health services in these countries. Much suffering could be averted and the farmers would not be destoyed in the process.