When a policy doesn’t work no matter how many dollars and officers you throw at it, how do you keep the lights on and the citizens engaged?

Well, histrionics, demonization, war propagandizing, and hysteria have worked wonders in the past. Let’s listen to the President of the Philippines give them a shot:

… she ordered an “all-out war, an unyielding and unrelenting war against illegal drugs and their devil merchants.”

This is a great start. With “unrelenting” in there you make it clear the policy can never be altered. With so many people critical of the war, you can’t have people thinking they can just end it!

“A country awash with illegal drugs is a country compromised, its law-and-order institutions tainted and corrupted.” … “No other criminal activity does a better and faster job of tearing apart the social and security fabric of a nation than the trade of illegal drugs”

Good use of fear mongering with a dose of hysteria.

… calling on her fellow Filipinos “not to allow this menace to spread its tentacles, ruin our youth, and gnaw on the integrity of our law-enforcement institutions and our judicial systems.”

Tentacles, integrity-gnawing teeth; you’ve clearly got a demon. There’s no time for studying policy efficacy. Get a gun.

… she declared the all-out war because “governments that delay action against illegal drugs, or regard it as a routine police matter, do so at their own peril.”

Wow, blaming other governments for the failure and issuing veiled threats. She must have studied how we talk to Canada anytime they mention wanting to decriminalize marijuana.

The country’s anti-drugs agency, however, has branded the report [citing alarming use statistics] “unfair,” and said there were some errors in the data which were made as the basis of the report.

She didn’t address this, but here’s a suggestion: “In war you don’t waste time checking errors. Now get out there and do the same thing you’ve been doing for years, but this time really do it! One other thing: we can’t win a war without supporting the troops so we’ll be needing more tax dollars.”

Oustanding job overall, though she did fail to attack the credibility of policy opponents. If short on time, “they’re all stoners” is useful, but our outgoing drug czar John Walters recently offered this more nuanced technique:

Many of these [medical marijuana proponents] care little for the actual suffering and pain of others, but are instead using it to advance their own pro-drug agenda. [link]

Drug policy reformers are both pro-drugs and don’t care about people’s suffering. That’s a pro move.

“I don’t mind adopting a policy that seems strange to you if the result of it is going to make society improved…”
– William F. Buckley Jr. re: drug legalization

When drug policy reformers say “legalization”, it strikes fear into persons who have only experienced and imagined society under the effects of modern drug prohibitions. Most cannot picture a world where drug addicts were not safely locked away, criminalized, marginalized and cordoned toward the poor areas of our country. Those who cannot afford to escape those neighborhoods have never known a time when drugs were not so expensive that addicts must rob to afford them; when gangs did not violently compete on their streets for the drug market; when pushers did not offer a free taste to their children or entice them into the trade with easy money; when a large number of their fathers weren’t incarcerated or weren’t trying to find work with a criminal record; when police did not look upon them without suspicion.

None of us have known our southern border without the constant rush of harmful substances into the country, nor the reverse flow of billions of dollars and weapons into the hands of cartels that murder ruthlessly. None of us have seen peace south of our border; the existence of the coca plant seems to guarantee endless killing.

More prisoners; more violence; more harmful drugs; more spreading of infectious disease; more dangerous areas; more damage of foreign lands and peoples; fewer civil liberties; less respect for law enforcement; more assurances from our leaders that “our drug policy is a success”; more promises and goals of a drug-free world; more dire warnings that any alternative would certainly lead to the destruction of society.

Has it always been like this? This is how the world has worked as long as I’ve been alive, so this is surely its most natural and stable state, and how it must continue. After all, I’m told the alternative is unimaginable:

“It is hard to imagine an aspect of American life that would be enriched by millions of new cocaine, heroin or marijuana users.”
– John Walters re: drug legalization

Perhaps our ancestors could survive without a War on Drugs, but humanity simply no longer has the necessary skills to survive in such a free world; we would surely collapse into Mr. Walters’ imagined chaos. We can no longer educate our children that some legal activities are dangerous; we need our government to protect us from ourselves no matter the cost.

Please do not waste any time imagining a different world; our drug czars have done this and it didn’t look good. Definitely do not bother with the fascinating history of our drug laws, or how other civilized countries are having success reducing harm. These countries may save “lives” and money, but they are breaking our treaties.