There is great suffering in our world. To pretend that you, or others aren't suffering at some points in time is to gloss over the realities of life. We all wish for a world without pain, but a world without suffering is a world without life. I accept this notion, but I reject the "suffering" projected by certain political and ideological interests.
For years, the government and other elitist institutions have force-fed myths that have drastically escalated the longest war in American history-the war on drugs.
The suffering of the great drug scourge is seen as just that, an affliction. But this is the invented reality. We curse drugs for the average man and tolerate drugs used by the elite. Why do George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama get away with it, but the average person does not? Failing to take the people behind drugs and their usage into account is disturbing. Drugs aren't people, they are merely tools. If war requires an enemy, then who are we fighting?
The arbiters of drug policy claim they want to solve the problem, but in actuality they simply bury the real problem under the mass of bodies the drug war has produced. Drug addiction is the symptom of a deeply hurt human being; a body of flesh devoid of a core. From prostitutes to abused children there is a very real pain when people make this unenforceable decision to secede from the everyday suffering of their lives with drugs.
Those that do not know the personal horror of addiction sit on their couches and rave about the horrors of drugs. These people do not know suffering and thus fail to realize the true causes of pervasive drug addiction. These are the people who make our drug policy. In actuality the drug addict is a victim, not a criminal. Drug addiction is merely an illustrated cover for the saddest novella ever told.
Even sadder is the fact that drug prohibition creates and exports this pain to others who never wished to bear this burden. Prohibition's most destructive side effect is the destruction of families affected by drug abuse. Drug abuse destroys families, but for every father, mother, son or daughter incarcerated, there is another void created in the hearts of family members. Every arrest made for non-violent drug crimes creates more pain and suffering than the drugs themselves. Incarcerating a fragile child's father or mother, seeing them behind glass and hearing their scratchy, static voices over telephone wire is a driving force behind the self-destructive forces surrounding drug culture. What is more destructive, taking that figure away or leaving the problem to be dealt with by the family? Families must live with the loss; the police and judges go back to their lives, while a child someplace else cries to sleep.
Look at mandatory minimum sentences. Federal crack laws, as stipulated by the 1986 & 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts held that any first-time possession of five grams must result in a mandatory minimum of five years in prison, which is the equivalent of possessing 500 grams of powder cocaine; this disparity between crack and powder cocaine was known as the "100-1" rule. Who smokes crack most often? Poor, often minority, individuals do. The vicious cycle lasted decades and generations of minority communities,
especially the black community, have grown up without their fathers or mothers. Hurt souls seek pleasure, and the law, insufficiently seeking security, locks them up, only to set their children up for the same self-destruction in a dynamic that is not uniquely American.
Dead bodies, signs of torture, pools of blood, decapitated heads, revenge, money, corruption and fear are now common sights in Mexico. Mexico has now become a narco-terrorist state nearing a total collapse. It is sickly ironic that the people who suffer the most aren't the drug users and dealers. It's the people around them, whether they chose to be or not. In a little over five years nearly 45,515 people have been killed in association with drug violence. Every number has a family; every number was once a child. The Mexican people live in fear of dying. For what?
The violence has only escalated. Now, in Mexico, you can be killed for speaking ill of the cartels even on Facebook. All the while the mangled bodies of youth hang from bridges.
The drug war isn't simply a failed policy. Since drugs are cheaper, more plentiful and dealers are dealing to children, the drug war has created act of terrors causing far more destruction than the drugs themselves. If we are to ever tackle this problem seriously we must end the war on drugs. Behind every fall from grace is a human story. My hope is to expose the raw, emotional truths of those stories, because a war on drugs is really a war on people.
Matt Curry is a junior majoring in political science and environmental studies. Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
