20 Dec There’s no success like failure, Inspector Ryan

As you have no doubt heard, police busted a house at Southside Boularderie Island yesterday, just a few miles down the road from Contrarian HQ. They found an eyebrow-raising array of firearms, along with cocaine, ecstasy, steroids, and my personal favorite, pot.

An RCMP news release cataloged the seized items in a handy bulleted list. The release also included this statement from Inspector John Ryan:

Yesterday’s seizure reinforces the clear link between drugs and violence.

Wrong. Yesterday’s seizure reinforces the clear link between prohibition and violence. Eliminate the prohibition on drugs, and you’ll eliminate the artificial prices that enrich and encourage gun-toting thugs. Overnight.

Al Capone taught our grandparents this lesson 90 years ago, but we’re apparently slower learners than they were. As Will Rogers put it:

Instead of giving money to fund colleges to promote learning, why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

Mind you, ending prohibition would also eliminate thousands of jobs in police departments, courts, prisons, and sanctimonious political parties. We should bear that in mind whenever the people holding these jobs trumpet another bogus “victory” in the senseless,  self-perpetuating failure known as the War on Drugs. They are the main cause of the problem they pretend to combat.

Further reading for curious students here, here, here, here, and here.