Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

It's small wonder that the drug prohibitionists are now trying to claim there is a connection between "illegal" drugs and support for terrorism. The drug prohibitionists are absolutely terrified by the overwhelmingly positive demonstrated reality of legalized medical marijuana. They're terrified that the outrageous lies they've used to justify nearly 70 years of violent assaults on the lives and property of millions of citizens in the name of marijuana prohibition will be exposed by the jarringly contradictory real world experiences of growing numbers of citizens. They're terrified that if the lies they've been using to justify marijuana prohibition are exposed, the public might start to question the rest of their lies.

What the prohibitionists are most desperate to "protect against" is wide spread realization that prohibition is itself the ultimate source of the very evils it claims to be protecting against. Those whose power and prestige are based on the "need" for prohibition, have an obvious self-interest in keeping the public from finding out that their greatest need is actually protection from the prohibitionists.

In the infamous tradition of the propagandists of the last century, drug prohibitionists are now seeking to project responsibility for the direct consequences of their own actions onto their victims. Billions of taxpayer dollars have already been extracted by force from the productive sector, and used to mount a preemptive media saturation campaign designed to defend the failures of drug prohibition from the slender threads of emerging truth, by overwhelming the truth in a thick fog of lies.

Television is the medium of choice for this new campaign due to its ability to deliver repetitive exposures of carefully crafted audio-visual sensory experiences that imperceptibly infiltrate, and incrementally undermine, the viewer's higher level critical facilities. Quick vignettes juxtapose emotion-charged images, sounds, and situations with otherwise disconnected negative events, reverse cause and effect, or otherwise seek to provide the viewer with a subconscious sense of "personal experiences" that validate the embedded message. No effort to provide the viewer's conscious mind with valid information or persuasive logic distracts from the disgustingly blatant emotional manipulation. Of course, this is hardly surprising since logic and rationality are of little use to prohibitionists.

Marijuana has been the "demon drug" in the majority of the "public service" propaganda pieces I've witnessed. This also isn't surprising since marijuana is the only area of the "drug war" where the citizens have had the effrontery to pass initiatives reaffirming the fundamental rights of individual citizens, and restricting the power of the prohibitionists. "Adjusting" the public's perception of marijuana serves the dual purpose of demonizing both the substance, and the initiative process that allows citizens to impose limits on their government.

It was distressingly predictable that the prohibitionists would attempt to exploit the public concern over terrorism by claiming a link between drug use and support for terrorists. Increasingly unable to prove their long standing claims of adverse health and social effects, the prohibitionists have shifted their focus to demonizing drug users through a campaign of outrageous lies.

Proof that the American government is maliciously lying to its citizens can be found in its own official records, and by applying simple economics. The official position of the Federal drug czar is that medical marijuana is no different than any other "illegal" drug, regardless of state laws to the contrary. Oregon's Medical Marijuana Act (OMMA), which has been the model for most of the other states that have so far legalized medical marijuana, specifically prohibits any exchange of medication "for consideration". A patient can give another patient a limited amount of medication as a gift, but can't sell it to him. Suppliers have a hard time recovering their out of pocket costs in the "legal" medical marijuana market, let alone supporting terrorists.

Accepting that profit margins are better in the recreational marijuana market, it still doesn't follow that buying pot from your friendly neighborhood dealer contributes to terrorists. Most of the marijuana available on the domestic market these days is grown inside the U.S. The Oregon Department of Agriculture rates marijuana as Oregon's most valuable agricultural product - contributing more to the state economy than the "legal" harvests of timber, wheat, grass seed, etc. Most of Oregon's marijuana crop is grown inside closets and grow rooms in private residences, by small individual growers who are even less likely to support terrorism than the average citizen.

In a free market, competition limits the profit margins of the distribution channel to the cost of production plus a modest profit. Too little profit and no one will be willing to take the risks, and do the work, required to supply the demand. Too much profit will attract competitors willing to supply the demand at a lower price - either by accepting a lower profit margin, or by finding innovative ways to reduce their cost of production.

Even in a prohibition distorted distribution channel, the original producers of the prohibited product receive little more than a bulk commodity price for their crop. It's been estimated that the bulk price "at the source" for such high profit drugs as cocaine and heroin is roughly equal to the price of premium pastry flour. (It's been pointed out for decades that it would only take a small fraction of what is spent on interdiction to simply buy all of the available supply at the source. But actually eliminating the prohibited drugs would also have the utterly unacceptable adverse side effect of eliminating the need for drug prohibitionists.)

Consumers have a well documented preference for paying the lowest possible price for drugs like nicotine and alcohol that are more addictive and/or involved in more fatalities than cocaine and heroin. So the extraordinary profit margins of the "drug trade" can hardly be attributed to the production and consumption of the prohibited products.

Criminals and terrorists didn't create the artificially enhanced profit margins of the "illegal" drug trade. They were attracted to the easy money made available by the market distortions of the prohibitionists. Milton Freeman explained decades ago that the primary result of drug prohibition would be exactly the kind of artificial market constriction needed to support artificially enhanced profit margins for the higher levels of the distribution chain, while ensuring enough demand to consume any available supply. The greater the market interference of the prohibitionists, the greater the profit margin the resulting distorted market would support for those willing to satisfy the demand for prohibited products. Without the market distortions created by the prohibitionists, the price of drugs would be limited by competition to the actual cost of production, processing, and transportation, plus a small profit margin - just as with other "legal" products.

The kinds of profit margins needed to interest criminals and terrorists can only be created through the artificial market distortions resulting from prohibitions. Terrorists don't buy farms in Iowa expecting to fund their war on civilization with the easy money to be made growing corn and wheat. I think it's fair to predict that most Iowa farmers would deny there is any easy money in legal farming. While some of the participants in modern agriculture might not fit the Norman Rockwell stereotype, Iowa farms are hardly a statistically significant source of terrorist funding.

The economic distortions of drug prohibition should hardly be a surprise - or difficult to intreprete. Al Capone built a criminal empire supplying prohibited beer to willing consumers, but the beer business hasn't been anywhere near as profitable since its products were legalized. Historically, the only period during which the profit margins in the beer business have ever been capable of supporting the parasitic extravagance and murderous violence of organized crime was when the the beer market was artificially distorted by the tragic disaster of alcohol prohibition.

The brewing and drinking of beer wasn't the source of the "easy money" and murderous violence of the roaring twenties. Alcohol prohibition was the only factor required to turn the modest profits of the competitive "legal" beer industry into a lucrative source of funding for organized crime. Drug prohibition has essentially replicated the pattern of alcohol prohibition in every "drug" it has sought to prohibit.

But today, in direct contradiction of the all too clear lessons of history, and the most basic economic principles, the prohibitionists are spending billions of our tax dollars to lie to us about their role in turning the "illegal" drug trade into a primary source of funding for terrorists around the globe.

The prohibitionists want us to believe that it's the individual peacefully smoking a joint in the privacy of his own living room who is supporting terrorism, and not recognize the clear truth that the real source of terror is the black hooded body armored drug war storm trooper preparing to smash in his door. And they're willing to spend every penny the taxpayers have repeating their lies until we're no longer capable of recognizing the truth.