Tylor Brand

According to the United Nations, which rarely does anything good beyond collecting statistics, the drug trade pulls in roughly $400 billion, mostly in the United States, and saps over $18 billion from our country in order to fight it. That stands as 8 percent of the entire world's trade, even narrowly defeating Sen. Ted Kennedy's pork projects in scope. Millions die, waste their lives in addiction and prison, and buy totally unnecessary items from QVC. And, according to some new TV ads paid for by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, it's all the fault of you damnable drug users!

The commercials themselves resemble the whole "See Dick, see Spot, see Spot bite Dick, bad Spot, bad!" genre of early century schoolbooks for people who rode the short bus. They place Dan, a recreational marijuana user, in the position to take the blame for: the money the dealer made, the money the drug runner made, the money the cartel made and, ultimately, the deaths of families as a result. What they didn't mention is that America's failed policy of prohibition and "war" (really, we are at war in Colombia; don't think we have no troops there) artificially boosted the prices that the cartel got from the drug runner, who bumped it up to the dealer, who bumped it up to roughly 26 times what it originally cost Dan.

So what kind of intervention would be needed to make drug running that much less profitable? We'd have to take down over 75 percent of the drugs that come into the country, at which we fail as miserably as the mass of plastic trying to keep Cher's body looking somewhat human. At best, we can estimate we catch 40 percent of all cocaine making its way to such lowlife areas as Beverly Hills. And that's a horrid estimate, since if we aren't catching it, how do we know how much there is in the first place? And, in the traditional "You're damned if you do, not if you don't" style, the more they intercept, the more people pay for it, and the more profitable it gets! It's such simple supply and demand that you have to wonder why we're not getting into it ourselves, particularly since we're usually so gung-ho about screwing our population.

Actually, since we're on the subject of screwing the public, the number of people in prison for drug-related offenses dwarfs that of every other by far, with an average of $1.1 billion a year spent by the states on drug-related crimes, and the numbers of prisoners ranging in the millions. For the "freest country in the world" to have over a quarter of the entire world's prison population points either to a major oversight in nomenclature or total contradiction in terms.

So how about a solution? Let's try legalizing all narcotics. This would immediately knock the price down to levels on which few could survive, and they would have to move to another line of work (or concentrate solely on their positions in the Colombian Presidential Cabinet). This is coincidentally what the drug trade did to coffee growers, forcing them to grow drugs to live.

At the same time, we would release all non-violent drug offenders back into society (some of whom possessed minimal amounts of the Class-5 drug marijuana) where they could either choose to contribute, or go back to drugs and end up in prison for a legitimate offense. You may say, "But Tylor, these people could go out on the streets and hurt people for drug money!" To which I reply: "They do it anyway!"

Here's my knockout blow for the drug war. My neighbor was a "recreational" speed user, which was at first merely mildly disconcerting; but eventually, he exhibited the traditional craziness exhibited by such addicts and ended up pulling his gun on random people, thinking he was God, and having the S.W.A.T. team use my roommate's car as a backstop for their AR-15s several times.

He was not arrested because they thought they could get to the "real danger" ÷ the meth lab ÷ by keeping him free and and trying to bargain.

How do I know this? I asked the lieutenant and the man himself about it; the cop waffled and lied, the crazy-drugged-up guy told me what they told him. Really protective, eh? We should run another ad, with all of Congress in the end saying in unison "See us dodge responsibility for our actions."