It appears from the recent flurry of legislative proposals and blizzard of news reports that we have opened a new front in the War on Drugs.
“Meth” (the street name for methamphetamine), we are told, is uniquely dangerous. “The worst drug this nation has ever faced,” hyperbolizes Rep. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge).
First synthesized nearly a century ago, this powerful stimulant is, of course, not what’s new – only its ascension to the long and storied list of “worst drug ever.”
In my parent’s day the unparalleled threat was marijuana, a “Devil’s Weed” that, according to vintage movies and posters, brought: “Murder! Death!! Insanity!!!”
The perils of pot gave way to those of Heroin. Originally an over-the-counter, trademarked product of the Bayer Company, this opium derivative was ultimately said to make users into mindless “junkies” willing to do anything at all for their next “fix.”
In the days of my youth it was LSD – purportedly causing permanent damage to the chromosomes of users (though, admittedly, this was only of concern to those who didn’t jump off rooftops in the throes of an “acid flashback.”)
Then came PCP, an animal tranquilizer popularly known as “angel dust,” that was so manifestly toxic it enjoyed only brief popularity among illicit drug users. Consequently, it was something of a flash-in-the-pan for Chicken Little politicians.
The next, big crusade was of much greater moment – the effort to rid the world of that scourge of disco-dancing yuppies: cocaine. We were regaled with lurid tales of up-and-coming young executives brought low by what had once been a soft drink ingredient.
This one segued nicely into a new menace – the more concentrated form of the selfsame coca plant dubbed, “crack.”
Actually nothing more than a marketing contrivance (fortuitously, directed at the underclass), a crack “epidemic” was reputed to be inevitable. This drug, we were ominously warned, was “the most addictive substance ever known” – combining the overwhelming compulsion of Heroin with the murder, death and insanity brought on by marijuana.
Following a relatively brief, but stunningly successful, side skirmish against the legal drug, tobacco, the temperance heirs of Carry Nation have come to the new cause célèbre: “Meth.”
Now, enforcing prohibition laws has always been problematic under our system of governance for the simple reason that there is no actual complaining witness to allege a provable harm in a court of law.
Since buyer and seller are necessarily engaged in a voluntary transaction, no one is coming forward. Consequently, ferreting out this proscribed commerce has compelled the state to employ tactics that turn the most fundamental precept of our legal system – innocent until proven guilty – on its head.
The Drug Jihad has put our precious Bill of Rights through a paper shredder.
General searches and random testing have become ubiquitous, the nicety of showing probable cause passé.
Creation of “civil asset forfeiture” has cleverly side-stepped constitutional protections by charging property instead of citizens – putting the burden of proof on owners and reducing the standard for the state from “beyond a reasonable doubt” to the much less rigorous “preponderance of the evidence.”
To combat drug-related money laundering, we now have the ironically named “bank secrecy laws” that require financial institutions to report any cash transaction over $3,000.
Americans, grown accustomed to being presumed guilty, have become cravenly eager to prove their innocence at every checkpoint and teller window.
Now comes a package of bills from Rep. Jones and his colleagues to redress the particular dangers of clandestine methamphetamine labs (it apparently never occurring to any of them that the very existence of unregulated manufacturing is entirely a consequence of prohibition).
These latest encroachments are (wait for it)… “for the children.” They include making the illicit manufacture of meth, where minors may come into contact with the dangerous chemicals involved, ipso facto “child abuse.” The Department of Human Services would be empowered to require medical evaluations in such circumstances, without the inconvenience of obtaining either parental consent or a court order.
After nearly a century of Drug Wars, we have done far more damage to our Bill of Rights than to the popularity of indulging in mind-altering substances.
If we would only give up the quixotic quest to protect the terminally self-destructive from the consequences of their own vices, we could restore our American heritage of limited government, privacy and personal freedom to the rest of us.
Or at least shift focus to defending it against encroachments in the name of the War on Terror.
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More on the War on Drugs:
- Going around politicians to help sick people
- Drug war casualties
- A conservative divorce
- Prohibition — No nobler the 2nd time around
- Drug Wars
