Let’s take a look at it in basic terms. First — essentially all the violence, from both the drug warriors and the drug traffickers, is a direct result of prohibition. It is a major side effect of the drug war. What is the purpose of the drug war? Well, theoretically, its purpose is to prevent people from using certain drugs. Marijuana, mostly, since that’s the most popular illicit drug. And it’s to prevent people from voluntarily using marijuana (marijuana isn’t like rape or murder or theft — it isn’t done to a person by someone else — it’s a choice).
[Now, forget for a moment the fact that it doesn’t actually work. Assume it does.]
So when you killed Kathryn Johnston, that was to prevent someone from voluntarily smoking marijuana. In other words, you cared more about the supposed harm to a drug user who was doing it to himself, than the life of an innocent person.
How morally bankrupt do you have to be to make such a choice? How many people are you willing to kill to accomplish your goal? How many innocent deaths do you accept in order to stop someone from smoking pot and hanging out on Pete’s couch? If one innocent person dies and 10 people stop smoking pot, is that a good trade-off? How many lives and families are you willing to destroy to stop someone from voluntarily taking heroin?
And horror of horrors, what if (as most certainly is the case), all your killing of innocent people didn’t really have a significant impact on drug use or abuse. When you realize that you have killed these people for nothing… what will you tell their children?
- DrugWarRant.com, the longest running single-issue blog devoted to drug policy
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