I have long been an advocate of drug legalization, believing that it not only wastes huge amounts of resources on something that can’t be stopped as well as having a corrosive impact on society, driving otherwise law-abiding people into a world of illegality.
My views on this haven’t changed, but hearing the outcry over the suicide of a youthful Canadian drug smuggler, Samuel Brown, has made me want to distance myself from the broader legalization movements. For one thing, I don’t believe this young man deserves our sympathy. He was a willing participant in an illegal trade, and while I believe in legalization, I have never supported the people who are in this business. If anything, the whole reason I believe in legalization is so that these unscrupulous characters will lose the ability to make as much money as they do, which makes them such menaces to society.
When reading over the numerous internet comments around Mr Brown’s death, I can’t help but notice that a great many of these people (particularly those from Canada), just want to be able to pursue the drug trade, and get rich without the risk of getting caught by those evil American lawmen. All the righteous indignation in Nelson over Samuel’s death makes my blood boil. After all, it is the uncouth monsters who run grow-ops, and ancillary drug-trade industries in BC who are responsible for creating such a brutal environment where young men and women risk their lives in the pursuit of an easy buck.
This just makes me wish all the more fervently for true drug legalization. Then all those holier-than-thou drug-operators in BC (and wherever else they may reside) will find themselves out of business overnight. If the US really wants to have its revenge on the foreign drug producers, filling it’s streets with crime, they should just legalize the goods. Not only would such a move utterly destroy communities like Nelson overnight, but it would likewise undermine demagogues like Evo Morales (the president of Bolivia) without so much as firing a gun.
I don’t believe in legalization because I like drugs. I stand for legalization because I despise the entire drug sub-culture, and the people who pervert society through making easy money off of the illicit trade.
