A recent front page reported that the FBI broke up a drug distribution ring. There was a smaller story about the FBI ignoring ex-gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse of young girls.
Fighting drug abuse makes good headlines, but does nothing to make the world a better place, whereas going after Nassar would have saved young girls’ lives.
We could bust a drug ring every day and there would still be a drug problem. The war against drugs is decades long, and the criminal justice system is not working. Cutting the supply of drugs only temporarily increases their street value, which leads to others taking the place of the busted ring. Politicians, drug manufacturers, drug distributors, police, courts, probation officers, prisons, defense attorneys and treatment centers all profit from the war on drugs, and are averse to stopping it.
Before drugs became illegal, we did not historically have a particularly bad drug problem. We had cocaine in Coca-Cola. There was morphine in cough medicine and various elixirs. A few people became dependent on them, but we did not have the drug overdoses and deaths like we do today. We need a different solution to our drug problem.