Sudafederalization
Damn. If your US residence is in the 15th District, you can get something called the Dent Dispatch, which feeds your inbox with the latest news from Charlie Dent’s website. Most of the time it’s the usual “I managed to snag $3 million in federal money for a Memorial to Pennsylvania Dutch Settlers to be erected in front of the old Hess’s Main Store” or whatever. But Reason has reached back a few months for one of his more wacky overreaches. I find that when reading whatever his latest post is, it helps to linger a few seconds on the very adorable picture he has posted at the top of each page first, because once you get to the words…well, look here:
“The growing availability of methamphetamine is a form of terrorism unto itself,” Congressman Dent said. “This bill will help reduce the supply of this deadly drug by making it more difficult to obtain the ingredients necessary for production. It will also stiffen existing penalties for anyone caught producing or trafficking in meth.”
You know, if Pennsylvania politicians keep talking nonsense like this whenever they open their mouth about terrorism, I’m going to have to start telling people I’m from “near New Jersey.”
Okay, no, it’ll never get that bad. But still.
The availability of meth is a form of terrorism? I can see how buying illegal drugs, which puts money in the hands of shady characters who sometimes funnel it to terrorists, can be seen as abetting terrorism. That doesn’t mean I’m in favor of the War on Drugs, I hope it’s obvious. I’m just saying that someone who managed to brush past rationality in a crowded hallway within the last week could see a connection.
I think that ultimately, the war against human freedom we call the “Drug War” will be defeated (or rendered moot) by technology. Genetic or molecular engineering will eventually make it possible for ordinary users to produce morphine or cocaine. The gene splicing technology is becoming simpler by the day, and sooner or later, a libertarian grad student with a drug habit (or an axe to grind against drug warriors) will create, say, a new and improved yeast that produces morphine instead alcohol. (It doesn’t take bioengineering skills to “just add sugar and water.”) Once something like that is released into the addict population, the realization will soon set in that continuing the “War” is absurd.
That sounds like a plausible scenario, though I can imagine the initial reaction wouldn’t be pretty, despite the futility of trying to eradicate something that can reproduce by airborne spores.