“Order
may be nothing more than evidence of tyranny. Order may be nothing more than
the prohibitions on freedom, the elimination of rights and the suppression of
liberty. You are just as unsafe when things are too orderly as when they are
disorderly.” — Jerry Day
Governments
have learned that laws can be used as revenue and control measures by
criminalizing more and more of human activity. Indeed, in many instances the
term “criminal” is now meaningless as law enforcement has become a greater
threat to ordinary people than actual criminals.
At an accelerating
rate, western governments are criminalizing victimless trivialities for profit
and control of the masses. In Denmark, the laws governing unemployment benefits
are more than 36,000 pages and grow by almost seven pages daily on average. A massive
20,000 laws have been formulated to control ownership and use of guns in the
US. The taxfoundation.org has shown that in order to understand and comply with
US tax laws one must go through about 80,000 pages. Civil libertarians protest
that prosecutors can charge any American with several crimes every day of the
year because there are so many laws and regulations. See, for example, Harvey
A. Silverglate, Three
Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.
As it is impossible
for a person to peruse all the required pages in order to comply with the laws,
we are all probable criminals. Thus, the word “criminal” has effectively lost
its meaning.
Governments not only
criminalize behavior for revenue purposes and in order to create a slave prison
population to be exploited by private industries. Governments also legalize
crimes, such as gambling for which government prosecuted private interests, and
turn them into government sponsored lotteries. There is also evidence that the
US government is actively involved in illegal drug trade.
San Jose Mercury
investigative reporter Gary Webb found evidence of the CIA’s involvement in the
drug trade. The Mercury published it. The CIA then used its media assets, such
as the Washington Post, to carry on a campaign against Webb to discredit him.
Investigative reporters got the message and have not looked into the CIA’s
presence in the Afghan opium drug trade despite the massive growth under US
occupation of Afghanistan’s opium share of the world market. The Taliban had
suppressed the opium trade, but under US occupation the percentage of the world
market supplied by Afghanistan rose from 6% in 2001 to 93% in 2007.
An
explosion in drug laws and incarcerations saw the light of the day after
President Nixon launched the US War on Drugs in 1971. After 50 years of stable
incarceration rates, the number of US prisoners went from 161 per 100,000
population in 1972 to 767 per 100,000 in 2007, almost a fivefold increase. In
2007, federal and state prisons and local jails held nearly 2.3 million inmates
(over 20% of the world’s prisoners), but if parolees and probationers are
included, the total US correctional population exceeded 7 million. Prisoners
have become integrated into the corporate world as privately owned prisons and
forced labor have become big businesses. Corporations who owe their low labor
cost to prison labor have a vested interest in harsh sentences and expansion of
the already seemingly infinite number of laws.
Prohibition of drugs
does not deter people from using them. If harsh drug laws deterred people from
drugs, not many offenders would be found in correctional facilities with a drug
offense on their rap sheet. If we consider the 2015 statistics for people on
probation and parole, 25% and 31% respectively had a drug charge as their most
serious offense, a total of 1,217,305 people. In 2016, 47% and 15% respectively
of federal and state prisoners were in prison for drug violations, their most
serious offense. In 2017, federal agents and state police made 1,632,921
arrests for drugs violations of which 85.4% of these arrests were for
possession.
These
numbers clearly show that harsher sentences do not deter people from drugs.
This was also echoed in a study by the Pew Research Center which showed that
drug use, drug arrest, and overdose death had no statistically significant
relationship with drug imprisonment. That is, higher incarceration rates did
not deter people from drugs. Drug laws also result in the murders of many
people by police in violation of due process. As police are seldom held
accountable for their crimes, the legal and constitutional protections of
citizens are being lost.
Moreover,
prohibition leads to secondary crimes as indicated by a study that showed “17%
of state and 18% of federal prisoners committed their crimes to obtain money
for drugs.” If cigarettes, alcohol and chocolate were outlawed tomorrow, prices
would rise, vicious syndicates would appear and people would commit real
crimes, including robbery and theft in order to get their preferred stimulant.
Prohibition of alcohol in the US and elsewhere produced a new class of criminal
activity. It should come as no surprise that a study by Coyne et al concluded
that “prohibition is not only ineffective, but counterproductive, at achieving
the goals of policymakers both domestically and abroad … the domestic War on
Drugs has contributed to an increase in drug overdoses and fostered and
sustained the creation of powerful drug cartels.”
Getting access to
drug war expenditures is notoriously difficult, but a 2010 estimate showed that
one trillion dollars in tax revenue have been spent on the War on Drugs since
1971. Nevertheless a multiyear study, published in the British Medical Journal
by Werb et al, concluded that “expanding efforts at controlling the global
illegal drug market through law enforcement are failing.” It appears that the
US War on Drugs has been a disaster for the average American, but has enriched
certain powerful organizations.
Some governments not
only participate in the illegal drug trade, but also approve the production and
sale of addictive drugs by private businesses. Many of the drugs that can be
purchased on the street from your average drug dealer have been approved by the
FDA, including amphetamines, MDMA, opioids, psilocybin and methamphetamine. One
of these drugs is called Adzenys which is a formulation of amphetamine (yes, it
is the same drug sold by street dealers), has been approved by the FDA for
children. This amphetamine drug comes in “great-tasting” fruit and candy
flavors for children who do not like taking pills. Possible side effects
include addiction, heart attack, and death.
Large pharmaceutical
corporations which have deep financial ties to policymakers produce and
distribute these drugs on a grand scale. The US government cashes in on the
drugs via taxation and through campaign contributions from these multibillion
dollar industries. Transparency International concludes: “Pharmaceutical
companies can unduly influence national political systems through their large
spending power. Pharmaceutical companies often fund candidates that support
their position on key issues. Outside of elections, the pharmaceutical industry
spends vast sums of money lobbying.”
Professor Peter
Gøtzsche, former director of the independent Nordic Cochrane Centre, shows in
his book, Lethal
Medicine and Organized Crime, that legalized drugs kill at least
200,000 Americans and also 200,000 Europeans every year. Half of those people
take their drugs as prescribed, the other half die because of contraindications
and accidental overdoses.
Data from the CDC
show that in 2017, heroin and cocaine killed 15,482 and 13,942 Americans
respectively. However, 88,000 died from alcohol related causes, over 480,000
from tobacco, but zero died from a cannabis overdose.
There are
innumerable examples of how laws turn citizens into criminals. On June 1, 2012,
in Denmark, anyone without a permit could purchase an air gun with a caliber in
excess of 4.5 millimeters. However, on June 2 such possession brought a prison
sentence. Every day governments define the word “criminal” more and more
broadly. Eventually, by existence alone we will all be criminals.
References:
Søren
Korsgaard, author of America’s
Jack the Ripper: The Crimes and Psychology of the Zodiac Killer, is
the editor-in-chief of Radians & Inches: The Journal of Crime. He may be
contacted via Editor@RadiansANDInches.com.
