Innocents Die in the Drug War
So says the title of an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about Veronica Bowers, a Christian missionary killed in Peru due to a failed CIA policy, which directed the Peruvian Air Force to force down small planes suspected of running drugs.
Many advocates of drug policy reform are quick to cite the number of annual arrests or misallocation of police resources domestically. But few mention the severe negative impact U.S. governmental policies about substances it deems “illicit” have outside our borders. It’s unfortunate, and really, quite despicable, that it takes incidents like the death of an American to highlight this fact.
Yet, billions of dollars of government-to-government aid tied to eradication and interdiction through programs like Plan Colombia, which only served to further entrench poverty, destabilize entire countries and increase anti-Americanism, continue to be supported by politicians “tough on crime”, prison guard unions, and law enforcement agencies that have a vested interest in seeing that the laws do not change (due to asset forfeiture laws, etc.).
It’s time for a change. Earlier this month was the 75th Anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition, an era that is joked about today. Hopefully, in the near future, drug prohibition and all the related negative unintended consequences can be a thing of the past as well.
For more on this, check out the Crasher Challege: Stop Wars and the Who Owns You? overview on Bureaucrash Social.
