The War on Drugs Supports Terrorism

I don't know if the ads still run, but I remember shortly after September 11 happened, the Bush Administration and the Drug-Free America nitwits ran ads claiming that if you smoked marijuana, you were supporting terror. I dismissed the ad at the time because so much of America's marijuana is domestic or from the Western Hemisphere.

Yet, the Times of London reports that the Taliban are looking to rake in £50 million ($100 million) from the elicit trade of opium and the ganj:

Afghanistan, which produces 90 per cent of the world's illegal opium, is also expected to increase its output of marijuana, according to the survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Notice the words "illegal opium." Opium is used as a base for many perfectly legal (yet regulated via prescription) pharmaceuticals. Maybe, just maybe, if the world's nations decriminalized possession and sale of opiates and marijuana, (making production less risky thus driving down operating costs) the Taliban wouldn't be profiting off of our drug war in order to kill our soldiers.

Just a thought.

UPDATE: Apparently great minds think alike. H&R just put up a post on the Drug-Free spots here. #9 is one example of the terror/drugs connection, but not the one I was thinking of.

While your there, check out KMW's post on Romney, porn, and black babies.

Smoke 'Em if You Got 'Em

My friend Jamie Dettmer has an interesting post on Cato @ Liberty:

The study, undertaken by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Holland, found that ultimately healthy people, who live on average four years longer than obese people and seven years longer than smokers, cost the health system about $417,000 from the age of 20 compared to $371,000 for obese people and $326,000 for smokers.

Would you look at that? Strike two against the smoking-ban argument. (Strike one is the infringement on business owners allowing their customers to smoke on private property).

A Rebuttal

Dear GOP,

It's not us, it's you.

Sincerely,

The Reagan-Goldwaterites

As penned by Radley Balko.