(Truthstream Media.com) With focus on a thorough border inspection of a vehicle driven by a mom with three kids from Arizona, USA Today highlighted the horrors of heroin as an increasing drug of choice for cartels to smuggle across the border.
Though U.S. Customs & Border Patrol admittedly stop less than 10% of all heroin trafficking, the enormity of the problem with drugs and violent Mexican cartels still SEEMS to justify why everyone from an 82 year old to a mom traveling with kids needs to be treated as a potential terrorist/drug smuggler and combed over with drug dogs, mirrors, electronic density detectors and intimidating questions... never mind the rights of American citizens and even international visitors. America is/must be a "Constitution-free zone" at the border, and a veritable Police State inside her borders to fulfill the insane mandate of a completely failed War on Drugs.
With some estimates claiming 100,000 people brutally killed by Mexican drug cartels in the ongoing drug war, is it all worth it?
USA Today and comparable outlets conveniently fail to mention the backdrop of heroin's surge, or the deep politics of the drug war:
- U.S. troops admittedly guard the poppy fields in Afghanistan; heroin production has increased drastically since the onset of the U.S. war against and occupation of Afghanistan.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-war-american-troops-are-protecting-afghan-opium-u-s-occupation-leads-to-all-time-high-heroin-production/5358053
- Wachovia and other major U.S. banks and Wall Street entities have been implicated in laundering billions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels. Investigation of a crashed plane carrying numerous tons of cocaine conclusively linked Wachovia to an estimated $370 Billion+ in laundered funds connected to the Sinoloa drug cartel. The bank, since absorbed by Wells Fargo, has had to pay fines for its involvement.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs
- U.S. forces were caught smuggling heroin in the body bags of U.S. troops during the Vietnam War, and opium from the "Golden Triangle" was a hidden-but-pivotal factor in both Vietnam & Afghanistan, despite the public's ignorance about this horror.
- Gary Webb's investigation, documented in his book Dark Alliance, uncovered the involvement in covert U.S. agencies (CIA, DEA, et al.) in drug smuggling to Los Angeles and other locales in conjunction with cartels working for the Contras.
Despite all this, the burden of suspicion falls on the average nobody crossing the border, or pulled over during traffic stops. The majority of arrests, convictions and prosecutions in the Drug War- now overwhelming the prison system and creating the largest prison population in the world - is carried out on low level users, street dealers and petty gangs, with a total failure to break the system that is fueling drug violence and epidemic usage.
There is an utter failure to learn the lessons of alcohol prohibition, which fueled big city gangs, created speakeasies and a violent black market, while building up new police units, government powers, gun control laws and fortunes for the large-scale bootleggers.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/aug/26/lawless-prohibition-gangsters-speakeasies
Are we afraid to even suggest the idea of "Decriminalization"? Will the streets be filled with junkies and the hospitals with overdoses of street drugs? Maybe, but statistics have suggested otherwise, while many more die from prescription drug overdoses and still-dangerous replacement treatments (such as a Methadone) than from street heroin. Are the lives of the 50,000 to 100,000 killed by violent cartels not enough reason to consider puncturing the illicit drug business by DROPPING all the checkpoints and patrols? Who created all the demand for drugs anyway, and what kind of subversion is happening to society? Would changes in the law be the quickest way to deflate the otherwise unstoppable drug cartels?
Not sure, but it's time we at least started raising the questions, because liberty is under attack, and no serious dent is being placed on the drug supply.
If the Border Patrol lined up every granny, soccer mom and possibly-suspicious male for a cavity search, it admittedly would do nothing to stop the ever increasing supply of drugs... so why put ordinary and innocent people through so much trouble, if it is admittedly all just pomp and circumstance?
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