Hammer, Meet Nail

Tuesday 31 January 2012 - Filed under Uncategorized

In an interview of Eugene Jarnecki, the director of a new, award winning documentary concerning the horror that is the modern war on drugs and why, despite its obvious futility, our politicians still insist on prosecuting it:

It’s the same reason we start losing wars. It’s because we have systems in place that were built and became deeply ensconced before the wisdom about the grotesque failure of the operation was clear. So now, even if Judge Bennett wanted to give an offender a sentence of less than 20 years, he can’t. And even if we wanted to do x ,y, and z, we can’t. By “can’t,” we mean it is a Herculean task. If we went back to the imprisonment rate we had in the early 70s, something like four out of five people employed in the prison industry would lose their jobs. That’s what you’re up against. That’s what makes it hard, even though we know better.

That’s exactly right. The prison industrial complex has become an industry unto itself. Large chunks of American government function only because of the drug war. Large swaths of government are literally addicted to the war on drugs, and depend on it for their very survival.

2012-01-31  »  madlibertarianguy