By way of Tom Maguire, I found this article by John Tierney, the best writer at the NY Times. Tierney is decrying the effects of mandatory sentencing on “non-violent offenders.” I find myself entirely unmoved.
Let’s be clear here: I would be ecstatic to support ending the war on drugs, killing the FDA, and telling people: It’s your body, do whatever you want to it (just don’t expect us to pay for it). But that’s not on the agenda. What’s on the agenda is cutting the punishment of “non-violent offenders.” And I’m opposed, because when it comes to drugs, there aren’t any “non-violent offenders.”
Those Mexican drug cartels that are murdering people and corrupting Mexican society? They exist because, and only because, of those “non-violent offenders.” Those teenage and twenty+ year old boys shooting each other (and the occasional innocent bystander) over “turf” for selling drugs? Again, without the buyers pumping all that money into the system, those shootings wouldn’t be happening. So don’t tell me how sad it is that their life’s been “ruined”, because they are the ones ruining everyone else’s lives.
End the trade. Make it all legal, sell heroine through drug stores, slash the prices so there’s nothing to fight over. Great, got no problem with that.
But so long as those people are paying (and working, in the case of the “mules”) to destroy the US inner city, Mexico, Columbia, etc., they deserve the misery that mandatory sentencing brings them.
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