Ecstasy in the Homeland
by Marie
All the doubting Thomas’s, myself included, must eat our words. Homeland Security can finally claim success. Not catching many terrorists, and a “dirty bomb,” if a terrorist could build one, would still get through our ports, but look out drug runners. Our multi-billion dollar Homeland Security Department is striking a blow in the War on Drugs. You remember that war don’t you? It was the one the GOP abandoned when it lost its power to instill fear in Americans and they discovered that fear of terrorists practically sells itself. Now that the Global War on Terror isn’t going all that well, and the Crusade against liberalism has taken a few hits, looks like they may be dusting off that old stand-by, drugs. No, no, no – not all the opium that will become heroin that Afghanistan is producing at record levels, but a party drug popular with the young, Ecstasy.
Seems the supply of Ecstasy was very vulnerable to increased scrutiny at our international airports. And as drugs conform better to the simple law of supply and demand than just about any other industry, the prices for Ecstasy have gone way up.
Post-9/11 security cuts into Ecstasy
That should bring in more suppliers, which in turn would drive down the prices. But wait, there is more good news for the guardians of our public safety (and bad news for those potential new drug runners). The US is incarcerating more prisoners than ever before. More bad guys are being locked up at the very time that the number of bad guys is declining (if overall crime rates are the criteria). U.S. Prison Population Soars in 2003, '04
Which takes us back to that even older GOP inspired war – the War on Crime. Never heard of it? It was a long time ago, back in the days of Nixon. Nothing better than wars without ends to keep the GOP in power. At least this time they never promised us an end. Perhaps history will remember George Bush as the man who started the longest running war in western history and took that distinction away from The Hundred Years War.