...or, Only a government employee could peddle this:
Q: Are we winning the war on drugs in Houston?
A: It's one of the toughest questions to answer. The opposing view is, “Let's make drugs legal.” I can never see that; I can't go down that route because in this job you see the human casualties, the human toll, that is brought by illegal drugs. So it's one of those prolonged wars that we're going to be fighting at least in your and my lifetime and our children's lifetime. But it's the war we need to fight, and we have to fight. Do I believe we're winning? Yes. I think every time we lock up a drug trafficker, every time we identify and dismantle a cartel, every time we capture their assassins, every time that we capture large loads of drugs, lives are being saved.
Ah, yes, the old "if it saves just one life, it's worth it." All righty then. You know what? I will bet you, right here and now, that more good people's lives are ruined, and more money wasted, as a result of the War On Some Drugs than on the drugs themselves. And we have not even gotten into the detrimental effects on our Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. You're probably wondering how the War On Some Drugs affects the RKBA, I'm sure. Well, that one's quite simple: As long as we have a War On Some Drugs, we are going to have a War On All Guns -- because I would also bet you that most of the violent acts perpetrated with guns are due to turf wars and other disagreements rising directly from the black market on illegal drugs. And you know what? That right there takes the statistic of how many people's lives are screwed up by drugs right out of the realm of debate. (Or at least it should, but you know it doesn't because we continually insist on spending our hard earned money on bailing people out when they make the decision to get hooked on drugs.) Because if the number of people whose lives are screwed up by those illegal drugs is a legitimate statistic to use in this debate, then using the same logic the number of people killed with guns each year is a legitimate statistic to use in the debate over gun control. If our Second Amendment rights are not subject to arguments grounded in social utility -- and they are not -- then neither should our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, or any other right protected by the Bill of Rights, be. Human casualties. One wonders what he'd say about cigarettes and alcohol being legal, which also exacts a high toll on our society. Why is the freedom to choose worth it in some cases but not in others?
UPDATE: Borepatch slams it home in comments with this:
Not to mention the difference of someone doing themselves wrong, vs. the government doing them wrong.
What was it the lefties used to say? "Not In My Name."
Why yes, it was. Not In My Name, indeed, you authoritarian nanny-state pricks.
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