The U.S. government just convicted Juan Orlando Hernandez of a drug offense. Who’s he? He’s the former president of Honduras. U.S. officials charged him with conspiracy to import hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. Last Friday, a federal jury in New York found him guilty.
Yay! The drug war is now over, right?
Well, not exactly. In fact, if truth be told, the conviction means nothing in terms of winning the war on drugs. Notwithstanding this conviction, all previous drug-war convictions, and all future drug-war convictions, the war on drugs will just keep going … and going … and going, just like the Energizer Bunny.
That’s because the drug war is just one great big racket, one that lines the pockets of both drug dealers and government officials. In other words, if there wasn’t drug prohibition, the drug gangs and the drug-war enforcers would both be out of business. So, the racket has to keep going to keep them both in high cotton.
It’s easy for U.S. officials to look down their noses at Latin American officials who make money off the drug war. But let’s be honest: there are plenty of prosecutors, DEA agents, deputy sheriffs, policemen, border officials, and judges here in the United States who are on the take too. And even if they are not on the take, they receive lucrative salaries for enforcing the war on drugs. Those salaries would dry up if drug prohibition were to be ended, and every single federal and state official who is on the drug-war dole knows it.
Of course, there is the standard big mainstream media hoopla about the Hernandez conviction. But it’s the same standard mainstream media hoopla that we’ve seen for the past 50 years, which have involved an endless series of arrests, prosecutions, and convictions of big drug lords and big corrupt Latin American officials. Big deal. They convict them and send them to jail, only to find that they are quickly replaced by new drug lords and new corrupt government officials, who they then target in order to garner more big mainstream media hoopla.
It’s just one one great big crooked and corrupt endless racket, one that enriches drug cartels and government officials, both foreign and domestic, and taxes the American people to pay for it all. One of these days, the American people will demand that it come to an end. On that day, there will be much gnashing of teeth among drug lords, foreign government officials, and U.S. government officials, all of whom will be wailing that their decades-long drug-war gravy train has finally come to an end.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
