What is it Good For?

Last year, 1,600 people were murdered by drug traffickers in the Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez. Now, the Mexican government has ordered 5,000 soldiers and 3,000 federal agents to the streets of Juarez to help stem the violence and bring the area back under control. The town’s chief of police recently resigned after organized criminals threatened to kill one police officer every day he remained in office. In short, this is a horrible, violent, and costly situation—especially for a country that doesn’t have the most robust economy in the first place. Which begs the question: What the hell is this all about, anyway? How many people are we willing to see killed because we don’t want adults putting certain chemicals in their bodies? Without this mindless policy of prohibition, these traffickers would be called businessmen, and they wouldn’t need to deal in the kinds of criminally violent tactics that are destroying the lives of each and every person in this part of Mexico and many other places around the world. I don’t often get all up in arms over the War on Some Drugs, but this is just absurd. Even worse, I can’t think of a joke to shoehorn in here. I could mention something about the fact that the state where Juarez is located is called Chihuahua, but that just seems too juvenile. More details here.