Chomsky on Drugs

Guernica magazine has a fascinating interview / article with Noam Chomsky on the failure of the War on Drugs and the violent effect of the policies in Mexico. WELL worth a read. My favourite quotes

If they want to stop the drugs, the drug rackets, I think they know how to proceed, and it's not with military action. You have to get to the heart of the matter. Part of the answer was given by the declaration of the three ex-presidents, Zedillo, Cardoso, and Gaviria. They came out with a study about two years ago in which they simply said that criminalizing drugs is just creating the problem, and that in some fashion the drugs should be legalized, like alcohol, and regulated. Then you wouldn’t get criminal syndicates. That’s part of the issue, but a deeper part is right here in the United States.
The drug problem is in the United States, not in Mexico. It’s a demand problem and that is to be dealt with here, and it is not being dealt with. It’s been shown over and over that prevention and treatment are far more cost effective than police action, out-of-country action, border control, and so on. But the money goes in the other direction and never has an impact. When leaders carry out policies for decades that have no consequences for the stated goal and are very costly, you have to ask whether they are telling you the truth or whether the policies are for a different goal, because they are not reducing drug use. In fact, they are not even raising drug prices.

Also

Governments are not in the business of catering to their citizens. It’s as old as Adam Smith. The governments work for their main constituencies. When the Republicans come into office with plans to increase benefits for the wealthy—like making sure that the super wealthy get tax cuts, making sure that the insurance companies and the financial institutions are unconstrained in their operations—that’s not for the benefit of U.S. citizens. That’s for the benefit of their constituency.