"The Absurd Farce of Machine Guns,
Maduro, and the Endless War on Drugs"
by David Stockman
"The Venezuela saga gets more cockamamie by the day. It turns out that the predicates for kidnapping the president of a country that poses no threat whatsoever to America’s Homeland security are about as threadbare (and even comical) as they come. For instance, did the DOJ writers of the superseding indictment of Maduro and his misses not turn bright red with embarrassment when penning this gem: "Possession of machine guns and destructive devices" and "conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices" in furtherance of the narco-terrorism and cocaine importation conspiracies.
WTF! For better or worse, the man was the president of a sovereign nation-state, and the very essence of such institutions is that they have all the guns or at least most of the big, really lethal ones such as military-style machine guns. So this amounts to an "excuse me for existing" charge, but also something even more to the point.
The definitions in section 924(c) on which this machine gun charge was based derive from the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). The latter was passed during Prohibition’s aftermath to combat armed gangsters like Al Capone, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson—all of whom famously used Thompson sub-machine guns ("Tommy guns") in the conduct of their day jobs.
Of course, Prohibition was a disaster for endless reasons, but among them was surely the fact that the bonneted ladies of the temperance societies ended up causing more people to be killed by the machine guns of the booze-running gangsters than were being felled by excessive fondness for Demon Rum. Likewise, the reincarnation of Prohibition in today’s War on Drugs generates far more maimed and dead collateral victims–especially in the case of cocaine—than the contraband drugs themselves.
That is to say, on its own the annual fatality rate among the nation’s 5 million cocaine users is a tiny 0.1% or identical to the 0.1% fatality rate for the nation’s 178 million (now legal) alcohol users. Yet since the utterly misbegotten War on Drugs has forced cocaine dealers into the Al Capone-style criminal black markets and subjected them to massive law enforcement attacks and interdiction losses, it has driven the price of cocaine from $400 per pound in the coca fields to $54,000 per pound for customers on the retail streets in the USA.
In turn, these massively bloated prices make pure cocaine 500X more expensive than fentanyl compounded in backyard chem labs on a per dose ("high") basis. So, not surprisingly, coke dealers adulterate their high-cost cocaine out of the brick with practically zero cost-baking soda, which imitates its color and texture. They then add tiny pinches of high-potency (and deathly) fentanyl to their retail dime-bags in order to maintain its potency.
Needless to say, this kind of dangerous adulteration driven by government-created black market economics does sharply reduce dealers’ cost of goods sold and enhances their net profits. But it also generates upwards of 20,000 deaths per year in the US owing to fentanyl-adulterated coke. That’s actually more than four times more deaths than caused by pure cocaine overdoses alone.
However, if cocaine production, transit and distribution were legal, the street price would likely plunge by more than 95%, thereby removing any incentive for (legal) dealers to adulterate their product with pure poison. Indeed, in a legal market there would be no economic incentive at all to adulterate in this manner; and the deterrent of massive wrongful death suits would ensure that CVS, Walgreens etc. sold only safe (pure) product.
Yet the Donald and his band of MAGA fools domiciled on the Potomac cheered when the Navy blew-up the cocaine carrying speedboats and then virtually wet their pants with excitement when he perp-walked into Federal court the now ex-president of a country that is just a 8% bit player in the black market cocaine trade that would not even exist absent modern day Drug Prohibition.
And we do mean, not exist. Back in the day when the FBI and DEA didn’t exist, either, peaceful commerce handled the nation’s cocaine needs. And it did so with nary a machine gun fired or a Federal drug bust that resulted in over-crowding in the nation’s far smaller, more modest jails. And the price wasn’t sky high either.As shown in the 1885 ad depicted below, mothers needing to treat with their kids’ toothaches could get a whole bottle of the stuff for 15 cents!
That was peaceful commerce and productive capitalism. It also reflected the fact that 140 years ago Washington was still allowing the good people of Albany New York to decide for themselves what medicines, remedies and stimulants to consume in their daily lives.
The same governing class that turned Prohibition into bloodshed and the drug war into mass death is now presiding over the largest financial bubble in human history, armed with the same reflexes and fewer remaining tools."
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