VHeadline's Washington DC-based commentarist Chris Herz writes: From Rio to Los Angeles ... drugs, like booze are real problems. The biggest problem being that these things are a problem most people rather like. The same fellow who enjoys a shot of whiskey after work might well smoke a marijuana cigarette with his friends. And so long as that's the extent of it no one is greatly harmed, neither himself nor his community.

• But we all know some folks seem to embrace the destiny to roll in the gutter, intoxicated to the point of helplessness.

Usually they do the job with liquor, but sometimes with the various other drugs. I've always suspected there to be a certain minority which is going to be bums; and if whiskey is around that is what they will use. If heroin is around that is what they will use. And everyone else will walk right on by.

I've long been convinced that some altruistic concern for the welfare of these bums, to limit what they use to stupefy themselves has not much to do with the decision of the US to launch its war on drugs. Whatever else we can say about US leaders we must concede that they are a hard-headed and unsympathetic bunch who weigh costs against benefits. They've long calculated it a profitable exercise to distort their own law, to hold millions of expensive prisoners in order to cripple inconvenient minorities at home and to carry war abroad. And for a long time it has all worked out just fine.

But if the USA cannot by reason of its economic exigencies remain an empire then the drug war is of no further use: It is a solid money loser and will be liquidated. This is the direction in which California is now moving.

Already, the state's voters have by referendum mandated that ordinary addicts be treated, not incarcerated, also that marijuana be made available to sick patients by physicians' prescription. Now it appears near certain that drug, and perhaps other products of the plant genus Cannabis will be outright legalized. Once again by popular vote in the face of a pusillanimous and moribund legislature, one which cannot even work out a functional budget. All of this sets the state on a collision course with the Washington bureaucracy.

The US Department of Justice have already indicated their displeasure with California's prescription policy by raiding under Federal auspices some of the growers and dispensers of the prescription marijuana. But the Obama government, preoccupied with its many other problems have ordered the Federal police agencies to desist and to respect the State's sovereignty. Whether this order will be obeyed is anyone's guess. But on the question of outright legalization of marijuana high officials in Washington are now issuing rather strident threats. This reflects the fact that our modern prohibition is historically a Federal enterprise, manipulated to bully liberal minorities at home and provide justifications for aggression abroad. It must be noted that police and justice officials at all levels are usually personally heavily invested in support of this suppression and do not enjoy being over-ruled, especially by democratic referendum. Already in California we see, on the pattern of their operations elsewhere, Federal officials attempting to instigate mutiny and resistance among their local colleagues.

Here we must note that in other states and localities similar ideas are afoot, though not so far advanced as in California. As yet, nowhere in the USA has reason prevailed to the extent that it has in Mexico City where small quantities of any drugs are legal for personal consumption.

California's economic woes have already exposed the extent to which the state is used as a cash cow, milked for the benefit of less progressive, more reactionary jurisdictions elsewhere within the USA. Two important instances: She pays at least $1.40 in taxes for everyone returned for local projects or for the production of war goods. Here in Maryland, adjacent to the Federal District, the proportion is exactly reversed, and this pattern holds for the reliably conservative states of the South and interior West. Also, the deregulatory policies of the last several Federal administrations have resulted in the wholesale looting of the state by its electrical power monopoly: These funds were supplied to the defunct Texas firm Enron and lost in its financial collapse.

• With much war production having moved out of the state, into the old South, and with resistance growing to the drug war craziness, with a more liberal population, less Anglo, the stage is set for a realization on the part of Californians that the present Federal system operates against them and their economic interests. The results could be interesting.

Meanwhile, we have seen in the new empire of Brazil full-scale military operations of the militarized police and the policing military against what are called drug gangs in the favelas of Rio. These even resulted in the shooting down of a government helicopter.

One must suspect that there are deeper springs behind such levels of popular resistance than merely criminal gangs trying to protect their business.

Its not just US capitalism which needs the drug war.

From the imperial capital

Chris Herz
chris.herz@vheadline.com

http://www.vheadline.com/herz