Dammit! Just Say No!

Nancy Reagan said it, and was proud to say it. She led a highly-publicized, very virtuous and utterly failed campaign against recreational drug use and addiction to said drugs. U.S. jails are strained beyond endurance. And when Canadian politicians mused on the possibility of legalizing soft drugs like marijuana, the U.S. drug czar huffed and puffed and waxed indignant and said Americans would want nothing to do with godless Canadians.

Human nature being what it is, people do not take kindly to being told what they may or may not do with themselves. Prohibition has been proven, time after weary time, to be a wasted effort. Now the dastardly drug known as alcohol is legal. And alcohol addiction is a dreadful misery. Causing physical disintegration, along with mental degradation. Or the other way around. Either way, the results of indulging to excess are suicidally costly.

And how about that other drug, tobacco, with its sinister nicotine addiction, which tobacco companies so long advertised as just the thing for virile, manly types wanting to impress. And of course they didn't stop there, since tobacco also was glamorous, and women were eager to be noticed, too. And then teens got introduced and hooked, as well, since it was cool to smoke. Or smoke up. Public relations, advertising too is addictive.

And we all know how marvellously well nicotine products embellish normal human body parts, from hearts and lungs, to gums and breath. We humans are just never satisfied, always on the look-out to enhance our living experiences. Come to think of it, couldn't we find a place on the prohibition list for fast-food and so-called convenience foods? They belong there, with their artery-clogging, obesity-prone properties.

Well, one does digress. Back to just say no. Here is poor old Mexico, nowhere near as well endowed with natural resources and wealth as its other two counterparts on the continent. And there's a huge market in the United States, slavering over the need to consume illegal narcotics. And because they're illegal, they're also expensive to acquire. Offering business opportunities that the free enterprise system simply cannot ignore.

That's capitalism for you; everyone wants in. Canada too is not free from having a population eager to indulge - in all the vices, inclusive of recreational drugs. Mind, Canada also produces a good grade of cannabis. For the home market and for hawking abroad. The drug wars taking place in Mexico, with the instability and corruption and huge violent incidents claiming thousands of lives owes much if not everything to prohibition.

And yet another product of the violence, insecurity and poverty, is the burgeoning rate of emigration, another illegal activity when it's done outside the law. And then too there is the increasing rate of refugees seeking safety for themselves and their families from the drug cartels who are able to murder civic officials, police chiefs and judges with impunity in their country of origin. Canada is saying "no" to would-be Mexican refugee claimants.

The United States is saying "no" and "enough already" to the masses of illegal entrants from Mexico, along with their underground economy (which garners the country no tax revenues). Then the United States, which really holds the key to solving this dreadful dilemma insists that the 'criminals' who are addicted to drugs and who clog up their justice system, and who make use of their stressed health-care system, have to say no too.

But they won't, because, well, because. Because it's a social thing, and it's an elite thing, and it's a thing of social degradation too, and it's fun and engaging, and misery-drowning, and, dammit, addictive.