We all know the war on drugs is a failure. We know that it’s given police military-style weapons to wage war on plants and powders. The plants and powders, however, always seem to have the upper hand. How did marijuana, opium, and coca get so smart? How are they so easily outwitting law enforcement? We decided to dig into this question and what we found is nothing short of astounding.
First of all, we need to understand what these drugs are. Marijuana is a plant that grows a bud that people smoke, vaporize, or cook and eat. Coca is a shrub that people chew or process for its alkaloids. Opium, and subsequently heroin, come from a type of poppy which is a flower. The parts of these plants that people use depend on the plant and the processing methods. Marijuana is basically picked, trimmed and dried (like tobacco). Coca is usually picked, then pulverized, mixed with solvents to extract alkaloids which are then evaporated leaving a fine white powder called cocaine. Opium poppies are used similarly to marijuana by taking the milky sap out of seed pods and drying it for smoking. It can also be processed similarly to cocaine giving us everything from morphine to heroin to oxycodone. The takeaway from this paragraph is that they’re plants. Nothing more, nothing less.
As we answer why law enforcement has such a tough time beating plants, we’re forced to ask why they’re trying. Is it because the plants are dangerous? In the case of marijuana, the answer is a resounding ‘no.’ Heroin, on the other hand, can and does kill people. Those people usually die from taking too much or taking stuff that was mixed with other stuff they didn’t want. Cocaine can also kill people who take too much of it, but they turn into utter assholes with too much energy before they die. How many people die, though? The answer is, not really all that many. Roughly zero people in the history of the world have died from marijuana. About 1500 people die from cocaine annually in the US. About 10,000 die from heroin overdoses. That’s a high number until you note that the vast majority of ODs are from prescription medications. About twice as many people die from prescription opiates.
So again, why are law enforcement officers failing at getting rid of these plants? They started making them illegal, not because of the danger they posed to people, but because of the fact that only cool people used them. It’s a well-known fact that most police officers were picked on as kids by cool the kids. They joined a job where they got authority as a means to appear cooler than they are. That’s been the same since the beginning of time. The number of wedgies received in high school has a strong correlation to the likelihood of becoming a cop. The obvious reason to rid the world of drugs is that they were never cool enough to get invited to use them.
High school gives us several groups of people. The jocks get jobs as car salesmen and gym coaches. The nerds become scientists. The preppy girls become miserable housewives married to car salesmen. The freaks become artists. That leaves the dumb, mopey kids to be cops. That also explains why they’re getting beat by the plants. They tend to breathe through their mouths while they think, and that gives the plants time to plot and scheme. Those wily plants.
That’s right, folks. The war on drugs is to keep cool kids from being cool. The dumb mopey kids now have some authority and they want to take away your bongs and needles and rolled up twenty dollar bills. It’s because you didn’t invite them to snort a line off the hookers ass. You didn’t pass them the bong at the kegger. You didn’t offer them the needle in the alley. They could smell the joint but were never offered a puff. Now they have to go and ruin all our fun because someone gave them a gun and no one gave them a hit.
Nice going…
