Any public transport–riding New Yorker will have noticed the ads: October 2, PBS is releasing Ken Burns’ new three-part documentary “Prohibition: American Folly.” Burns’ subtitle seems an accepted truism of U.S. history at this point—it was foolish to pursue a national policy banning alcohol. The 18th Amendment was unenforceable, it didn’t positively affect public health, it clashed with our belief in personal liberty, and it was an act that promoted full employment for criminals.
Seeing these ads for the first time upon my return from Mexico, I couldn’t help but feel that our current prohibition—on drugs—faces entirely the same defects. Plus it includes an entirely more insidious one: we are creating circumstances of criminality in other countries as well as our own.
My week in Mexico was filled with delicious food, breathtaking Mayan ruins, some of the most beautiful coral reefs in the Americas… and guns. Everywhere you went there were at least a few men with automatic weapons. The ferries were patrolled by fierce looking marines, many of the police vehicles were Ford Ranger pick-up trucks with intimidating machine-gun turrets in the back bed, and even the cops driving along in their golf carts, handing out parking tickets, were in full body armor. In the heat, this last group looked more comical than menacing.
This show of force was far from the normal areas of drug violence, yet the War on Drugs (which the U.S. fights through proxy) has normalized continuous militarization in the nations along the drug supply routes from South to North America.
As the GOP’s debates, and eventually the presidential debates, continue, I am sure that we will hear many ideas on where our cash-strapped nation can cut “wasteful” spending. Let’s start with this contemporary version of teetotalism, which costs us close to $500 per second. And the victims of this policy are often other nations’ citizens caught on the front line of our “War,” dying and having their lives disrupted in our place. This folly is not merely an American one; it is a folly that America imposes on the rest of the region.
The first time a prohibition failed we were wise enough to ditch it after about ten years. This time it has been forty.
