Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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Prohibition & Milkshakes
I was watching a documentary on the St. Valentines Day Massacre tother day and it got me wondering and thinking and contemplating.
I've always had mixed
drinksfeelings about Prohibition. Even though the taste of alkyhaul has been know to pass my lips, I would be fine with Prohibition. Seeing the devastation alcohol can cause to families, I could easily see myself getting talked into voting that direction back in the day. But obviously, Prohibition didn't work. Unable to enforce the law it passed on itself, this nation eventually repealed it. Even though its been 75 years (!) since it was repealed, Prohibition gave rise to criminal organizations that are still very much active in this country today. Capone and his ilk made like 60% to 70% of their ill gotten gains bootlegging throughout the Roaring Twenties. All of their protection and gambling rackets paled in comparison to the serious coin the Mafia got from bootlegging.Those yards and yards of long green made Organized Crime so powerful that it has long survived the Constitutional Amendment that prohibited Prohibition. Eventually, they took over illegal drug traffic, I guess. I've always thought that the best, most effective way to fight Organized Crime would be to legalize all illegal drugs. We spend so much time and effort and money enforcing laws to keep addictive people from buying what they are obviously going to buy anyway, it seems like an incredible waste of resources. We would have NEVER heard of classless violent thugs like Capone if it weren't for Prohibition. Making bootlegging profitable is what made Capone and the rest of the Mafia so powerful! "Chuckle, chuckle" is what I says to myself as I chuckle to myself about how devastated the Mob would be if we legalized pot and crack and cocaine. Ha! That'd show them!
But then I wonder if it would. It's true that Prohibition made Capone rich and powerful, but then Prohibition was repealed and Organized Crime still found a way. My brain tells me that if we make illegal substances legal we will defeat the ne'er-do-wells! But then my heart tells me something additional. The ne'er-do-wells will live up to their evil name. How's a scumbag that makes money selling meth or crack gonna respond to such liberation?
How?
Get a job?
"Oh, they sell marijuana in packs at the 7-11 now? I guess I'll have to take that job laying shingles after all". From reefer to roofer! I don't think so. I think he'll just look for another way to make gains ill gotten. It's the 'ill gotten' that appeals to him, not satisfaction from the service he's providing. So then maybe he'll turn to burglary or car theft and steal something from ME instead of selling drugs to...drug-users. He might take his straw and drink MY MILKSHAKE!
Yikes! So let's leave the Criminals something illegal for them to do so that they don't start being a criminals on us. What is that kind of thinking? Cynical? Stupid? Fatalistic? Or is it just realistic? Isn't that what we're doing now? Fighting a war on drugs but not so seriously that we actually thwart anything? Arent we just keeping the criminals busy with crime we can live with?
I'm asking a lot of questions, aren't I? How do you feel about that?
Doesn't this glorious picture make you feel better?
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Comments (10)
I totally agree that the criminals would find another way to break the law if drugs were legalized. But I still think they should be legalized so they'd have to get creative. Then the gov't could spend the war-on-drug money on fighting other crime, and they could tax the drugs out the wazoo to get more crime fighting $$. And the drugs would be regulated by the FDA. I don't think legalizing would make someone more likely to get into drugs. I think there are people who like that kind of stuff and people who don't and legality has very little to do with it.
But here's what clenches the legalization argument for me. When I was a kid, and I mean just a 13-year old little girl attending junior high in the Bible Belt, I could very easily obtain marajuana, and many of my peers knew how to get their hands on much harder drugs. But we couldn't usually get any alcohol, and it's not because we weren't interested. It's because it was "dealt" by law-abiding vendors and not unscrupulous criminals.
I wold love to watch charlie brown with teh music from There will be blood
They'd run for office, of course. They would find plenty of dirty deals to be made there.
Tonight on the way to church DemoGReggo pulled out that old musty "you can't/shouldn't legislate morality" torch. I told him to just put that one back in his holster and come up with something else. So dumb.
We saw American Gangster over the weekend. Ugggh. I shouldn't watch movies like that. Drugs are bad bad bad bad. I can't see how an even remotely civilized society would want to legalize that stuff. It's evil.
you are so awesome it hurts.
i especially like the line: "from reefer to roofer!" <
I have been away so I am trying to catch up! I read this entry and scanned a few back. I have missed reading you. You are so interesting, and clever, and MYSTERIOUS!!!! I *loved* the "reefer to roofer" line as did vocalistic. That cracked me up! You do have some things for me to think about in this entry.....
@CarmellaApple - Well, the reason for my lengthy prose is that I had several different ideas to explain how I arrived at my...oh....I can see that you've already lost your interest...*tries not to talk so much*
*probably fails*