GrowlTowel said:
ATL Bear said:
KaiBear said:
They kill US citizens by the Thousands with their drugs for profit
Yet Dem partisans ***** when we save our people.
Insanity
People kill themselves with drugs. Let's be honest in this debate.
And while we are being honest, let us agree that when you choose a life in the drug trade, death is a known work related hazard.
Agree. Although I'm thinking that being tortured, dismembered and put in a barrel of acid is probably worse than being blown up.
But while we're being honest, let's really talk about this situation. Even putting the constitutional questions to the side, let's address the fundamental misunderstanding of this "war".
This is a market equilibrium issue. Every drug seizure, every blown-up smuggling boat, every cartel takedown, all we're really doing is tightening supply in a market where demand is practically inelastic. Addicts don't stop using because prices rise, they just pay more, switch drugs, or turn to more dangerous suppliers.
Because there's no legal, regulated supply chain, the entire production side is run by criminal enterprises that can take risks, innovate around enforcement, and exploit the scarcity we create. That's how you get fentanyl, the market's deadly "innovation" after we made traditional opioids harder to move. More intense high from a smaller dose resulted in a deadlier but more effective product. You can bet they're already innovating, evolving and expanding supply chains through container ships, commercial flights, cruise lines, and land routes, things you can't attack militarily.
We keep reducing supply without reducing demand, so prices rise. Higher prices create higher profit incentives, which attract more motivated and violent suppliers because the rewards justify the risk. This is the risk-premium paradox of prohibition. When the state raises the cost of participation, it also raises the potential reward. The "war" ends up inflating the value of the very product it's trying to eliminate. The War on Drugs might be the only "market war" in history where the enemy's profit margin increases when we win a battle.
Now compare that to the Saudi Arabia or Singapore model, where near-zero drug problems exist not because they win interdiction battles, but because the laws and cultural norms annihilate both sides of the market, trafficking and possession. The deterrence is absolute. You touch it, you die. Brutal? Absolutely. But effective. We're obviously constrained by freedom from this approach, yet it shows how essential demand curbing is if you actually want to win.
The U.S. has built a moral and legal asymmetry that guarantees market survival. We criminalize the supplier and rehabilitate the user. The intent is humane, but the outcome is perpetual. Demand never dies, it just gets subsidized by the next cartel.
Meanwhile, the militarization of the drug war, which began decades ago with DEA raids and civil asset forfeiture, expanding gun laws, and curbing of judicial process, has now escalated into a global campaign bordering on foreign warfare. It's a self defeating focus that raises the stakes for our country while destabilizing entire regions. This is economic Darwinism masquerading as policy, generating domestic and geopolitical theater, but never a market correction.
At its core, it's a price-control policy gone wrong, distorting supply while ignoring the root causes of demand. Until demand truly declines, the market will always reorganize itself.
TL;DR version:
As one economist put it, "You can fight the supplier or you can fight the demand, but as long as one exists, the other will too. The only war that ends markets is the one that kills the need."
Think of how the buggy whip disappeared. How do we defeat "need"?
