War on drugs is really about forced obedience

Letter to Editor, Times Union Newspaper - published: Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Your May 12 editorial "End drug law impasse" reports that the Rockefeller Drug Laws are, and have been, an expensive failure. You report $250 million a year could be saved and declare that although reform should be "rooted in principle," rooting it in money would be OK, too. You tell the reader that Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver called a conference committee to examine the issue.

What is to examine? Grade school kids know the war on drugs is a failure. Could it be that the usual politicians are doing the usual tap dance with the usual commissions to calculate votes won and lost by taking $250 million from some interest and giving it to others?

For Bruno and Silver, principle has little to do with laws. Politics is the arbiter. Distributing treasury money is how they get and lose campaign payola. And payola translates into votes. Politicians buy our votes with the treasury. Voters sell their votes for the treasury.

Of course, there really are people who care about principle. That may be why they get so little respect from voters. One of these people is Donald Silberger. He has for years been passionate about stopping the war on drugs. He calls it a war on people. He gets no help and no interest and no editorials from the media.

Professor Silberger (http://www.SilbergerForSenator.org) is running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Charles Schumer. Schumer is known for his wars on people. Schumer likes to impose his Democrat values by legislating away the opposing values of other people. He wants laws to force obedience. He fancies himself a liberal. But what is liberal about forcing others to obey? Do laws not force us to do things we would not want do if we were free?

The American dream and the "social contract" are about voluntary agreement, not forced obedience. The drug laws are just one instance of imposing values. Drug laws, gun laws, abortion laws, school laws, business laws, smoking laws, tax laws -- all laws reduce choices for people.

What do you have when you have no choice? Values don't just come in either Republican or Democrat flavors. There are lots of different values. Diversity is good. It allows choices. There are too many laws and too few choices.