No one bothers to care much about the war on (some) drugs these days. Sure it’s an $80 billion a year boondoggle for law enforcement and criminals, paid for by the taxpayer at an untold cost in lost civil liberties. But that pales in comparison to the $200 billion a year boondoggle otherwise known as the War in Iraq—a trough in which there are even more snouts. And of course one which has created even more problems than the war on drugs, which may even have a larger effect and last as long. But out of nowhere, the NY Times Editorial page has remembered.

Sadly remembering and understanding are two very different things.

Mexican criminals make money off the criminilization of personal behavior in the US. That money, in the form of cash and guns, flows south. And there’s a terrible inevitability about it, as the Times says, Yet so long as there is demand, the narcotics will always find a route, through Mexico or some other way.

So what, after 90 years of failed prohibition, is the NY Times’ radical answer? Send more money to the Mexicans from the US taxpayer so that the police there can buy more guns.

Did Judy Miller get moved to the editorial department? The NY Times editorial is drinking the kool-aid straight from the futile but endless fundable idiocies of the drug warriors at the DEA. Can it not do better?

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