The price of prohibition

One of the nicest results of my brief stint at TongueTied is that I gained Ben Harris as a reader here. Ben kindly sends the links when Fox News covers the war on some drugs. I appreciate this because I don't have the time or the stomach for checking the site regularly and I like knowing that they do, even if it's for the wrong reasons. It still illustrates how inane it is to think you can stop the import of illegal drugs as long as the profits generated by their prohibition remain in effect.

Today's military drug run comes from Germany where two unfortunate souls in the Air National Guard were caught carrying 290,000 Ecstasy pills into the country while on a military mission. If you think they're the only ones doing it, think again. Interestingly the two here were named Rodriguez and Fong, but what are the chances these guys are the only two out of tens of thousands of soldiers who would be tempted by a chance to make $10,000 for carrying a couple of big baggies full of pills?

And by the way, I've never taken it myself but Melissa at D'Alliance knows what's going on in that scene and has this to say on the DEA's valuation of the haul.

"$40 for ecstasy? On what planet?"

Law enforcement always over values the bust for a number of reasons. The bottom here is, 290,000 sounds like a lot but it is not a major haul and you can be sure that ten times that is arriving in other military bags, even as you read these words.

Update: Apologies to Ben. He didn't get here from Tonguetied; he's actually a fellow reformer and has been around here longer than that. I confused him with someone else, probably because he was sending links from Fox. I've been having this space-time continum problem lately.