{"id":5147,"date":"2010-05-12T13:29:32","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T18:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=5147"},"modified":"2010-05-12T13:29:32","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T18:29:32","slug":"our-nations-drug-enforcement-in-a-nutshell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=5147","title":{"rendered":"Our Nation&#8217;s Drug Enforcement in a Nutshell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/RbwSwvUaRqc&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xd0d0d0&amp;hl=en_US&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><\/object><br \/>\nMegan McArdle goes all &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/national\/archive\/2010\/05\/this-is-your-war-on-drugs\/56380\/\">righteous fury<\/a>&#8221; in response to the above video:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Have you ever had one of those arguments in a bar that start around eleven and wind up when the bartender kicks you out?\u00a0 It starts off on some perfectly reasonable topic, but as the hours and the drinks mount up, the participants are forced to stake out some clear logical positions, and in doing so, crawl farther and farther out along the limb they are defending . . . until suddenly you reach a point at which one of the debaters can either abandon their initial commitment, or endorse the slaughter of 30,000 Guatemalan orphans.\u00a0 And there&#8217;s this long pause, and then he says, &#8220;Look, it&#8217;s not like I\u00a0<em>want<\/em> to kill those orphans . . . &#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is our nation&#8217;s drug enforcement in a nutshell.\u00a0 We started out by banning the things.\u00a0 And people kept taking them.\u00a0 So we made the punishments more draconian.\u00a0 But people kept selling them.\u00a0 So we pushed the markets deep into black market territory, and got the predictable violence . . . and then we upped our game, turning drug squads into quasi-paramilitary raiders.\u00a0 Somewhere along the way, we got so focused on enforcing the law that we lost sight of the purpose of the law, which is to make life in America\u00a0<em>better<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Megan McArdle goes all &#8220;righteous fury&#8221; in response to the above video: Have you ever had one of those arguments in a bar that start around eleven and wind up when the bartender kicks you out?\u00a0 It starts off on some perfectly reasonable topic, but as the hours and the drinks mount up, the participants [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,458,44,1493],"tags":[2831],"class_list":["post-5147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-the-opinionsphere","category-videos","category-war-on-drugs-national-security","tag-megan-mcardle"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-1l1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5148,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5147\/revisions\/5148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}