I heard on NPR this morning that drug traffickers working in and around Guatemala are using the Global Positioning System to locate points where they drop off and pick up 25-kilogram, bouyant, water-tight packages of cocaine in the ocean. It warms my heart to see another technology, originally developed for inherently evil military purposes, being used for something constructive. All the folks here at Vernon T. Bludgeon Consulting would like to salute our colleagues in the narcotraffic industry and wish them all success.
For let us not forget: the illegal drug trade — and its sine qua non, coercive prohibitionist policies — creates employment, opportunity and prosperity for countless thousands. Not to mention the pleasure that quality product brings to so many recreational users who enjoy drugs, and suffer negligible adverse social and health consequences! Yes my friends, from producer to processor, transporter to wholesaler, retailer to end user, just about everybody wins — including, of course, our thriving correctional-industrial complex. But the prison boom is hardly the only side-benefit of the multiplier effect. Drug dealers and manufacturers with money to burn drive the demand for all manner of consumer and industrial goods and services — think of the high-end tennis shoes favored by many drug retailers, or the precursor chemicals a Colombian processor orders from a German firm, or the speedboats those fellows in Guatemala are using, or the laundering services provided by so many financial institutions ranging from the mom-and-pop remittance agencies to the biggest names in the banking industry.
Of course drug prohibition has negative social impact on a few people, but that’s just the way of capitalism, folks. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs! It’s clear that the benefits of the illegal drug trade and our apparently (but not really) failed policies far outweigh the costs.