And a little Fred:

the WOD is a fraud. In America the drug racket is a mildly disreputable business, tightly integrated into the economy, running smoothly, employing countless federal cops, prison guards, ineffectual rehab centers and equally ineffectual psychotherapists, and providing bribes to officials and huge deposits of laundered money to banks. Narcos in the US do not engage in pitched battles with the army because they have no reason to. The government barely inconveniences them.

So why should Mexico fight this war for Washington?

In a column, Pat Buchanan addresses the violence in Mexico, and asks:
“Which is the greater evil? Legalized narcotics for America's young or a failed state of 110,000 million on our southern border? Some choice. Some country we've become.”

Some country indeed, on many grounds. And the WOD might be a good idea if it did anything beyond keeping the price of drugs up. But it doesn’t. I suggest two things to Pat:
First, Mexico suffers narco-violence only because Washington expects Mexico to do what Washington won’t. Failed state? Take away the narco wars and Mexico is a reasonably successful upper-third-world nation. If it fails, it will be because we pushed it into failure.

Second, America’s young already have almost unlimited access to drugs. Many students experiment with them. Few become addicts. Why? Because they don’t want to. How is that for simple?

I tried pot, hash, 'shrooms and coke. I got addicted to cheap, strong, legal beer and chewing tobacco. The combination gives the buzz I like, which includes the taste. If you take vitamin E, you don't have to worry much about hangovers.

I say I'm an addict because I can't stop once I start. There is no such thing as moderate use, I either do none or I drink until I pass out. As near as I can tell, that lack of ability to moderate one's consumption of intoxicants isn't caused by the consumption of the substance, but by a psychological reaction/response to the buzz. That's why treatment is mostly about imbibing right ideas, not drugs.

The problem with the US is that we're imbibing too many bad ideas...about morality, psychology, politics, religion, philosophy... Am I missing anything?