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I see like most “drug warriors” you are a victim of the phenomenon George Santayana noted: unable to remember the past, you repeat it.

You evidently do not realize that history has repeatedly shown that trade in illicit goods is driven into the hands of the most violent in proportion to the strictness of enforcement measures taken to suppress the trade. It happened with Prohibition — at first rum-running was a mom-and-pop operation on the Great Lakes, until the Feds cracked down, then the trade was taken over by violent thugs like Al Capone. The same thing has happened with marijuana and cocaine — the more the Feds (and Federales) crack down, the more ruthless and violent the surviving groups controlling the trade become.

Be it the gangs in Chicago in the 1920’s or Mexican drug cartels, if you really want to lay the blame for their violent turf wars on someone other than those pulling the triggers or ordering the hits, it’s the drug warriors and Prohibitionists that should have to answer for it, not the customers who want a snort (whether of whiskey or cocaine) as your jeering at the notion of drug use as victimless suggests. The users would all be happier buying their favored intoxicants from legal stores rather than from criminal gangs, but can’t because the government has decided to pursue the fool’s errand of using criminal law as the main means of dealing with people willfully altering their brain chemistry.

Actually, I’m ambivalent about legalizing cocaine, but couldn’t resist playing on the word “snort”. However, whichever drugs are legal and whichever are illegal, we need to be clear about what harms are created by the drugs themselves, and which are created by the regime of keeping them illegal: users stupefied to the point they can’t function well in society are caused by drugs themselves; some adverse health effects are caused by the drugs themselves; violent turf wars between supply networks, however, are not a property of any drug, but are a property of a regime of keeping a product for which sizable demand exists illegal; the erosion of civil liberties caused by no-knock warrants and forfeiture provisions in laws directed at the drug trade are not cause by drugs, but by the regime of keeping them illegal; some overdose deaths are caused by drug qua drugs, but others by fluctuations in purity caused by, you guessed it, the regime of keeping them illegal and thus not subject to quality control; users engaging in crime to support their habit, likewise is split — drug habits would be cheaper without the black market premium, and users wouldn’t be pre-defined as criminals, were it not for the regime of keeping the drugs illegal — though doubtless the behavior would persist in levels comparable to the present level of crime committed to acquire booze or cigarettes.