I am not familiar with that book but as far as the war on drugs it was a war on the users, a war of contempt. It was justified by an elitism that sold drugs but frowned on the taking of drugs, as if selling drugs was superior and using drugs inferior.
This fiction was maintained for many years. The old racist image depicted in the Godfather was true in part at least in the early days with heroin (and later with crack) but then even the mafia’s kids soon smoked pot and coke became high class and fashionable. The prisons were filled with users and street dealers. The importers were rarely taken down. It happened, the Pizza Connection - but things always go back to normal except that the Mexican and Columbian drug trade were considered hard to manage compared to the Mafia. The Mafia was in effect the establishment and the Mex-Columbian cartels were not so respectful of authority. Coke went north and heroin went west.
There it stands with intelligence agency connections rationalizing that they are patriots while poisoning the young of their own countries.
The drug trade fears one thing… legalizing pot. The use of hard drugs like heroin will diminish and coke will be the high class recreational illegal and meth the low class but most people will get by with just pot and booze and live to an old age. Someday they may be smart enough to legalize a mild version of coke as a stimulant that isn’t so addicting and live and let live. The drug war, the anti-gay, the anti-abortion and other forms of societal control by a governing elite are all fascistic at root. The war on drugs was a control measure, a way of justifying control. The fact remains drug crime was real and people needed protection from addicts but then the drugs could have been stopped as they came in. They were let in and then the police were used to protect etc.
Who says someone else can control other people’s behavior and tell people what they can and can’t do. Only violence needs to be controlled to protect the victim. A victimless non-violent type of behavior like smoking pot or something is nobody’s business but that person’s.
But people like to control others. When a group does it or a government is is always fascistic. Once being gay was a crime. In places in the world adultery is a crime. In other places dissent is a crime. All a ruling group trying to control others behavior… fascism is at the top of that pyramid.
