McWhorter’s War On Drugs–my rebuttal

http://www.tnr.com/blog/80669/getting-darnell-the-corners-why-america-should-ride-the-anti-drug-war-wave

Now, one thing Darnell could do is get his GED, and meanwhile get a job stocking shelves at Staples. Or working at a shoe store or supermarket. He could get vocational training of some kind, with a small loan it wouldn’t be hard to get. But that’s not what a lot of his friends do. The way they make money is by selling drugs.

Of course nobody calls it that. No one walks up to Darnell and says “Would you like to help us sell drugs on the street to make a living?” It goes by euphemisms—“out on dem corners” and so on. There is a quiet community norm: Young men who drop out of school and do not take jobs, because they can keep money in their pockets by selling drugs on the street. Hardly all young men do this in the community. Most don’t, in fact. But many do—enough that to Darnell, there is nothing unusual about it.

That’s an excerpt from his article. I agree drugs should go legit so that the prison industrial complex will lose its sting in the black community. However, one word that McWhorter does not mention is “free market.” That is an important word he left out. Why? Because there is such a thing as the line of least resistance. In other words it’s damn easy to get a job selling drugs and making money. He also totally ignored “Darlene on the corner” you know what she’s up to. She is selling her body because it is the only skill that will pay her a living wage on the open/free market.

How we gonna get her off the corner John? What if drugs were made legal what would Darnell do? He would go the black market/resale route is my first guess. Then he would get more involved in the sex/slave trade. How we gonna make that legit, i.e., because it is a growing market don’t you know?

I lived through the crack epidemic when it hit the black community in the 1980s. We were warned to do anything but “Stay away from crack…it’s addictive.” That’s what the smart black people did…said no to crack. Seems like every freakin body else was saying yes to crack.

I think getting rid of the war on drugs will go a long way to ease some of the problems in the black community. If we have stronger males instead of endangered males we might be able to start over or at least have some bootstraps to pull up.

I don’t know if McWhorter is being facetious when he writes that it will fix most ills in the black community but he seems to be serious. So, I have to answer with…not so fast.  In some countries, such as Italy, it’s a way of life. I mean this not working thing.  And the war on drugs admittedly is just not working.

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