The War on... That, Too....

As everyone knows, we've been losing the War on Drugs® for quite a while now. But if you read the White House's press releases you know that the War on Terrorism™ is going just swell. The obvious solution is to start using the tactics of the latter on the former, and the Department of Justice is doing just that.

According to an AP article on Yahoo News, the new powers granted to it by the so-called Patriot Act is allowing a guy who's been running a meth lab to be charged with producing chemical weapons, a charge likely to multiply his sentence a couple dozen times over what he'd get if convicted of... y'know... manufacturing illegal drugs.

The good news (I guess) is that law enforcement agencies and prosecutors are doing this stuff openly, admitting that they're taking advantage of this (supposedly) anti-terrorism legislation to go after ordinary criminals. That's better than doing it while claiming that oh, no, they would never do something like that.

Now, if the people of the United States want terrorist-level sentences for drug dealers, they have every right to impose them. (Personally, I think that's insane, but that's not the point here.) But if that's what they want, then that's what the laws should be drafted to say, and that's what the legislators who pass them should be telling their constituents when they do so, and that's what the president should brag about as he signs it.

Selling a new law with the argument that it's to do one thing, then using it to do something more is just plain lying. Lying about what you're going to do if elected is a time-honored democratic tradition, and I wouldn't want to interfere with that. But lying about what you're doing once you get into office is something else. So if Patriot Act II: Electronic Boogaloo is going to be used in the War on Drugs® and the War on Liberties© as well, maybe they should admit as much ahead of time.