Forget everything that conservatives say about individual liberty, personal freedom, property rights, the Constitution, federalism, capitalism, limited government, the free market, and free enterprise. They don’t mean a word of it because they are such incorrigible drug warriors.
The reaction of conservatives to President Trump’s “lethal, kinetic strikes” by the U.S. military against “narco-terrorists” in boats in international waters who were supposedly transporting drugs to the United States is appalling.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo) remarked that “President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have every right to destroy every narco-terrorist trying to smuggle drugs into the U.S. that they can find.”
Deroy Murdock, a Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with The American Spectator, commented: “All week long, I have tried to cry for the narco-terrorists who survived a U.S. military strike on their drug-laden boat, only to be snuffed in a second attack. Somehow, my eyes have stayed totally dry.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth proudly proclaimed, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”
The words of conservative media darling Megyn Kelly are especially troubling:
So I really do kind of not only want to see them killed in the water, whether they’re on the boat or in the water, but I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so that they lose a limb and bleed out a little. Like I’m really having a difficult time ginning up sympathy for these guys who ten seconds earlier almost got taken out by the initial bomb, but because they managed to get ejected, you know, a little too soon, had to be taken out in the water.
Most conservatives fully support everything that Trump has done relating to Venezuela because it is being done under the guise of fighting the drug war. And they will fully support whatever military actions he takes in Colombia and Mexico for the same reason.
But even before Trump starting bombing boats in the ocean that he thought were transporting drugs to the United States, some conservatives were calling for drug dealers to be put to death.
In 1996, Newt Gingrich, then a Republican member of Congress, introduced the Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996 (H.R.4170) “to provide a sentence of death for certain importations of significant quantities of controlled substances.” Thankfully, the bill died in committee. When he appeared in 2009 on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Gingrich remarked that Americans needed to get the stomach for executing drug dealers.
President Trump himself, in his first term, advocated getting tough on drug dealers, “and that toughness includes the death penalty,” he said. When he was running for president the second time, Trump told New Hampshire voters during a CNN town hall that “we’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.”
Conservatives are such incorrigible drug warriors that many of them in and out of Congress even balked at President Trump’s executive order to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), thereby classifying marijuana in the same category as Tylenol with codeine instead of with fentanyl.
Paul Larkin of the Heritage Foundation said that the president’s rescheduling decision “would be a mistake on multiple levels.” He believes that marijuana is unsafe, more powerful than it was back in the 60s and 70s, unhealthy, harmful, and not effective for medical use. Twenty-six House Republicans even sent Trump a letter deploring his rescheduling decision. Signers included Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the misnamed House Freedom Caucus. Twenty-two Senate Republicans did likewise.
Why do conservatives care so much about those Americans who choose to use drugs?
Every bad thing conservatives say about illegal drugs (addictive, dangerous, unhealthy, deadly) can be said about alcohol and tobacco. Do conservatives think that the government should ban them? Why not? Why is it that if a man comes home from work on a Friday night and smokes a pack of cigarettes and drinks a 12-pack of beer or a fifth of whiskey and passes out drunk and does not wake up until noon on Saturday that the government doesn’t care and conservatives don’t care? But if a man comes home from work on a Friday night and smokes some marijuana or snorts some cocaine and passes out stoned and does not wake up until noon on Saturday, the government wants to lock him up in a cage, and conservatives enthusiastically agree. Why do they look at illegal drugs so differently?
Here again is Paul Larkin: “Rescheduling cannabis as Schedule III will lead to increased use, and some users will drive under its influence, crash their vehicles, or harm and kill other drivers.” I suppose that in the 1930s someone like Mr. Larkin probably said: “Ending Prohibition of alcohol will lead to increased use, and some users will drive under its influence, crash their vehicles, or harm and kill other drivers.” Why isn’t Mr. Larkin saying that alcohol should be banned because having legal alcohol will lead to increased use, and some users will drive under its influence, crash their vehicles, or harm and kill other drivers? Does he not care about the thousands of Americans killed every year by drunk drivers?
Conservatives may believe in individual liberty and personal freedom, but not if they include the right to take drugs. Conservatives may believe in property rights, but not if that property contains drugs. Conservatives may believe in the Constitution, federalism, and limited government, but they are willing to ignore these things to fight the drug war. Conservatives may believe in capitalism, the free market, and free enterprise, but not if these things involve drug “trafficking.”
A free society must include the right to use drugs and sell drugs — no matter how addictive, dangerous, unhealthy, and deadly they might be.
