Kristi Noem just hundreds of millions off in praising Trump’s drug deaths reduction

 Kristi Noem just hundreds of millions off in praising Trump’s drug deaths reduction

 

“You’ve saved hundreds of millions of lives with the cocaine you’ve blown up in the Caribbean.”

 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem proclaimed that at a December 2 cabinet meeting praising Trump’s mass murder of folks in small, unarmed boats off Venezuela. She echoed Trump’s claim that he was only murdering those boaters to save American lives from the cocaine they were bringing into America to satisfy our cocaine craving .

 

The actual number of deaths saved is zero, zilch, nada, none.

 

Couple of reasons. Since the boats were all obliterated, along with their hundred plus sailors, we don’t even know if Trump’s bombing spree prevented a single ton of the 8,000 tons of cocaine brought into the US annually from many countries from being interdicted.

 

Secondly, even if every one of the 30 boats was bringing in cocaine, the law of supply and demand would simply raise the price to users. Their response wouldn’t be ‘Gee, cocaine getting too high…better quit getting high on it today.’ Nope. Reduced supply would simply increase crime by both suppliers and users to replace the shortage and meet increased price.

                                                                                       

We can still see film from a century ago of feds using sledge hammers to smash in illegal barrels of booze. Today we see tape of feds using bombs to blow up boats claimed to be carrying cocaine from Venezuela. Big difference? The feds a century ago weren’t smashing in the heads of the bootleggers along with the barrels. Today they’re blowing up everyone on board along with the alleged cocaine.

 

Neither an alcohol user during20th century prohibition, nor a cocaine user in the 21st century was saved by America’s squandering billions in its deranged war on illegal recreational substances.

 

If Trump wanted to save lives from drugs he’d be investing those billions in mental health services, education, uplifting the 40 million in poverty most susceptible to drug abuse. Reducing the desire and need will work infinitely better than a murderous, futile campaign to reduce supply..

 

At Trump’s December 2 cabinet meeting Noem would have been a tad more accurate to have said, regarding Trump’s foreign policy, “You’ve killed tens of thousands with your support of Israeli genocide in Gaza and bombing 7 countries.”

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL