Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Whites Museum again and get the fingered at FDR We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very very much I say it, I say it again, you've been hacked You've been took You've been hoodwinked These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as a fact He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them We be on CNN like say our names, been saying, saying three times The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world, then there's going to be an invasion All right, y'all, introducing Jacob Hornberger He's the founder and the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation at FFF.org And they've been around since the very late 1980s and got literally a ton of Online articles for free for you there, and you know Adams ones and zeros are extremely lightweight, so a literal ton of Online articles is a lot of online articles.
I mean it Welcome back to the show.
How you doing?
I'm doing well.
It's always an honor and a pleasure to be with you Scott.
Thank you for having me on again Well, that's nice of you to say.
Hey listen.
I like your article so much so that I reprinted it at the Libertarian Institute It's called legalized drugs, all drugs, and so Yeah, well I agree with that.
Nice to have you on to talk about it again And you start off here with Milton Friedman attacking the right from the right in a way here explain Well Friedman was one of the early libertarians that was taking a Leading role in ending the war on drugs and back.
I think it was in 1972 he wrote an open letter to Bill Bennett who was the so-called drug czar at that time He wrote it in the Wall Street Journal that just threw down the gauntlet on Bennett He just said look, you know, regardless of your any good intentions you may have here To bring a drug-free society to America or the rest of the world the the means you're you have chosen through drug laws and draconian penalties and so forth is Is the wrong means that you're never going to achieve what you want to achieve with the this means and making drugs illegal And he talked about prohibition as an example Where that the same objectives stamp out alcohol use in America and yet it didn't do that but you end up with a society filled with violence and Ruination of lives and destructiveness until finally Americans finally came to their senses and realized, you know This is not something that should be criminalized It should be left entirely to the private sector and Friedman saying the exact same thing should happen with drugs that you're repeating the The prohibition, you know, it's it's the same old story and sure enough.
I mean, you know, nobody Obviously paid attention to Friedman libertarians did I mean we we have been leading this movement toward drug legalization since at least the 70s and But you know society at large at all.
That's outrageous.
That's ridiculous.
And so here we are, you know Many decades after Friedman wrote that open letter and everything he said has turned out to be true massive violence destructiveness death ruination of lives mass incarceration illegal searches and seizures humiliation of blacks abuse of blacks and All for nothing because you still got the same drug flows into the United States And so obviously that's water under the bridge but going forward is not water under the bridge going forward We should be doing what Friedman said back in 1972 and that is just ending the war on drugs Legalizing all drugs not just marijuana as some people advocate legalizing heroin cocaine methamphetamines Opioids everything and leaving drug addiction in the private sector and rehab centers therapy and so forth is where it belongs All right, well so Before we go back because you went through a quick list there and I want to talk about the economic incentives of prohibition But what about the economic incentives of legalization why you would just have heroin and vending machines on the public sidewalks?
Well in a sense Yes, but that's ordinarily not what's gonna happen.
Oh, man.
I was pitching you a softball.
You totally miss her You're supposed to say libertarians are against public sidewalks Oh Yeah, that was a good one.
You got me good on that one.
Yeah.
Well, okay, go ahead No, but that's that's the fear right is look you you want government which is basically the stand-in for Jesus the arbiter of Morality on the planet to say the drugs are okay now So then now a bunch of really bad things are going to happen like people are going to use drugs more and stuff Well, that's the argument and and it's certainly possible that when drugs are legal that that more people will use them They'll say oh, well gosh now it's legal.
I think I'll go try but you know How many people do you really know that are just anxiously awaiting to go snort some cocaine and just waiting for the law to be?
Changed I don't know of any and and you know, you also have to think about the forbidden fruit factor how many people are Tempted to ingest illicit drugs, especially young people because it's prohibited and so there's that factor but but ultimately it's like what business does the state have in punishing a person for engaging a in a purely Peaceful albeit maybe destructive activity I mean, this is the very essence of freedom if you're not free to put whatever you want into your own mouth There is no way that you can be said to be living in a free society It's just none of the government's business.
Now.
Does that mean that libertarians condone the use of drugs?
Of course not.
It doesn't mean that at all.
I mean a good analogy of this is like adultery, you know America Libertarians don't believe that adultery should be criminalized people shouldn't be going to jail for engaging in an extramarital affair That doesn't mean necessarily that we're sitting there.
Hey saying adultery is a great thing It's just saying that in the world of peaceful activity People sometimes choose in ways that other people disapprove of and that might even objectively be considered wrong Those don't belong in the criminal justice system.
The only activities that involvement that should be involved in the criminal justice system are activities that involve violence against other people like murder rape theft or Fraud against other people was essentially a way to steal from people robbery burglary That when you trespass and other people's rights that belongs in the criminal justice system But when you engage in peaceful activities including sinful activity immoral activity Those do not belong in the realm of the seizures jurisdiction.
They belong in the realm of the private sector well, and you know then now to go back to the perverse incentives of prohibition You see things like, you know, we talk about violent crime.
The worst kind of violent crimes are committed by crack addicts and meth addicts both of whom are You know probably would just sniff cocaine up their nose if it was legal and affordable and instead Prohibition has you know had that I don't know I know it has an academic name for it right the potency increase effect or whatever.
They want to call it where you know people switch from cocaine to meth just because of the Availability and the price and the bang for your buck and that kind of thing and those are the tweakers You know Those are the people who really want to stay away from where a cokehead probably is not gonna be as bad of a problem on average Yeah, well, you know, it's just impossible to say I mean, I mean there is obviously a drug problem in America There are masses of people that that are ingesting Alcohol that's a drug tobacco.
That's a drug In fact alcohol and tobacco kill many more people than the illegal drugs do People smoke marijuana.
They snort cocaine.
Some people inject heroin There's obviously an opioid crisis going on The real question is does any of this belong in the criminal justice system should or to put it another way should people be sent to jail for doing these things and that's what just so shocking that we live in a society where the state is Punishing people putting them in jail for these kind of things I mean it when you look at it just you know from on high and you look down on it It really is a shocking thing.
I mean drug addiction is difficult enough for some people You know, they're obviously going through or some of them are going through difficult parts of their lives I mean, why else would you take a a substance that that is mind-altering that?
Makes you feel better and so forth.
It's usually because you're going through a tough time or some other reason But what business is the state have and sending you to jail for that?
It's it's absolutely shocking to me yeah, well and you know I actually had a conversation with a friend who has chronic pain problems and talking about all the hoops that she and her Doctor have to jump through in order to stay off the DEA's Radar so if she actually has an okay month and takes a few less pain pills well that looks really bad because now you have this surplus of pain pills and what do you need them for then and and then from the point of view of the DEA is the doctor in on her plot to have this extra margin of Pills that she can now sell on the black market when actually what happened was she had a couple of pain-free days that month Thank goodness that usually doesn't happen She wants to take as few of these pills as she possibly can and so she skipped a couple of doses in that nice But instead it's the kind of thing where her doctor's going.
No.
No, you can't do that Because he's terrified right his business could be shut down.
He could go to prison She could go to prison who knows what they could try to make out of it if they decided to try to make a case out of just a Completely non-criminal situation between a patient and her doctor that has you know, no You know no abuse or no, you know criminal Connotations in any sense to it other than the degree of the regulations sitting on top of them That's a great point.
I mean, you know, you can't really blame doctors for being Ultra cautious about this thing I mean, it's they they really are subject to being prosecuted and sent to jail and I've been reading articles where Opioid addicts that people really need this stuff for their pain I mean the pain is really bad and one guy was having to travel like 300 miles I think he was in Texas to find one doctor who was willing to prescribe the necessary amount of painkillers that this guy needed and That Physicians told him look.
I'm think I'm going out of business soon And so the the old boy opioid addict was considering suicide and the article sort of revolving that theme around that theme of how many drug users specifically the opioid users are committing suicide because they they can't stand the pain anymore and ultimately, this is a matter between The the doctor is patient but All right now so I Think it's important, you know, you start out the thing with Milton Friedman in 1972 and this is just at the start of Nixon's drug war and you know, there been prohibition really was a jobs program left over Alcohol prohibition.
Well, we'll just have you focus on narcotics and pot and stuff like that in the New Deal days So these cops wouldn't have to get jabs and so, you know here they still are holding their jobs and But so Milton Friedman comes in and he applies just a free market economic analysis to what's at that point just the beginning of this new era of Crusade against drug abuse and the trade in drugs and And he predicted exactly what has happened exactly what has played out.
I mean, that's pretty good right 72 It's a and and you have this extended block quote of him here explaining not just what's going to happen, but why right?
He's not saying I am making predictions.
He's saying here's how economics works and here's what's going to happen and you talk quite a bit about this and explain real well in your article to about okay, so what happens when you have an open market in a product and You make it illegal or you know, and and also I guess When you clamp down on it when you increase the penalties and increase the enforcement like at the dawn of Nixon's drug war What does it really change and so talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I actually misstated Freedom in 72 Friedman actually published an article in Newsweek called prohibition in drugs where he talked about these things and then Almost 20 years later, of course the issue still there and he gets into this exchange with Bill Bennett And that was the Wall Street Journal article So, I mean this thing goes back decades and and where are we today?
I mean, obviously the war on drugs has not been won.
In fact, it's the exact opposite They tell us it has to be waged more fiercely than ever which is a pretty strong indication that their decades-long drug war has failed And and it will always fail.
It's just a matter of laws of supply and demand you know, they say they want to get rid of the drug pushers the drug cartels the drug dealers and and they They're you know, they're talking about these violent criminals and the drug gangs and so forth But it's actually their drug Prohibition and this is what Friedman said that brings these kind of people into existence That in a legalized market which existed in the United States all through the 1800s early 1900s The the pharmacies are selling the drugs.
Well pharmacies worry about their reputation.
They also worry about their pocketbooks So they're gonna they're gonna provide good Good clean drugs good clean needles.
They don't want to get sued by somebody for Negligently giving them a dirty needle and so People come in and buy drugs.
They're adults.
They do so and then the pharmacist is gonna also be concerned about selling the kids He's got a reputation to uphold if people find out that he's out there pushing drugs on kids That's gonna hurt his bottom line because people are likely to boycott them but in the process You put out of business all the people that they're trying to put out of business through the criminal justice system That all these drug gangs and drug cartels they cannot survive in a legal market You know They can only survive in a black market where violence pays off where you get rid of your competition by killing them off You don't see pharmacies killing each other off Because they're competing against each other So by legalizing drugs, you've got pharmacies and other companies that are providing Drugs to people that they can count on they can count on the that they're not corrupted they're not gonna cause them death because they've been polluted with some other item and you get rid of all the Violence that comes with the drug war the drug gangs the drug cartels Now here's another factor to consider that the more they crack down The more that restricts supply.
Well, what does that mean?
Well some Restricted supply means the price goes up.
Well as the price goes up that lures more people into it This is why you have ordinary people Like flight attendants and airplanes that are smuggling drugs in when they would never do that Why because the amount of money that can be made in just one score is so huge That it's worth it for them in their minds to take the risk So the more they crack down the worse the problem gets because the more the price goes up and the more Ordinary people get into the drug trade.
There's no way Scott that they can ever win a war like this They couldn't win it with alcohol They cannot win it with tobacco and they certainly are not gonna be able to win it with the rest of these illicit drugs The Scott Horton show is brought to you by books Particularly Kesslin runs a new dystopian novel about the very near future by the great Charles Featherstone Kesslin runs also no dev no ops No IT by Hussain Badak Chani and the war state by Mike Swanson about the rise of the military Industrial complex in America after World War two.
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You know first of all pot Yeah, go ahead and legalize it who cares about that, but which is you know hey, that's pretty good You know he really seemed to just kind of wave his hand at it.
No big deal But then he says but cocaine that kills people so right there really he must be thinking of heroin because cocaine very rarely Kills anyone you know just people Take it so you can stay up drinking later stuff like that anyway so but he starts from it kills people to well so therefore first offense for even having some and no differentiation between being a customer or being a salesman not that I differentiate either in terms of morality, but No differentiation from him you should get 15 years in prison if you're caught with any of it ever That's it mandatory minimum 15 years.
Maybe 20, and if you ever caught with it again and cut your head off That was what he said beheadings for people who would continue to persist in cocaine abuse after they've been warned once by having decades of their life taken away and That'll teach them then it'll go away And that's how we'll get there where all he really needed and I tried to give it to him, but boy he couldn't listen He didn't want to hear it at all was that simple economic incentive that you said that if you did that Boy, you would make cocaine really expensive And then you would have the most cutthroat criminals of all straight out of the movies would take over the business Again, they would be the only ones willing and able to participate in that level of black market trade But it sure wouldn't make it go away right it would just make Create that much reason for that much more of it, but but anyway But that's the argument that people get in it's like a cul-de-sac the statist cul-de-sac all we could do is just Increase the power and the penalty until someday we win I've heard people numerous times in my life say they should just send the US Army Door to door to every house in America and take all the drug users and kill them And then the rest of us will be fine like I've heard, you know adult people say that that must be the way We're headed here.
You know, what else is there to do?
Well, and what they fail to recognize is that somebody's already tried that I mean you've seen the increase in draconian measures And the war on drugs here people say well, we just need to crack down.
They have cracked down I mean over the decades They've got mandatory minimum sentences that takes discretion out of the judge's hands to impose sentence.
They're locking people up That's what mass incarceration is all about they've got asset forfeiture that it now enables the police to steal whatever amount of money they find in cars on the highway and Without even charging a person with a crime.
They're just taking their money away from them And then you've got all these bashing down people's doors in the middle of the night You've got abusing African-american stopping patting them down searching them Humiliating them so there really has been this massive crackdown I mean, that's why the penitentiaries are filled.
But if you want an example of what these people say, you know, like you're right They're saying well, no Jacob.
We need to really crack down bring in the military.
Well, that's what Mexico did I mean for the last seven or eight years Mexico has had the military enforcing the war on drugs and the result has been absolute disaster Massive death toll.
I mean the murder toll in in Mexico is so phenomenal I forgot the number is but like tens of thousands of people because of the drug war and and then the Military is abusing civil liberties in mass I mean people are almost at the point where they're saying get rid of the military You know, we'll deal with the drug lords and then you've got the Philippines Which is a drug enforcers dream come true where the the regime there has been killing people now for two years on site I mean, okay, they're not beheading them, but they're shooting them any person You know this that is suspected of some drug law violation including drug addicts.
They just shoot him I forget what the numbers are, but it's phenomenal and that's after two years.
You would think well, okay Drug drug war over right?
Well, you've got this massive power Totalitarian power to just kill people without due process of law without a trial and Yet they're saying we still haven't won it.
We still need to keep waging this thing.
Yeah It's horrible there's only one solution to this and That is just legalized drugs and you're right about the job producing program The people who are resisting this are the drug lords and drug gangs because they know they'd be put out of business Immediately with drug legalization and then the federal judges the federal prosecutors the DEA agents the law enforcement People that focus on the drug war.
It's a jobs producing program They know that they would no longer have their big drug war racket and a lot of federal judges They spend most of their time on drug cases or immigration cases total waste of time And but you know They need their their dockets filled to justify why they're federal judges or federal prosecutors or federal clerks It's just a big job producing program a very expensive and very destructive one Yeah well and you know then there's all the incentives for corruption and bribes and that kind of thing where Even the pretension of honor among cops is thrown out Everybody's on somebody's take and this kind of thing whole sections of Massive cities under the control of crime lords and this kind of thing where that wouldn't happen.
Otherwise, necessarily You know, whatever you think of having police at least there there used to be more of a facade of professionalism where now it's just you know, the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force and by the way, you know, you mentioned the the racism and the And the The militarization of the cops and those are really two sides of the same coin, you know you talk about in the article about how You know, it's not just you know, you talk about in the article you mentioned in the context of racist cops who you know are getting away with You know brutality because they can In that sense, but then you just have the structure of the whole thing Where you know when you read Radley Balco in The Washington Post talking about 50,000 SWAT raids a year.
I mean, well, where are those happening?
Those are happening mostly in the black parts of town and it's not just you know Racism that the cops hate black people more it's which probably is a part of it anyway But it's that they know that these are people who are typically poorer and have less political power Less ability to fight back or have any accountability whatsoever.
I mean think about that a Thousand-fifty thousand SWAT raids.
There's only 52 weeks in the year and then you got to figure some holidays and stuff So a thousand SWAT raids a week I mean think about that people still cry at the National Anthem about how free we are and stuff when that's going on You know all day long every day in every in every town You know, that is truly incredible I had no idea that that statistic and yeah, there are militarized It's amazing how few shootings there are when you think about it breaking into people's houses in the middle of the night like that and and there are Lots, there are thousands, but you would think it'd be even more than that Absolutely, because how do you know who's doing the breaking in?
You don't know if it's a cops or some burglar or some gang that's coming in And you're right about the corruption, I mean the drug war Corrupts all aspects of society, but especially the police the law enforcement people and it makes sense I mean, let's let's say you're a you're a guard at the border and you're approached and they say, okay You got a choice.
You can take this hundred thousand dollar bribe to look the other way or You can get killed along with your kids and wife I mean, what's a guy gonna do?
I mean, it's sort of rational for him to say.
Well, okay.
I'll take the money and That that undoubtedly goes along all the way around.
I mean, it's just a logical thing I mean, they're getting in the drugs in the country somehow and there's just very little doubt that corruption is part of this But there's a rationality to it.
Yeah.
Hey, by the way, I don't know if this speech is still online, but I bet it is I went well, I guess a decade ago.
It was 2008 to your Restore the Republic conference there in Virginia and one of the speeches that was given there that I'll never forget was Jonathan Turley talking about the Fourth Amendment and People may be familiar with him.
He's a you know TV lawyer talking head guy Ron Paul once talked about making, you know, putting him on the Supreme Court if he was the president Which goes to tell you a little something although he's not a libertarian.
He's good where it counts.
And anyway, so in this speech he was talking all about the Fourth Amendment and the history of these Supreme Court cases where the Fourth Amendment used to mean this and then we went through this court case and this one and this one and this one and these decisions chipped away and chipped away and Most of it in the name of the war on drugs and in the name of stopping cars on the side of the road And once it turned out that cops could have a cell phone and they could call a judge at home That they didn't go back and undo the previous decisions that had said that well You don't need a warrant because it's too inconvenient to have to drive to the judge's house and ask for one So go ahead and search in the name of your traveling on a public right-of-way and all this and that they didn't go back And and when once technology made it easier They didn't go back and repeal that decision and and go back to having warrants again No way and it's just the ratchet effect as Robert Higgs says Through the perpetual drug crisis where the Fourth Amendment what's left of it is just a shadow it's you know barely even a thing compared to what it was before they went at it in the name of drugs and He just did such a great job of explaining, you know, how they got away with this levels just a little bit at a time But it amounts to you know, the death of the thing Yeah, Charlie's absolutely great.
He teaches over at George Washington University Law School and And yeah, he's one of the real advocates of civil liberties and Especially the Fourth Amendment.
I mean people forget that these amendments were enacted to protect society to protect our country from federal officials I mean that was the whole purpose of the Fourth Amendment because they knew that the propensity of government officials to assault people's freedom their their privacy their homes and And so they they wanted this express prohibition that you can't come and search me my home my belongings Unless you go to a judge and you get a warrant showing probable cause and then you can come in But man, the drug war has just decimated the Fourth Amendment.
It's been just absolutely horrendous especially on car searches Where essentially that the cops now have carte blanche to just search whatever they want And and I'm not suggesting that all caught cops are bigots But I am suggesting that some cops are bigots and for the bigoted cops the the drug war is a dream come true Because they can go out and exercise their bigot bigotry with impunity.
They can just stop any black they can pat him down Humiliate him make him ask stupid answer stupid questions Hope that he starts resisting arrest so they can pounce on them and say stop resisting as they're beating him up and it's all legal It's all oh, thank you for your service because you're over here enforcing the drug war you keep in America drug-free society It's bull.
It's the this this group of bigoted cops that are using this system to to exercise their bigotry So it's it's not surprising that a bigot would be attracted to a police department in order to be able to do this legally and honorably Right.
Yeah, they'd be crazy to work in the private sector at this point, right same with any murderer criminal What are you doing?
Not being a sheriff's deputy?
That's where the qualified immunity is that?
All right.
Now speaking of drug wars.
You got a brand new one today still dying for nothing in Afghanistan Maybe a little something.
Hey, did you know I saw this thing about the outgoing general Nicholson?
And how his wife was, you know, this major expert and sort of his co-general in charge over there for a little while to a degree calling some shots and how In her expertise.
She said, you know, the obvious thing to do here would be to legalize opium and encourage Afghans to grow it to Sell it for medicine on the open market and that is this only solution to the heroin problem and all the black market You know corruption and everything that comes with it And of course, you know, I guess they gave her a nice little pat on the head But it's nice to hear that at least someone on that level gets it and you know I cite a couple things in my book about how This is what they did in Turkey and in India there was no way they're gonna take on the heroin cartels and destroy them There's no such thing as that.
They just legalized it put them in business and said, you know what?
There's seven billion people in the world enough of them need opium products for medicinal reasons that there's plenty to Plenty of demand to go around for the supply.
So but I guess we're gonna not do that.
We're gonna do what instead Maybe that's why the guy's no longer commander in Afghanistan because his wife came out and said that I wonder about that I don't know.
I mean his time was pretty much up.
But yeah Well, no, I and I'm glad you brought up the article because it relates I mean, you know that here you had the Taliban regime that they're they've been fighting all these 17 years And that they ousted from power and the irony was the Taliban had strict drug laws I mean there there was no opium coming out of Afghanistan into the Taliban So then they put in this puppet regime and now it's the Taliban and it's become the the opium producing capital of the world but I mean like the reason I wrote the article was that there's a another soldier killed by somebody on the inside some Friendly Afghan cop well, not so friendly obviously or some military guy But I mean, you know, what did he die for?
I mean, they brought in now the ninth commander It's clear that he has no more clue as to what to do than any of the other previous ones did They're just buying time Scott They don't want to pull out because they know that the second guessing game will start People saying what was that all about and as long as they can keep a force there that maintains the this puppet regime They can keep for stalling the inevitable second guessing that we all know that everybody's gonna engage in once this thing's over Yeah, these people are dying for nothing and they're killing for nothing.
It's it's absolutely horrendous Yeah, you know Nick Turse has a new one today where he says they've turned the old adage around I think he's quotes Kissinger.
I didn't know this was a Kissinger quote that You know about Vietnam that all the insurgents have to do is not lose While you know the occupying power has to win if they don't outright win They do lose but all the guerrillas have to do is just hang on that kind of thing and he said but now they've turned That completely around we're now all the American occupying power has to do is not lose as long as they stay forever They've never officially been defeated and the Taliban, you know, according to my credible sources Could never take the Bagram airbase from the Americans there.
They have enough power to You know fend off any assault on that base from now on and so Just stay and try to keep propping up that Kabul government and never have to admit defeat.
And so They've turned that whole thing around where you know, they'll never win.
But at least you can't say that they've finished losing yet.
I think that's exactly what's going on at this point and the guys that are paying the price are the Soldiers that are sent over there to be part of this residual force and Like this guy here that just just got killed I mean that they they're there are the sacrificial lambs to avoid Having to put up with the inevitable price or people said what was that intervention all about?
I mean I finished up my article by talking about a young waiter in a near in a restaurant near my house And he told me the other day that he had signed up to go into the military And I just said would you mind if I give you just one piece of advice and he says no not at all And I said well if they send you to these faraway lands, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, or wherever Just do not take any unnecessary risks because you will be dying for nothing and life's too valuable to die for nothing and I could tell that he had never heard this before his eyes were bulging out of his head and that's all I said so Maybe it'll stand him in good stead.
But that's that's the thing about these soldiers over there now now they're killing people wrongfully No question about it, and they've killed a lot of people wrongfully Don't forget this is an illegal war under our form of government because our form of government says no waging of war without a Congressional declaration of war and there is no congressional declaration of war against Afghanistan But on the other side dying for this stuff is just dying for Empire which in my books is dying for nothing Yeah, well, you know, I had Lawrence Wilkerson on the show the other day Colin Powell's former chief of staff and army colonel and he said, you know the overriding reason that we're there is because of China because they want to build a highway through there and Which the Americans I think imagine means coming military dominance over all of Eurasia, which I think is ridiculous but that seems to be what they fear and then but also it means access to the Uyghurs if They want to arm up and use the Uyghurs to fight inside China and keep China down so it's all this Grand Chessboard stuff where the middle part of North America has to occupy the middle part of Central Asia or South Central Asia from now on to prevent a highway Maybe which you know is kind of a pipe dream sort of a project at this point anyway And by the way, you know what Jacob I mentioned My source that said don't worry about Bagram airbase being overrun.
Well, that's lieutenant-colonel Daniel Davis the great whistleblower and very experienced in the Afghan war and Yet when I asked him about this grand strategy stuff, he said no we never talked about that So to your point about you know, the the young man the waiter at the restaurant and the rest of these guys over there fighting Where they're fighting, you know, they're looking at it at this narrow point of view that well We're fighting to keep the Taliban out of this valley or we're fighting to prop up a provincial reconstruction team supporting the government effort here there in this or that district or province and They're not even told that hey at some level There's some idiot think-tank goon who's decided that how important it is that we keep Russia and China out of their own backyard By staying in it That there's this whole other thing that and if they ever had to sell it that way if they ever had to pitch it that Way, honestly that that's what's going on Here is a great game that we must dominate the center part of Eurasia forever The American people would never go for that So instead they say well, it's we have to keep terrorists from using Afghanistan as a staging ground or some ridiculous, you know faint Right, you know as if terrorists can't use a living room or a hotel room anywhere in the world to plan their terrorism and And oh, you know, don't forget though.
The troops are protecting our country and they're protecting our freedom I mean that nonsense and I wonder how many troops really believe that at this point.
It's so ridiculous I mean, there's nobody in Afghanistan It's trying to take away our freedom or that it wants to take control of the federal government is trying to take control of the Government, this is classic Empire.
I mean, this is the way empires talk Scott when you when you talk about rivals that that we there's a rival hegemon arising in the Far East China's rising we need to put them down.
We need to put them in their place this is classic Empire talk and that's what this is about and When you when they're putting in these puppet regimes It's all part of imperialism And that's what these troops are killing and dying for if only US officials were dishonest at least British officials I think we're honest with the British Empires imperialist escapades I don't think when British troops were dying in Afghanistan in the 1800s that the British people were ever told that hey They're dying to protect your freedom All right, you guys here's how to support the show first of all subscribe to the RSS feeds iTunes Stitcher and all of that.
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My email address is Scott at Scott Horton org Right, well, you know It's funny too that if they ever had to be honest about who's selling all the heroin in Afghanistan, you know while waging this vicious drug war against the American people here at home the American sponsor a government That basically is nothing but a bunch of heroin dealers.
It's their primary source of revenue.
It's like half the Afghan economy and You know, they say oh the Taliban Taliban Taliban when it comes to heroin, but same for quote our side to our Completely up to their eyeballs in this and that's you know, as you said, it's the greatest source of supply for black market heroin for abuse purposes in the world and Right, and we put up with both of these things at the same time Right, they can't do anything about it because those are their allies, right?
They're producing the drugs if they start attacking them Then they're attacking both the people in government and the Taliban who's trying to take control and in the drug war, right?
And all the same corrupt You know economic Incentives apply there too, you know, you crack down on some poppies somewhere.
You just drive up the price drive up the cost of a bribe You know Drive up a certain police chiefs power in comparison to his governor or whatever kind of distortions come from that same as always Right, and you decapitate one drug supplier and ten more pop up I mean you can see this on Netflix where they have this forever series called narcos I mean and you know, they knock out one Cartel and then so then they have to go to the next series Which is about the cartel that took over when the first cartel was knocked out and then the third cartel that takes over when the Second one's knocked out.
That's the way the laws of supply and demand work and that's exactly what would happen in Afghanistan If the u.s.
Started going after the drug dealers there knock out one and they're replaced by ten more You know what?
I think probably a decade ago you and I had a talk about an article in The New York Times about how they did this in Mexico and how when they took out the a few of the major dealers how all the lieutenants went to war and it was oh And it was also the one I think was the same article where they talked about it's like DEA guys reminiscing and they're talking about how it used to be a bunch of you know margaritaville type open shirt fun time small airplane guys in the Caribbean flying cocaine in having a good time and then they crack down on them and So then it went into the hands of worse criminals the cocaine Supply market did and then they crack down on them and how the criminals just got worse and worse and worse the more they crack Down and what's funny is how the DEA guys who are given these quotes to The New York Times?
Like you can almost hear their tone of voice where they're like, huh?
It's almost like what we're doing is counterproductive in a way if you think about it, you know It's kind of hard to sink all the way in but they're the ones telling the story about how they Made it worse and worse and worse the whole time, you know Well, and then the mainstream media feeds into this, you know when there's a big massive drug bust in a little in a community somewhere man, the media is their headlines drug bust and praising the cops and taking pictures and stuff and never Stopping to think that this is just one bust in a long series of never-ending busts It never hits them Especially when they say a record drug bust right?
Well, that's supposed to be progress that records are being said Yeah, I thought you guys won this thing back in the 1990s with the record drug bust back then Actually, and they don't get it.
They just don't get it.
They say oh man.
Look what success is man They've just busted this latest group and then one year later the same thing.
Oh, wow.
Look another drug bust for this community It's it is so nonsensical.
It's it boggles the mind that people keep buying into this thing.
That's funny Okay, you know what as long as I'm keeping you over time here say a wise word about prescription drugs and The regulation of who can take what medicines because that's the same kind of thing sort of oh, it's the same thing I mean the government has no business interfering with the the doctor client patient relationship Okay, but let me speak for everybody's mom when I say oh no But then it would be crazy and wild and you don't know what you're getting and I'm afraid Well, not exactly when you walk into a pharmacy and you say I want some penicillin Well, did you go see a doctor first?
No, I just want the penicillin Okay, here it is and the pharmacy is gonna give you good penicillin or cocaine or whatever Why should you be required by law to go pay a doctor to write this prescription out?
I mean, it's it's ridiculous It's just a money-making racket for the doctors Okay Well, but I mean they're saying that listen any old snake oil salesman could sell you any old crazy thing And so that's why you have to have the government check it all first or else you'd get poisoned That's entirely up to an adult if he wants to go buy something from a snake oil salesman.
That's his right It may be entirely stupid, but it is not the role of government to to protect people from their own stupidity Well, you know and and you're right in a free market.
There would be anybody's free to sell whatever drugs they want But the smart people are gonna go to the pharmacies the reputable businesses the ones that want to go to the fly-by-night Well, take your chances.
It works that way on anything on a restaurant Well, I guess that's not a good example since restaurants are licensed Grocery stores.
I mean you can go to a really good grocery store or you can go pick one that looks pretty ratty and stuff Well, okay, you take your chances, but this should be left up to adults That's what being adults all about is the freedom to make these decisions and then bear the consequences for your own choices All right.
Well, but so in a utilitarian sense, you think we'd be better off necessarily if we had a Completely open and free market in these medicines or you think I mean cuz after all people are gonna say hey look my Grammy's sick And I don't know this and that molecule from Adam.
And so what the hell am I supposed to do?
You know, how am I supposed to decide?
Well, that's what doctors are for.
I mean, that's what pharmacies are for so it doesn't mean in a free market doesn't mean that you you you don't go to a doctor and if you're sick and It doesn't mean that the doctor doesn't prescribe medicine.
It just means that there's no law Requiring these things so you go to a doctor your mother's sick.
She goes to the doctor and the doctor says hey I think you need some penicillin.
Here's a prescription you take it to the pharmacy or you just tell the guy going here's here's the the instructions for your mother to take penicillin and you just go to the pharmacy and buy it and Then you you you follow the doctor's instructions.
There's no reason why the state has to be involved in this process That everything can be done just with the doctor the patient and the pharmacy I'm with you and with the internet there to tell us what to think about it all I Guess I don't get me wrong.
I'm for abolishing everything immediately even going back in time, but I guess I'm just trying to speak for those who are afraid because When you're talking about, you know, what kind of potions you're supposed to be taking for all the wide and varied Kinds of illnesses and and degrees of severity People want some kind of surety and I guess what see I mean, whatever I get it You're saying trust freedom to to play itself out and it'll work find yourself a good doctor on the market and it'll be fine But I'm just saying I think people really need to hear that because I think otherwise This is exactly the kind of thing other than the roads It's exactly the kind of good government people think they need, you know FDA supervision over the pharmaceutical market Yeah, an analogy is is licensure laws and Milton Friedman wrote this great essay and his book capitalism and freedom Calling for the abolition of licensure laws, and he didn't pick shoeshine people or you know hairdressers He chose the most difficult case that the licensure of doctors and he wrote an entire chapter in the book Showing why licensure for doctors should be abolished.
Now.
Does that mean that quacks will be performing brain surgery?
Of course not.
It simply means the state is not involved in certifying which doctors are good in which ones are not That means that if you need a brain surgeon, you need to check it out You go you go to your regular and family physician you ask him for recommendations And that's what people do today when they're finding doctors Very rarely do people just look at in the phone book for a doctor and say well, he's got a license.
I'll go to him Usually they go they talk to their friends.
They for a specialist They'll ask their family physician and and in a private market you'd have certifying agencies Hey, here's the best pharmacies to buy your drugs at here's the list or here are the best physicians.
Here's the list There's absolutely no reason why you can't have certifying agencies like underwriters laboratory or good housekeeping seal of approval or Yelp or you know anybody that's providing these these recommendations to people but Ultimately leaving the final decision in the hands of the individual if he wants alternative mess medicine Then that's his choice and then he bears the responsibility if things don't go well That's what a truly genuinely free society is all about and that's what we libertarians are fighting for Hey, that's what I'm saying.
All right, fff.org.
That's where you find Jacob Hornberger.
He writes every day at Fff.org.
Thanks very much, sir.
Appreciate it.
Hey, thank you as always a greatly enjoyed it.
Thanks for having me on Scott really appreciate next time All right, y'all again Jacob Hornberger founder and president of the future of Freedom Foundation.
Oh And this one is called legalized drugs all drugs All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarian Institute org at Scott Horton org Anti-war comm and reddit comm slash Scott Horton show Oh, yeah, and read my book fool's errand timed and the war in Afghanistan at fool's errand us
