Imagine a society in which the drug lords enjoy crab imperial, champagne, expensive cigars, and accommodating women -- while in jail. Actually, if you are a US citizen, you don’t have to imagine it – you already live in it.

According to this article in the Baltimore Sun, federal authorities have indicted 24 individuals believed to be leaders or hangers-on of the “Black Guerilla Family” prison gang. Gang members are accused of trafficking in illegal drugs, extorting protection money from inmates, and ordering attacks on witnesses and members of rival gangs. Prosecutors affirm that more indictments will be forthcoming, including murder charges.

Prison guards assisted gang leaders in their activities, and helped them to obtain shrimp, salmon and crab imperial to dine on, as well as Grey Goose vodka, champagne, and fine cigars. One of the guards, Takevia Smith, is alleged to have had sex with inmates in exchange for money. In a taped conversation, she explains that she does not fear losing her job, boasting “I have the union behind me.”

When will we admit that the War on Drugs is a lost cause?

When was the last time you heard somebody say, “Gee, I’d like to buy some drugs, but I can’t find anyone to sell them to me?” Or, “Gee, I’m glad drugs are illegal, because if they made them legal, I have so little self-control I’d run right out and take every kind of drug I can get my hands on?”

The War On Drugs has never prevented a single person from becoming a drug addict. The drive to alter one’s mood by taking psychoactive drugs is simply too strong to eradicate. What the War On Drugs does accomplish is to drive everybody out of the business except for the most vicious psychopaths, and, by giving them an oligopoly, to make those individuals rich.

It’s no coincidence that we have this incredibly destructive War On Drugs at the same time the pharmaceutical companies are spending billions of dollars in advertising, trying to get us all addicted to as many kinds of drugs as possible, trying to convince us that the answer to each and every one of life’s trials – sadness, shyness, aging, “erectile dysfunction,” PMS -- you name it -- is to pop another pill. For more information, see The Truth About the Drug Companies by Marcia Angell, M.D.; Selling Sickness by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels; and Worried Sick by Nortin M. Hadler, M.D.

How different are the pharmaceutical companies from the street corner drug dealers? (“I’ve got this great stuff, man. You got to try it. Everybody’s tryin’ it. Why aren’t you tryin’ it?”) And like the street corner drug dealers, they hate competition, and they have their armed enforcers to keep it out.

Drug abuse is simply not a problem amenable to law enforcement. When somebody is attacked or robbed, the authorities can usually count on the cooperation of the victim. But when somebody buys drugs from another person, you usually cannot count on the cooperation of the “victim.” The drug police have to rely on deceit and treachery instead. And when deceit and treachery become their stock in trade, how can it not end badly for all of us?

It's getting harder and harder to see any difference between the drug police and the people they claim to be protecting us against. There’s just too much money involved for it not to corrupt everyone and everything involved. After turning nation after nation into these hideous narco-republics, we’re becoming one ourselves.

This disgusting story confirms what anybody with two adjacent brain cells already knew – the drug dealers and the drug police are like two warring armies which long ago forgot what they were fighting over, and have devolved into looting and terrorizing the populace. And the rest of us are caught in the crossfire, like it or not.