Rand Paul: “Regarding the loss of lives, whether it is 3,000 that some report, or 20,000, many of those would be preventable if we…”

“Regarding the loss of lives, whether it is 3,000 that some report, or 20,000, many of those would be preventable if we did not have the drug wars going on. The drug wars go on because people are fighting for turf and then the police have to go in and try to stop them because prices are artificially high. We have created the incentive for drug violence. We take something worthless and make it worth billions of dollars. We set the stage for terrorists. Right now, because of the policies in Afghanistan, 80 percent of Afghanistan now has been returned to the drug lords. If the drugs were worthless, there would be no incentive to promote them. But they are worth a lot of money, so inadvertently our drug war pushes the prices up, and we create the incentive for the Taliban and others to raise the poppies and send the drugs over here. Then they finance the terrorists. So it is an unintended consequence that does not make any sense. It does not have to happen. The big challenge is will anybody ever be willing to raise the questions and suggest another way. Could we have made a mistake, such as we did with the prohibition of alcohol? This does not mean that everybody has everything they want. Alcohol is legal, but kids get marijuana and other drugs easier on the street than they get their alcohol, because there is such a tremendous incentive.”