Just because someone is evil does not necessarily mean he is thick.
Drug traffickers are a case in point. They have shown themselves to be devious, and cunning criminal-entrepreneurs. Over the past couple of decades in particular they have also have proven adroit at adapting to rapidly changing market conditions. When drug enforcement agencies make life difficult in one area, the traffickers simply switch their activities to another area. In so doing, they often demonstrate a great deal of organizing flair and, on occasion, considerable ingenuity.
For example, when the Drug Enforcement Agency sought to clamp down on cocaine coming into the United States via South Florida, the Columbian manufacturers hired Mexican drug traffickers to smuggle their contraband across the Mexican border into the U.S. Most likely they calculated the cost of paying Mexican fellow criminals a cut of their profits for services rendered was less than what it would cost them to play cat and mouse with the DEA in Florida.
When U.S. border security was tightened after September 11, 2001, drug traffickers actually began to dig tunnels under the Mexico-U.S. border! One of the largest ones found was three quarters of a mile long and housed a full two tons of baled marijuana.
By way of a third example, when law enforcement became a problem for them in Philadelphia, the local drug barons moved their stash houses into the suburbs. And in Washington State, a cottage industry of marijuana grown indoors in private suburban residences flourished in response to the increased destruction by the authorities of marijuana crops in national forests.
And just in the last month, according to federal drug authorities, Atlanta has now become the new gateway for the movement of drugs to eastern U.S. regions.
"The ‘balloon theory' is used to explain situations like this," stated Derry Hallmark, Director of Admissions and Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor at Narconon Arrowhead.
Located in Canadian, Oklahoma, Narconon Arrowhead is one of the world's leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers. Mr. Hallmark went on to explain that when you squeeze a balloon in one area, the air in the balloon simply moves to a different part of the balloon.
Similarly, when drug enforcement applies pressure in one area, the drugs will simply flow through a different area.
This embroils government in an endless cat-and-mouse game of chasing an elusive and fabian adversary from pillar to post. Vast resources are expended for a limited result: at best merely inconveniencing the traffickers but doing little to actually stem the flow of drugs into a country.
One can imagine this must break the hearts of those men and women who dedicate themselves to defending their country from this greed-driven assault upon the well-being of its citizens.
It has become painfully self-evident that policing, while valid and vital, does not on its own provide a workable solution to the problem of the drugs epidemic. The police could do with some help in the shape of effective action to choke off the demand that engorges their adversary with such vast quantities of lucre. Their efforts must in other words be accompanied by effective means of CHOKING OFF DEMAND.
There are two ways of reducing demand: one is rehabilitation of the addict that gets him off drugs permanently. The other is drug education for the young that results in THEIR decision to skip the whole drugs thing as a mug's game.
We need both of these strategies to come into play on a grand scale and we need it now. While there are some vested interests that profit from the continuation of an unresolved drugs epidemic, pharmaceutical companies and many profit-based rehab programs prominent among these, society as a whole is being decimated by it. There may soon be no stable civilization left in which the aforementioned interests can enjoy their spoils.
Of all the drug programs on the market, the most effective in terms of both rehabilitation and drug education is that offered by the non-profit Narconon program and a smart government would do its utmost to give Narconon's highly dedicated teams every assistance to get their job done. A diversion of resources towards Narconon's provenly successful strategies would greatly assist any government that seriously intends to win the war on drugs.
At its more than 100 centers around the world, seven out of ten Narconon graduates have gone on to live drug-free lives, a phenomenal success rate that to my knowledge is unrivalled by any other rehab program.
On the drug education side of things Narconon reaches young people in their tens of thousands every year with a highly successful drug education curriculum that really communicates a drug-free message to the young, frequently receiving rave reports from pupils and teachers like. The Narconon drug education program represents the way forward towards educating the young out of ever starting on drugs and makes a future possible where drug use will actually decline and the demand for drugs, having peaked, will then go into a long-term free fall.
"What message do we want to send to our young people?" added Mr. Hallmark. "They should understand that life is better when one is drug-free. Let's send that message first."
