The Agitator is Addicted to Drugs 

Radley Balko over at The Agitator (one of my regular blog stops) has written a new article for A World Connected which has me wondering. Now I'm not suggesting that Radley is actually addicted to anything. What I'm suggesting is that he's addicted to talking about drugs. If you read The Agitator lately, it seems that is his primary focus. While that's all well and good, when you read the article on A World Connected, he ends up spending a large chunk talking about drugs as well. What's strange is that the purpose of the article seems to be to talk about protectionism in international trade. So how do you get from protectionism to drug policy? Oh... Radley will find a way to get you there.

Now, troublingly, we're seeing similar demands come from the right. Under the threat of trade sanctions, conservatives in Congress and in the Bush administration are demanding that U.S. trade partners conform to American mores and values.

The most obvious example is the international drug war. The U.S. Anti-Drug Abuse of 1986 and 1988 conditioned access to U.S. markets on cooperation from the developing world in the U.S. war on drugs. The problem is that the United States' very prohibition of certain drugs has created a lucrative black market for them.

While that's all well and good, are you telling me that this is the most obvious example? Just a few sentences earlier I think he covers a much better example:

The problem comes not from the free exchange of goods and services, but when one country's government tries to impose its values on the other. In the past, for example, leftist trade critics have attempted to use the United States' enormous bargaining advantage to demand that developing countries conform to U.S. environmental or labor standards, robbing them of the only real bargaining chip they have to attract corporate investors - cheap labor and minimal regulation.

Now there is a topic worth some screen space. But that is the last he mentions it. The rest of the article talks about drugs and gambling. My question of course is that if your goal is to change people's minds on things like protectionism, which is already a lighting rod topic... Why would you add to it the discussion of drugs and gambling... both lightening rods in and of themselves?

The Agitator often times complains about how non-drug related matters are often compared to drugs. How some new gambling is the new heroine, or how the Hardees Thick Burger is the new crack. I find it interesting that when he criticizes so many for comparing everything to drugs... that now he tries to pull drugs into a topic where it probably doesn't belong itself.

Especially in light of the recent tsunami, which has once again brought the plight of these third world nations back into the spotlight, giving these people real aid in the form of economic support and international trade is more important than ever. Don't make it harder to garner support for opening trade up by dragging drug policy into the equation. Time to break the cycle of addiction.