by Shai Nir

Those of you who know me know I like a good war. Except for that one fine-ass hippie chick – you know who you are, and I’m sorry I lied to you.¹ It was wrong, but a necessary evil, just like war is. That said, there are times when a war is simply too big a drain on the nation’s resources. Right now the United States is embroiled in a terribly costly war, and victory is nowhere on the horizon.² That’s why it’s time to rethink our priorities, and why, after painstaking consideration and long sleepless afternoons, I’ve come up with a list of alternative ways to use the $45 billion a year³ the government spends to fight the War on Drugs.

1. As part of the War on Drugs, U.S. agencies routinely gain access to drug shipments so they can destroy them or throw bitchin’ parties or whatever they do with the drugs. Instead, why not deter drug use by contaminating the goods? Let the drug shipments through, but first slip something undetectable and unpleasant into them, like anthrax in cocaine, or weaponized hallucinogens in normal hallucinogens. This plan has the advantage that only a fraction of shipments need to be intercepted; if a stoner knows there’s a one in twenty chance that their pot has napalm in it, he or she will think twice before lighting up.

2. Modern genetic technology has allowed for wonderful things. Thanks to genetic engineering, average Americans can now enjoy the benefits of glow-in-the-dark fruit and identical sheep. The same technology can be applied to the War on Drugs in the form of an army of tiny drug-sniffing badgers. You release them into the wild, and they’ll naturally home onto any prohibited substance you want. Since they’re tiny they’d be able to get into crack den and basement alike, sniffing out and gobbling up drugs and leaving behind cute little badger turds.⁴ Soon the population will get tired of this vermin and all but the worst drug abuse will stop.

3. The government can use the money to build a functioning giant battle robot. It doesn’t need to have any use against drugs, or even military applications. But they have $45 billion and robots are awesome.

4. Finally, the government can just stop trying to fight something it can’t stop and instead focus on making life better for its people. Maybe that means giving people better things to do with their lives than drugs, like education or World of Warcraft. Maybe it means lowering taxes so Americans can decide how best to spend their own money.⁵ And maybe it just means something as simple as building a functioning giant battle robot.

In conclusion, I’ll leave you with a pertinent quote:
“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.” – W. Somerset⁶

¹ Mom.
² Or for that matter the agenda.
³ Source: Someone’ ass.
⁴ Laced with napalm.
⁵ Probably on drugs.
⁶ Maugham.