Trip to the Border

Thu Nov 18th, 2004 (previously posted at The Agonist)

Monday I took a trip to Ciudad Acuña near the Texas border town of Del Rio. I took the trip in desperation, driven by the pain of a toothache and the recent knowledge that my American dentist would not extract it because my blood pressure is high. Afraid of getting sued. None of that diminished the fact that my tooth needed to be taken out. I had gone through two rounds of antibiotics--the infection was under control but laying, waiting to return, as sure as I was breathing air. So at 3:30 am I jumped out of bed, said good-bye to my wife and headed for a place I knew someone was unafraid to pull my tooth.

I'd have to say that is one issue where I agree with a lot of Republicans. The practice of everyone suing everybody anytime something bad happens is total crap. And we all pay for it in the long run.

Anyway, driving back to the scene of many of my misdeeds as a marijuana smuggler triggered lots of memories. But the world I entered was not the one I remembered. Between Uvalde and Del Rio, a stretch of around fifty miles, I saw fifteen border-patrol vehicles. That was just those on the main road. Lord knows how many there were on the many side roads branching off or in the air above. The place felt like a war zone. Or opening day of deer season.

I passed a couple of prisons I had never before noticed; they seem to grow like cancers from the land of my youth. Every little town wants one and the jobs they'll bring.

But at what cost?

These jobs produce nothing. To the contrary, all of us have to pay for these jobs when we pay our taxes.

I am told our national prison population has exceeded two million. Only thirteen years ago, when I was released from prison, the number was one million. Does that mean we have twice as many people inclined to break the law? We were already number one in the world with a million. Now we have the dubious distinction of being the number one country by percentage of residents incarcerated as well as having the highest gross number of prisoners.

We're number one. We're number one!

I can't tell you how many inmates currently in prison are there for drug offenses, but when I was locked up we represented over half of the federal inmate population and it was estimated that when drug-related crimes were included in the equation, the number was more like 75%.

Are we that much worse than the rest of the world? Or that much more intolerant?

I like to think it is the second of these two choices. Not that that's a good thing.

The funny thing about our drug laws and the intolerance we have for drugs is that the two most addictive and harmful drugs we use in this country happen to be legal. By that, I mean alcohol and tobacco. Tobacco kills more people than all illegal drugs combined. Half of those that pick up the habit die from it. The poor success rate of those trying to quit is equaled only by heroin. Alcohol in large doses impairs the ability to function to an equal or greater degree than any drug on the planet and is responsible for a very high percentage of fatal auto accidents and acts of domestic violence. It kills brain cells. They don't grow back.

Then there's good old caffeine, my current drug of choice. Our whole country is fueled by it. Stop drinking that cold turkey and see what happens. Headaches, lethargy, fuzzy headedness, even flu-like symptoms are to be expected.

We go to doctors and get medicines for our minds: Zoloft, Paxil, Effexor, Lexapro, Welbutrin, and Prozac just for starters--the list goes on and on.  Even put our kids on Ritalin or Adderol for so-called "mental disorders". And then throw others in jail when their drug of choice happens to be marijuana.

I think it's time for us to revisit our policies on drug laws and mandatory sentencing guidelines and make some changes. Before we have to rope off entire states as penal colonies.

The really sad thing about the way we now deal with our drug problems is that it doesn't work.

You know what I'd like to see the next time I take a trip through West Texas?

Prisons boarded up--shut down for lack of inmates. And about half of those cops and guards doing something productive rather than bullying the citizens of my country with their idea of what America is supposed to look like. Maybe some of them could get jobs working as drug counselors in treatment centers for those addicted to drugs.

Then we might really be able to afford a tax cut.

(And an update)

Today I returned to the dentist to find streets almost devoid of Americans, courtesy of the travel advisory issued by the US government. I saw no Mexicans lined up waiting to kill me, just poor people with wares they can't sell.

To be sure the border is a place where trouble can be found, but no more so than 6th street in Austin, Texas or the seedy part of any big city in the US.