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CounterPunch pretends to be mildly left-leaning, but really it's not (as far as I am concerned). It strikes me as being funadmentally libertarian, although it often falls into the trap of The State as fixer of all evil (when in fact The State is the source of the preponderance of what we would identify as evil).
Every now and then, CP comes up with an absolute mind-bender; there's something there now that fits the bill.
Tracy McLellan (who is a bloke) has written a piece questioning the motive of the War on Drugs.
Its premise is that The State wishes to control not just the revenue flows from "first world" drugs (like cigarettes, alcohol, and prescription analgesics), but also wishes to circumscribe the extent to which individuals can experiment with altered states of consciousness.
So in Tracy's world, government permits an individual to alter their brain chemistry through alcohol (up to a point, and so long as you don't then drive a motor vehicle), but seeks to prevent the same individual from doing so with, say, heroin.
It's an interesting viewpoint - one the struck me square between the eyes. I always employ Cicero's "Cui Bono" methodology when attempting to discern the underlying motivations of apparently pointless actof od State. As such, my personal belief is that the War on Drugs is driven by the major Pharmaceutical companies:
- du Pont had a product (Nylon) that had a big rival from hemp in rope and textiles manufacture... so they used political-donor-clout to get it banned;
- Bayer couldn't patent heroin (they used to sell it though), so they couldn't price it monopolistically - but they could patent derivative opiates like Methadone... so they needed heroin banned. Cocaine? Codeine.
Furthermore, once the government decides to implement a "War" on something, they create a bureacuracy to oversee it, and that bureaucracy is populated with "True Believers". People who believe that income transfers will end poverty (nothing will end poverty until we get the massive productivity burst that will result from the advent of Drexlerian nanomanufacturing); people who believe that altered states of consciousness are per se "bad".
And of course government programs like these will always fail - which in turn means that the half-wits who administer them can declare that they failed through lack of proper funding. Budgets are increased.
