Original Sin

I’ve been looking for an original sin. The ultimate crime, so horrible it will claim infinite victims over time. The attacks of 9/11 were a start, but it must reach across infinite time. The war against terrorism might never succeed, but it won’t so long as the war against drugs persists.
It has long been known that Afghanistan is the home of Al-Qaeda, the ghostly demon that destroyed the Twin Towers and persists to this day in the shadows of the world. We have bombed them persistently, but they will always resurrect as long as our drug policies endure.
Afghanistan is the home of Opium production in the world, which if you are a farmer is much more profitable to produce than wheat. Much of it is transformed into Heroin for sale on the black market, and smuggled across the world. Despite its persistent anti-legality, the laws of supply and demand require that it will continue to be produced. It also guarantees that the lords of crime will continue to profit. You can also be almost certain that the followers of Al-Qaeda will find a way to profit from the trade, who could resist the money?
The war on drugs started almost forty years ago, on the decision of then President Richard Nixon. The United States imprisons as many as one million Americans per year due to drugs, and it has the highest proportion of its population in prison versus other countries. Despite this, the drug war has failed. It only feeds our own destruction by wasting billions in treasure to hold millions of people in jail for often non-violent offenses.
There will be hell to pay someday.