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Notes for Moral Dilemma

[1] Veronica Bowers, an American missionary, and her 7-month-old daughter, Charity, were shot and killed on April 20, 2001 in Peru, when Peruvians monitored by the CIA mistook them for drug smugglers. Her husband, Jim Bowers, and their son, Cory, survived. 

The pilot of the small Cessna plane in which they were traveling, Kevin Donaldson, was able to crash-land the plane along the Amazon River despite his own wounds from the attack. 

In early 1985, the DEA sent Kiki Camarena to work undercover in Mexico. His identity was discovered. He was kidnapped and tortured to death. Some of his DEA comrades have suffered the horror of listening to a recording made of his final agony. 

See: Esequiel for the photo gallery and story of how he was killed in Redford, Texas. 

[2] "The criminals would be hit where it hurts them most - in their pockets.. Their power-base would be cut from under their feet. They would have no more clients. We would truly drive them out of business." 

-- Scotland Yard drugs squad chief, Edward Ellison, Retired, London Daily Mail, March 10, 1998 

[3] Many on the victims of the DTOs have been journalists, judges, politicians or law enforcement officials who were responsible in some way for their own deaths; they could have chosen not to challenge the DTOs. We can only admire their courage and mourn their loss. 

They were among our best and the very sort of people who are most at risk.

Others died who were responsible for their own drug use. Nonetheless most of them harmed no one else and most who became addicted were headed for recovery (see http://www.dpft.org/duia.htm).  Most of these deaths were due to complications we created through our choice of prohibition just as many once died or were maimed by bootleg alcohol. 

Many more victims will follow and the moral implications of that fact must be weighed in selecting policy. 

"In any event, while both groups of victims are to be pitied, the innocent victims surely have a far greater claim on our sympathy than the 'self-chosen' victims - or else the concept of personal responsibility has been emptied of all content." 

- Friedman in "The War We Are Losing"  

 

[4] " Columbia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of narco-terror. Hell would not, in the words with which Billy Sunday welcomed prohibition, "be forever for rent," but it would be a lot emptier." 

- Friedman, Wall Street Journal, 07 Sep 1989 

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