And profit? “If you have fear, prejudice, and ignorance, there will be profit,” says Nadelmann. “Private prisons, politicians wanting private prisons operating, prison guard unions—it’s all about people making money. Too, we have a treatment industry that relies on the justice apparatus to keep feeding a treatment system that is less about good medical care and rehabilitation than about enforced abstinence.” To this list we may add entire professions in the law enforcement and legal fields who rely on the drug war for their incomes and, indeed, for their very raison d’être.
