Boy, you can't say Mark Souder isn't serious about fighting the drug war. He actually wants to test a fungus, Fusarium oxysporum, to see if it can destroy the plants in Colombia and Afghanistan used to make cocaine and heroin. There's just one tiny little problem:
However, the nation's drug czar, John Walters, and his staff said it's possible that the fungus would not only destroy coca plants and poppies - which are made into cocaine and heroin_ but also ruin the soil for other crops.
Fusarium is a naturally occurring fungus that can cause many plant diseases, and each strain of the fungus is thought to attack only one kind of plant. But skeptics say it's unclear whether a fungus that kills coca plants would spread to other plants or even harm humans.
"It's an organism that could mutate into another organism that kills everything," said Thomas Riley, spokesman for Walters' office. "The concern is if it mutates into something else, you've unleashed it on the wild."
Be careful when you mess with Mother Nature. Where I grew up, we have this little plant called kudzu (some of my relatives called it "kush vine"). It was imported from Japan and planted enthusiastically here to prevent erosion. The problem was that it just kept growing, and there seemed to be no way to kill the stuff. You left your house for a two-week vacation, and your back yard would practically be overrun with it. If anybody ever figures out how to make a narcotic out of kudzu, we'd put the Colombia cartels out of business in a heartbeat.
A little chink in Souder's philosophical armor, by the way. He has said consistently, including in his ads and in meetings with our editorial board, that he will keep fighting the drug scourge, even though skeptics say we can never get rid of all the drugs, so what's the point? But he has also said, about illegal immigration, that we have to figure out how to deal with the 11 or 12 million already here, because it would simply be unrealistic to think we could just round that many people up. I take that to mean that he thinks violating drug laws is serious but violating immigration laws is not. My life would certainly be a lot easier if I got to choose which laws to take seriously and which not to.
Comments
Mark Souder often proves to me that he DOES NOT think things through.
Leo is right, Mark Souder thinks it is ok to violate immigration laws and commit Identity Theft; however, he thinks it is evil to smoke a joint.
I have read a lot about this "Fungus" Mark Souder wants to unleash on foreign countries.
The last time I remember our country doing something similar to this proposal is when we used Agent Orange to defoliate areas in Southeast Asia.
I maintain that introducing a "Killer Fungus" into a foreign country against their will is an act of war.
It is amazing to me that Mark Souder, who was a class one C.O. during Viet-Nam and "dodged" military service when his classmates were dying in Viet-Nam would even consider introducing a "killer fungus" introduce foreign nations against their will.
Imagine what The United States would do if ANY foreign country introduced a killer fungus into our country that killed ANY of our crops?
I can promise you that we would and should flatten that country in a matter of days. We would consider it an act of war and act accordingly.
Mike Sylvester
Souder is a buffoon. A faux moralist that needs to be UNelected (hint hint).
The use of fusarium oxysporum would mean ratcheting up our involvement in Colombia from our current use of chemical warfare to include biological weapons.
Ummm... aren't these, well, you know... weapons of mass destruction?
Souder's (and his prohibition jihadist friends) belief in eliminating all drugs is chimeric and fatally flawed. If we eliminate humanity... maybe, but we know that elephants, monkeys and birds consume fermented fruit. Intentionally!
Better to ban stupid lawmakers.
What evidence, in all of the history of transplanted plants, makes Souder think that this is a good idea? It is human hubris at its very very worst. Let's get rid of Souder!
Mike,
Unfortunately, countries like Colombia and others have been more than willing to let U.S. drug warriors come into their lands and do whatever they want. It's not a question of the U.S. intervening against a foreign government's will; it's a matter of how sad it is that foreign leaders are willing to sacrifice the well-being of their own people just to make U.S. officials happy.
Someone from Columbia said it best when he said, "We don't have a drug problem, you do."
The dangerous drugs are the ones that have been legalized. I took Accutane for awhile, and though I knew there were side effects, there were more discovered later. I'm not advocating illegal drugs either.
The fungus idea sounds nuts. It sounds like an ego out of control... and I still call it 469.
All Souder wants to do is test. That hardly calls for hysteria. He may be over-enthusiastic, but as he says, other solutions should at least be looked into if we're serious about ending the lion's share of the drug abuse in this country.
I'm not one of those who secretly hopes we remain stalemated in the war on drugs so that American drug abusers can continue to rationalize supposedly victimless crimes while the rest of us pay back-breaking billions to clean up the messes.
Maybe any suggestion of real eradication of the drug supply at its sources scares our users and dealers more than some band-aid seizures at the border because it might actually stop the supply to a slow drip?
Having said all the above, I'm not inclined to believe a living fungus claimed to target only coca plants can or will be proved harmless to either Columbian or global ecology.
There may be examples where applied bioengineering has worked, but I can't help suspecting good luck is involved when such complex things work out according to plan.
If this fungus is judged safe, I'd rather see it used in American territories for a while first, with Americans taking the risks we claim are insignificant. We shouldn't ask others to be the guinea pigs.
Besides, when you say "fungus" it reminds people of everything from black mold to athlete's foot. Hardly a winning image for skeptical Americans.
Maybe the mosquito eating fish can be adapted for the drug war. Let's look into that...
http://wane.com/Global/story.asp?S=4976458
or maybe using that old idea of bombing Japan by putting bombs inside bats, but using them to bomb plants instead...yeah...
Actually the truest thing I have heard is that AMERICA has a drug problem, not Columbia...
Mike Sylvester
"I'm not one of those who secretly hopes we remain stalemated in the war on drugs so that American drug abusers can continue to rationalize supposedly victimless crimes while the rest of us pay back-breaking billions to clean up the messes."
We're at a point now where it's hard to make an intelligent choice between individual freedom with its concomitant responsibility and loyalty to the group, whether it's the right trying to censor our art or the left trying to browbeat us into white guilt.
I would say that all the drugs now illegal should be treated like alcohol -- do what you want to do, and it only concerns the rest of us when it has the potential to harm the rest of us. You come to work drunk -- or high on cocaine -- and you're fired. You drive under the influence -- of ANYTHING -- and you pay the price. You ruin your health -- on alcohol or meth or tobacco -- and you pay the bill.
But of course Steve is right; we've created such an anti-individual culture, in which everybody is responsible for everything except their own individual actions ("How dare you serve the drink that leads to the crash!")that such rationality seems quite quaint.
A good example is the law requiring seat belts (or motorcycle helmets). In a rational world, that would be my choice. If I want to put myself at risk, what business is it of anybody else? Hell, call it natural selection. But here come the people who argue that it doesn't affect just me. It adds to everybody's insurance and health costs, because we are all, you see, connected to the group. This argument is usually made, of course, by the very people who have helped create the group think in the first place and have no interest whatsoever in individual rights.
Mike: Right... I had that in quotes.
"I would say that all the drugs now illegal should be treated like alcohol -- do what you want to do, and it only concerns the rest of us when it has the potential to harm the rest of us."
I don't think we can assume that all the illegal drugs are basically no different from alcohol.
Ninety percent of Americans who drink, even those who drink daily for years, never become alcoholics. There is no real, comparable equivalent for the hard drugs.
Nearly everyone who takes a certain level of hard drugs long enough will become physically addicted.
You don't see many social crack users, or heroin slammers who can take it or leave it alone.
I'm not defending alcohol by any means; I'm just saying that a comparison of scheduled drugs to alcohol on any level is far too inaccurate to build a case on.
Who voted for this guy in the May primary?
He wants to unleash a fungus.
Mark Souder spoke to Prime Time 39 on 3-12-2004 and referred to Social Security as a "shell game." He stated, "For people under 30 its probably going to be income based. I am not saying we're going to pass that. It will probably be passed after I am dead." He continued "If you're 40, you might make it through the system. But if you're under 40, and certainly under 30, you had better start planning because if you want to have a decent retirement you
If you want to talk about something that's more addictive than all the other drugs and has probably caused more death than all the rest put together, how about tobacco? And if you wanted to base the law's treatment of drugs on some hierarchy of harm caused -- both to the individual and society -- how can you possibly justify the current state of marijuana legislation compared to that for tobacco and alcohol? In what sane system does marijuana become the most illegal of the three?
But that's all beside the point. Riding a motorcycle without a helmet may be more dangerous than driving a car without a seatbelt. But the central question is the same: In engaging in that behavior harmful just to me or the society at large? Heroin or crack may be more addictive than alcohol, but the central question is still what to do about addiction. At what point does it stop becoming an individual problem and start becoming a societal one?
The best law (here comes the libertarian sermon) is concerned with punishing actions already taken that have been shown to harm others. By making the punishment severe enough and applying it universally and consistently, we encourage people not to engage in the behavior. People still have freedom of choice, but with the knowledge that some choices have unpleasant consequences. The further we move away from that concept and into the area of trying to outlaw behavior (e.g. drinking) instead of its negative consequences (e.g. drunken driving), the more danger there is that the law will be used to enforce group preferences instead of individual rights, the core concept of this nation's founding.