Travel Advisory

A bit of advice for members of Solipsist Nation planning trips abroad.  Avoid flying around Honduras--or any other South American nation--in any sort of small plane.  In fact, maybe just avoid those countries altogether.  Those guys are nuts!

Over the summer, Honduran Air Force pilots shot down a small plane over international waters after the civilian plane's pilot failed to respond to repeated messages and even warning shots.  The Hondurans feared the small plane belonged to drug smugglers, so they took aggressive action.  Was the small plane carrying drugs?  Were the pilots smugglers desperately attempting to avoid capture?  Terrorists bent on wreaking destruction on, let's say, Miami's streets?  Or perhaps innocent civilians with radio trouble?  Who knows?  And this isn't the first time something like this has happened, either.

This story proves nothing so much as the fact that the never-ending war on drugs has been a colossal failure.  I have no intention of ever running for political office, so I would like now to extinguish any possibility of election by stating, for the record, that drugs should be legalized.  All drugs.  Marijuana, sure, but also heroin, cocaine, crack, and whatever narcotic next makes its way into our nation's bloodstream.

I know, I know: Drugs are dangerous.  Drugs kill.  Drugs destroy brain cells.  But motorcycles are dangerous.  Kitchen knives kill.  "Jersey Shore" destroys brain cells.  Any argument you can reasonably make in favor of the continued criminalization of drugs can reasonably be made in favor of the criminalization of many other things as well.  As for the decriminalization of drugs, any number of arguments can be made in favor of that, too: one of the strongest being that decriminalization would allow the United States to cut ties with psychotic regimes that think shooting down mysterious planes is an appropriate strategy to protect the world from the theoretical danger of getting high.