Got into a discussion this evening...

About six cops who got shot by an alleged drug dealer during the serving of a search warrant. Well, like I said initially, serves 'em right. The US "War on Drugs" was started well before I was born, and I recently hit the ripe old age of 33 years. If you're on a SWAT team serving a search warrant, you likely aren't a 40 year old man. There's a good solid chance you are AT MOST my age, likely younger.

If you're that old, you know damned good and well that fighting the "dope wars" is gonna be part of your job, and you willingly accepted it.

I'm gonna clue you in on something. I really fucking hate most "drug dealers". Not because they happen to sell pharmaceuticals that our government says are illegal, but because the current legal status of the pharmaceuticals they sell has forced most ethical people from selling them.

Nowadays, who sells crack? Hood rats with their pants hanging off their asses, who would sell their wares to a twelve year old girl if she either has $20 or is willing to get her knees dirty. A hundred years ago, who sold cocaine? Your neighborhood pharmacist.

But no, our government said "Hey, you can't sell that! We'll lock you up for it!". So, instead of selling cocaine over the counter to adults at a relatively reasonable price, legit pharmacists stopped selling coke. The same thing happened to legit brewers and distillers during alcohol prohibition. Then, just as now, sales are left to those unsavory characters willing to break the law to make a profit.

My grandma died of cancer. While she was dying of cancer, she was given prescriptions for powerful and toxic narcotics. My grandma worked in hospitals for longer than I can remember, and both of her daughters were registered nurses. Needless to say, she knows a thing or two about the situation. Instead of eating toxic chemicals, she chose to smoke pot, knowing that it was far safer and far more effective.

At that time, in her particular location, it was a violation of the law to buy, sell, purchase, or consume marijuana. The potential sentence she would face for being caught with her medicine was, in her case, quite literally a life sentence. She was already dying, and didn't have that much time left. By the time they caught her recurring breast cancer, it had already metastasized to her vital organs.

The man she bought her pot from, on the other hand, wouldn't have been facing a simple misdemeanor possession charge. Where she lived, at that time, it was a felony offense to merely offer a person a hit off of your already-burning joint. God help you, if you sold a dying grandma a dime-bag. Such an offense would send you to the ass-rape factory for five to ten.

But enough about grandma, let's get back to the cops who got shot. Whose house were they raiding? Coulda been some guy selling weed to sick people. Coulda been some hood rat selling crack to 12 year old girls. The world may never know.

What we do know is that the same SWAT teams are used to take down both, because both the crack dealer and the pot dealer are both considered our "enemies" in the war on drugs.

Regardless, let's get to the main issue. If the government declares that it has the authority to determine what you may or may not put into your body, that government is declaring that it has authority over your body. In essence, that government is declaring ownership of your body, which in turn means that you are a slave to said government.

It makes no difference if you're talking about some college sophomore taking a bong hit at a frat party, or some Bowery bum shooting smack in a back alley. If the government claims ownership of you, it makes no difference what you're ingesting. If you own yourself, you have the right to smoke crack and worship Satan, should you so choose.

Does that mean a person has the right to steal a television or rob an old lady for that next hit of crack? Absolutely not, no more than a person has the right to steal a television for the purposes of watching the superbowl, or robbing an old lady to buy beer to drink while watching said superbowl.

Last time I checked, we were supposed to punish actions that harmed others, not actions that could potentially lead to harming others...and yet, the last time I checked, some of the biggest supporters of the "War on Some Drugs" are people who are so virulently anti gun control. That, in and of itself, makes absolutely no sense to me. I can quite literally and legally buy an AR15 rifle, a 420rd can of steel-tip military-grade ammunition for said rifle, and a 30 pack of Busch beer at Wal Mart...and do it all for less than a thousand dollars.

Ever seen a drunk man with an AR15, 14 loaded mags, and a raging case of drunken pissedoffedness? Well, aside from the loaded rifle, I have.

Now let's take a look at that same thousand dollars. Let's say the guy decided to forgo the ammo and the case of beer, and take that $200 to buy a quarter pound of reefer. In most states, that's a felony. Being in possession of the rifle, at the same time, is automatically a federal felony.

So there you have it, the idiocy of our laws. But hey, the cops who arrest people for these "crimes" are just doing their jobs, right? I mean, if people would just follow the law, they wouldn't have anything to worry about, right?

Well, unfortunately for the police, some just don't see it like that. Some say "Hey, I'm gonna engage in voluntary commerce...and if you run up into my house with guns, I'm gonna shoot back." That's pretty much what we had going on in the aforementioned situation, involving the seven wounded people in the course of the drug raid.

But let's take a look at the score card. A SWAT team of heavily-armed and heavily-armored cops busted into an alleged dope dealer's house with a warrant. Even though they were supposedly the best-trained the department had to offer, one "thug dope dealer" took down six of them, killing one. Yes, he was wounded in the gun battle...but unlike Jose Guerena, he was only wounded.

They may give him the needle when all is said and done, but let's look at the score card as it stands. One cop dead, five cops with gunshot wounds, one alleged dope dealer with gunshot wound(s). Even if they give the guy the needle, the cops still lost out on this one.

Gives 'em something to think about, don't it?