If you were to ask anyone at random, what is the most dangerous threat to our country, he'd likely say China, Russia, or Iran, because those countries are, or soon will be, a military threat to our nation.  Some might say a polluted environment is our greatest enemy, while others might say the increase in rioting and looting from coast to coast.

It's highly unlikely that many people will say the greatest threat comes from the drug cartels that destroy the lives of tens of thousands of Americans each year.  Deaths from illicit drug use can be differentiated in several ways, including an indirect risk factor for premature death from disease or injury, deaths directly attributed to drug overdoses, and violent deaths caused by clashes among gang members involved in the distribution of the lethal substances.

We frequently read about the huge weekly death toll in major cities where drug gangs operate.  The aforementioned are only those involving statistics on death caused by illegal drugs, it doesn't include the thousands of families that deal with the devastating albeit non-lethal effects of addiction.  If you've ever seen a "former" addict trying to get the poison of hard drugs out of his system, you'll be afraid to take so much as a baby aspirin as a remedy for a mild headache. 

Given the fact that we consistently lose so many American lives each year to the dreaded scourge of illicit drug sales, have you ever wondered why our military isn't used to crush the drug cartels that make hundreds of billions of dollars each year by poisoning our population?  We spend billions defending our country from outside forces, while our citizens are being massacred from the inside by malignant enemies who traffic in drugs across our southern border.  An additional crisis for our nation comes from the cartels' trafficking of illegal aliens across our border from numerous countries.

It seems obvious to me that our country would be a lot more stable and have a lot less crime to deal with if our government would take a hard-line military stance against a threat that takes more lives each year, by far, than any of those distant countries listed as our mortal enemies.  If our high-tech military can locate and take out terrorist leaders thousands of miles away in the Middle East; why can't they do the same to leaders of the Sinaloa, Juarez, and Tijuana cartels in nearby Mexico?

Although the dangerous Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, was an existential threat to our country and, thanks to President Trump's strong leadership, was killed by a U.S. drone in 2020, he undoubtedly was less of a direct threat to our day-to-day lives than the drug-pushers on our streets who commit indiscriminate murders daily to advance their noxious network of drug distribution.  But how often do we hear outrage from our top elected officials when frequent drug wars result in the murders of innocent people caught in the crossfire?  Have they become so desensitized to the ongoing slaughter that they don't consider it worth addressing?

One frightening thought that comes to mind is the power and influence contained in warehouses filled with greenbacks from the most lucrative cash business in the world.  That much untraceable wealth could be a major inducement to those with greedy appetites that cannot be satiated by the monetary compensation of their offices.  The lure of astonishing riches puts bribery at the top of the list of corruption offenses.  History is replete with stories of people caught in the act of using their positions of authority to pad their bank accounts.  Have the billionaire moguls of illicit drugs been able to hand over cash-filled suitcases to high-ranking U.S. officials under the cover of darkness?

There are many ways in which fortunes can be surreptitiously delivered to the venal disciples of greed.  Laundering mountains of cash is a basic necessity of syndicates that need to sanitize their wealth before buying real estate, corporations, and people.

One thing remains clear: our country is slowly, but surely, rotting from the inside.  That decay has its roots in the destruction of our people by drug kingpins that are every bit as deadly, if not more, than terrorists half a world away.

Image via Pexels.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.