Matt Agorist, Free Thought Project

In all of 2011, British police killed 2 people. In 2012, 1 person. In 2013, a total of 3 bullets left the barrels of British police guns, and no one was killed. In the last two years, a total of 4 people have lost their lives because of British cops, bringing the total number of citizens killed in the UK to 7 in the last 5 years.

A real private prison would not be solely funded by taxpayer dollars. These Private prisons are nothing more than a fascist mixture of state and corporate, completely dependent upon the extortion factor of the state, i.e., taxation, as a means of their corporate sustenance.

A truly Private prison would have a negative incentive to boost its population for the simple fact that it is particularly expensive to house inmates. On the contrary, these fascist, or more aptly, corporatist prisons contractually require occupancy rates of 95%-100%.

The requirement for a 95% occupancy rate creates a de facto demand for criminals. Think about that for a second; a need or demand for people to commit crimes is created by this corporatist arrangement. The implications associated with demanding people commit crimes are horrifying — and deadly.

Creating a completely immoral demand for “criminals” leads to the situation in which we find ourselves today. People, who are otherwise entirely innocent, are labeled as criminals for their personal choices and thrown in cages or killed.

As a result, police in America have become a standing army and the citizens have become — the enemy.

The war on drugs has been exposed for creating a nearly exponential increase in crime and overdose deaths. It does nothing to curtail drug use and it has only served to turn America into a freedom-hating, deadly police state.

When so many people are tasked with finding and prosecuting those in possession of a substance deemed illegal, police interactions become more frequent and less cordial. If we end that, we get the state out of the private lives of most individuals. This will only serve to lessen the scope of police harassment, in turn diminishing the instance of brutality and killings.

The good news is that even cops are figuring this out. In fact, a record number of law enforcement personnel are quitting their jobs and joining the push to end the drug war.

The state’s immoral and deadly war on its citizens is crumbling. But during this process, however, the vilest of its enforcers are doing everything they can to keep it going — because they become irrelevant once it ends.

To end the police state, we have to end the war on drugs and to end the war on drugs we have to educate our fellow Americans about its immoral nature. Only through a lesser ignorance will Americans wake up to the atrocities being carried out against them by their supposed protectors.

“The war on drugs employs millions – politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military – that probably couldn’t find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners.” -L. Neil Smith

(This story originally appeared at The Free Thought Project)