In praise of smuggling: world's second oldest profession

They say that prostitution is the world's oldest profession. The second oldest is smuggling, invented by a Natufian pimp in 6100 BC when he sneaked two Sumarian hookers into the ancient walled city of Uruk. And it's been going gangbusters ever after.

When I worked at the drydock in Saint John there'd be a guy coming round every Thursday to take your order for liquor from the other side of the line. You could get a forty pounder of Canadian whiskey for about half the price from the smuggler than what you'd pay at the liquor store down the street. Twenty-four hours later, payday, your order would be waiting for you in the parking lot at the shipyard.

Passamaquoddy Bay was the "border" between Maine and New Brunswick. Beautiful country. Home to a couple thousand lobster boats and two Border Patrol vessels. Pulled up at the Canada Customs shack on Deer Island once, where the ferry comes in from Maine. They had a sign in the window, back in 15 minutes. Alrighty then... I'll just sit tight! Or not...

Up in Woodstock N.B. there's a golf course. Half of it is in Maine and the other half in Canada. Fore! Just gonna step state-side to find my ball, boys, back in a minute. I'll just leave my golf bag with the ten pounds of premium bud in the rough over there...  And now we got Republican contenders who are going to build a five thousand mile fence to put an end to this stuff?

Fellow I know crosses the border all the time. Called me up on his cell one night. Hey man, I'm in Michigan, half hour from the border. Didn't want to have anything on me when I got there so I just burned my last joint.

Know why he didn't want to have anything on him?

Dogs.

Smugglers avoid the dogs whenever they can. Anything else, all the high-tech stuff, smuggling becomes a math problem. You do the math and you figure out the odds. If you know the border crossing has dogs, you go somewhere else. So what does the Border Patrol do? Get rid of the dogs and buy more high-tech stuff.

It's part of the high-tech hypnosis that we've all fallen prey to. If it's got dials and screens it must be better than a dog. And the tech lobby knows how we think. There is no dog lobby. Best example I can think of in terms of effective lobbying is Michael Chertoff. Went from Secretary of Homeland Security to being a lobbiest for the outfit that puts body scanners in airports.

Body scanners do work. If you're a really dumbshit terrorist like the undie bomber, the scanners will catch you. If the undie bomber was a tad brighter and shoved the explosives up his butt, the scanner wouldn't catch him. That's why Israel doesn't use body scanners. They're useless. And the Israelis probably know more than we do about terrorism. Yet every airport in America now has body scanners, and Michael Chertoff is a wealthy man.

But I digress. Smuggling is Economics 101. Where there is a market, people will take risks to meet that need. We've been fighting the war on drugs for over thirty years. The market is still there. So are the drugs.

So let them build fences.