cannabisnews.com: 'Drug War' Still Just a Huff and a Puff! 





'Drug War' Still Just a Huff and a Puff! 
Posted by FoM on January 13, 1999 at 06:54:42 PT

Yes, I inhaled. But, as I'm supposed to add, it was part of a pattern of youthful experimentation that I have since regretted every day of my life. There is something resembling a Stalinist show trial about these public confessions. But this remains an obligatory exercise for all baby boomers who aspire to public office or, in my case, merely want to write a column about the incoherence of America's never-ending war on drugs. 
Bill Clinton, our peripatetic look-busy president, was at the United Nations Monday to add his voice to the vaporous platitudes of the General Assembly's drug summit. Typical of the unworldly rhetoric of this international gabfest was the Pollyanna pledge by Pino Arlacchi, the United Nations' drug czar, to rid the world of all coca leaf and opium poppy crops in 10 years. The president's own oratory was a bewildering collection of semiunrelated declarative sentences. His words are worth parsing because they illustrate the contradictions at the heart of the drug war. "Today we come here to say no nation is so large and powerful that it can conquer drugs alone," Clinton declared. "None is too small to make a difference." Yeah, as Luxembourg goes, so goes the global struggle against drug addiction. In typical fashion, Clinton took pains to assure the world how much better things have gotten on his watch. "Overall," the president said, "cocaine use has dropped 70% since 1985. The crack epidemic has begun to recede. Last year, our Coast Guard seized more than 100,000 pounds of cocaine.These sentences, jumbled together, imply a causal connection between cocaine seizures and the welcome lessening of the crack epidemic. Yet there is no evidence that anyone gave up the drug because the street price soared into the stratosphere. The Drug Enforcement Agency's own figures show that cocaine prices have remained level in a low-inflation environment. This is the inherent fallacy in the federal government's obsession with interdicting drug supplies. A true shortage would drive up prices and force addicts to commit more crimes to maintain their habits. But cocaine and most other illicit drugs are easy to smuggle across our porous borders, which is why every overpublicized drug seizure ends up having scant effect on the law of supply and demand that dictates street prices. Even as the president lamented nations "pointing fingers" over responsibility for the global drug trade, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo had a bone to pick with his good neighbor to the North. Zedillo was irked because he had just learned of a three-year U.S. sting operation on Mexican soil called "Operation Casablanca." Aggressive interdiction efforts abroad like this invariably ensnare America in the domestic politics of drug-exporting nations. A recent New York Times story revealed that anti-drug assistance to Colombia was frequently being used by the local military in an unrelated struggle against guerrilla insurgents. Once, anti-communism heedlessly propelled us into civil wars in Latin America; now we are again headed into the danger zone because of our law enforcement efforts against the drug trade. At the United Nations, Clinton unveiled his latest strategic breakthrough: a $2 billion ad campaign against drugs. When it comes to knotty social problems, the administration's motto seems to be "Let Madison Avenue handle it." This same approach is reflected in the anti-smoking commercials that would be required by the tobacco bill now on the floor of the Senate. The president may decry Big Government, but he believes in Big TV. With drugs, as with most social issues, Clinton is animated by the need to defuse political attacks from the Republican right. That's why roughly two-thirds of the proposed $17 billion federal drug-control effort goes to flawed law enforcement strategies rather than treatment programs. What troubles me is the way the drug policy debate revolves around such stale remedies as mandatory prison sentences and just-say-no campaigns. I am not preaching decriminalization so much as I am pumping for some original thinking. A small step in that direction came Monday when a blue-ribbon roster of international leaders signed a newspaper ad declaring that "the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." Among the American signers were two brave public officials, Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke and the irrepressible Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco. But the names that stood out were emeritus establishment figures like Robert Strauss and Lloyd Cutler. Only now, at an age safely beyond ambition, are they free to dissent from the anti-drug orthodoxy. 
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on January 13, 1999 at 09:21:03 PT
This was my comment I sent to PBS!
This is the comment I wrote and just sent to PBS. I am still very upset about the show. Thank You for your very good comment! We have to change these laws before it's too late, I believe!Thank you PBS and Frontline for this most informative show! I am overwhelmed with anger and sadness that this great country we have has become no better then a Communist Nation! I loathe the word Communist being applied to us but after seeing your show I'm not so afraid to say that because that is the direction we are headed. Our paranoia is making us slowly and methodically give up our civil liberties and soon we will be a total police nation controlled by whoever has a vendetta against us! It also shocked me that a conviction could happen without any evidence! How could this or any of it happen? Please change these laws on drugs and snitches before it's too late for everyone!http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/
FoM's Freedom Page
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Comment #1 posted by TheSiliconMagician on January 13, 1999 at 08:18:21 PT
Snitch and the War on Drugs
I watched the PBS Frontline Show called "Snitch" Last night.. and it went deep into the abuses of the "Drug War".Innocent folks and even those really low level guys were getting life in prison without parole. The Governments position? "This is war, and in war there are casualties, sometimes innocent ones"What ever happened to the motto "Better 100 guilty men go free rather than 1 innocent man be imprisoned unjustly"
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