cannabisnews.com: Daring to Dissent in the Drug War! 





Daring to Dissent in the Drug War! 
Posted by FoM on February 25, 1999 at 06:54:56 PT

God bless Jann Wenner. Without him and Rolling Stone, the magazine he publishes, there would be virtually no regularly published dissent in America's longest running war, the War on Drugs. 
No New York Times, no Newsweek, no NBC dares to do what Rolling Stone has done for decades: argue - unapologetically - that the government's War on Drugs, like the War on Alcohol fought by our ancestors, is an irrational, iniquitous, dangerous moral crusade that makes a mockery of a free society.The latest example of Wenner's good work is Eric Schlosser's "The Politics of Pot: A Government in Denial," which is in the March 4 Rolling Stone, the one with the underclothed Jennifer Aniston on the cover.The news hook for the piece is a recent report on the effects of smoking marijuana by the leading British medical journal, The Lancet. Based on a thorough analysis of available evidence, Lancet concluded that "moderate indulgence in cannabis has little effect on health." But as Schlosser points out, in a country that set a new record in 1997 by arresting 695,000 of its own citizens on marijuana charges (87 percent for possession), no major American newspaper found the space to report Lancet's findings. It costs $3 billion just to make all those pot arrests, while the total tab for the Drug War will be $17 billion this year, a new record.Schlosser presents other subversive information that mainstream media largely ignores. For instance, do we all realize that Italy and Spain have joined the Netherlands in decriminalizing marijuana? And that last fall citizens in Oregon voted, 2-1, in favor of decriminalizing marijuana possession? And that marijuana arrests have doubled since President "I Never Inhaled" took office in 1992? Schlosser's piece is most valuable because it reminds us that our national marijuana policy was much more sensible 20 years ago. Mainly, that's because back then moderates in both political parties realized the harm caused to society by marijuana laws was much worse than any harm done by the drug itself.In the 1970s, 11 states, including Oregon, decriminalized pot. The American Medical Association and President Carter were for decriminalization. So was the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1977 - for a week, until Orrin Hatch made such a fuss the committee reversed itself.Unfortunately, as Schlosser recounts, since then Hatch, Ronald Reagan, Bill Bennett and their acolytes have prosecuted a federal holy war against people who use drugs they don't approve of and turned parts of America into a police state.One place where basic rights have been sacrificed to winning the drug war is a 150-mile deep zone along the American-Mexican border, what John Robey in the March Liberty magazine calls "The Deconstitutionalized Zone." Robey reports that in the zone, thanks to court decisions that ruled that drug trafficking is a threat to national security and OK'd the use of military forces in the War on Drugs, warrantless searches, seizures of property and other violations of civil liberties are commonplace.Schlosser is optimistic that the American people - not its politicians - will ultimately bring about a marijuana policy guided by common sense. Robey, a resident of the deconstitutionalized zone who says he lives in fear of his own government, is not so sure.When governments are marching off to a war, calls for reason, restraint or common sense are often ignored. Drug wars are no different, as Robey demonstrates by quoting from a 1980s letter sent to then-Reagan Drug Czar Bill Bennett.The "path you propose," warned famous pot-head Milton Friedman, "of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish."Of course, Friedman was probably stoned.
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