Prohibition Redux: The Failed Drug War
"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it
attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes
a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law
strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government
was founded."
Abraham Lincoln, 1840
Barry McCaffrey
PUBLIC ENEMY NUMERO UNO
On 10/7/97, it was reported by CNN that Canadian ambassador to
Mexico, Marc Perron, has asked to be recalled to Ottawa because
of comments he made recently about the level of corruption in
Mexico's drug-fighting efforts, and the degree and direction of incentive being applied to Mexico by the U.S. government.
"I think the pressure on Mexico from the U.S. is just a game
that the American government uses for political ends," he said.
Thus reaffirming what many of us have suspected for years:
The War On Drugs is a sham, and many of our fellow citizens are
being duped by this "game."
THINK FOR YOURSELVES!
I was originally going to stay away from this topic for what I
now recognize as reasons of political correctness. But recently
a friend of mine expressed her appreciation for my sense of
outrage, and that comment caused me to reflect on that outrage
and how and where it is directed.
And I can remain silent no longer.
I am damned outraged by the so called War On Drugs! Primarily
because it is hypocritical, illogical and flies in the face of
our nation's history. Far from stemming the use of drugs like
Marijuana, Cocaine and LSD, the War On Drugs has made domestic
cultivation of pot THE cash crop in many states, (especially
California), and lowered the the price of Cocaine and LSD to
levels below those known in the sixties and seventies.
In short, the War On Drugs is an abject failure. Here's why:
Since 1937, when Congress enacted the Marijuana Tax Act, the
federal government has been conducting a war against its own
citizens. A war of prohibition not unlike the prohibition on
Alcohol in the 1920s and 1930s.
As we all learned in school, (a lesson for which many of our
elected officials were apparently absent that day), the
previous prohibition resulted in a crime wave unknown
until that time. A crime wave which was not restricted
to the typical criminal element, but also included members
of the upper class. 'Bathtub Gin' parties were as common
in the highrise apartments of the Manhattan elite in the 1920s
and '30s as 'Pot Parties' were in the hippie basement pads of San
Francisco's Haight-Ashbury District in the 1960s and '70s
The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was enacted almost simultaneously
with the invention of the decoricator machine, which would have
made it possible to produce as much paper pulp from 10,000 acres
of Hemp as from 40,000 acres of trees, using a small fraction of
the water and being far more renewable.
Why? Ask industrialists Pierre DuPont and Andrew Mellon, and
newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. They all had huge
financial interests in paper-from-trees. And they contributed
large amounts of money to political campaigns specifically to
insure that Marijuana and Hemp were taxed out of existence.
In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon's hand-picked commission on
drugs determined that Marijuana should be decriminalized because
it was relatively harmless when compared to Heroin, Opium, even
Alcohol. Nixon ignored the commission's recommendations and
launched the first real War On Drugs.
In the past three decades, laws against Marijuana alone have
resulted in the imprisonment of tens of thousands of American
citizens, many of them 18-24 years old, for having in their
possession no more than an ounce of weed, many with 10 to
20-year mandatory sentences. These people are POLITICAL
PRISONERS, plain and simple. Where is Amnesty International?
In D.E.A. Docket No. 86-22,57, Francis J. Young, an
administrative judge for the D.E.A., stated that, "nearly all
medicines have potentially lethal affects, but Marijuana is not
such a substance... Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the
safest, therapeutically active substances known to man." And,
"The evidence in this record clearly shows that Marijuana has
been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great
numbers of very ill people and doing so with safety under medical
supervision." The D.E.A. ignored its own conclusion, and has
spent the eleven years since that opinion knocking down the
doors of private homes, violating the Constitutional rights of
American citizens and prosecuting as criminals people who were
guilty of nothing more than pursuing their own brand of
happiness. Clearly, the D.E.A. never read the Declaration of
Independence.
It is now known that many of the tests which showed that
Marijuana had dangerous, perhaps lethal, affects on the
human brain, and on the immune and reproductive systems were
so skewed against medical use of Marijuana that they were
tantamount to scientific malpractice.
While the U.S. government SPENDS billions of tax-dollars each
year on the War On Drugs, if Marijuana was legalized,
regulated and taxed, the federal and state governemnts could REAP
billions of dollars, perhaps even erasing forever the spectre of
a dreaded budgetary deficit. But the political will is against
it. The prevailing political will is more concerned about
getting re-elected than doing the right thing. And that attitude
extends to many more issues than Drug Law Reform.
Since the passage of initiatives in California and Arizona in
1996, which Czar McCafferey called "hoax referendums", the
federal government has begun to also wage war on the sick and
dying by trying to deny them Marijuana which has been shown to
ease the nausea and other ailments related to their illness.
Ironically, in early '97, while Clinton was telling the rulers in war-torn
Eastern Europe to "obey the will of the voters" the D.E.A. was
detaining doctors in California who merely DISCUSSED Marijuana
with their cancer and AIDS patients.
And his drug czar was conducting a war of words, marketing
Marijuana as "dangerous and addictive". Either McCafferey,
who has no medical training or experience, was simply passing on
false info as gospel or he truly believed what he was saying.
Either way, he was grossly in error. Someone should tell him
that Morphine, known to be dangerously addictive, is perfectly
legal to prescribe. (And doctors report that patients who are
administered Morphine for pain do not become addicted to it.)
McCafferey even said that the voters of California and Arizona
were "asleep at the switch." In other words, the voters can
simply be disregarded when they disagree with the federal
government.
Clinton then decided that he would devote a million dollars to
study medical uses of Marijuana. This in spite of the fact that
such studies already exist, many of which can be found on the
Internet, (see www.paranoia.com/drugs/marijuana). It should also
be noted that the federal government has killed many similiar
studies on Marijuana in the past - why change its mind now?
Meanwhile, millions of Americans with Glaucoma, Cancer, and AIDS
suffer in agony from nausea and other conditions because
they have no access to Marijuana. Marinol, a legal pill-form of
only one of the hundreds of active cannabinoids present in
Marijuana, is prescribed as an alternative. This makes no
sense: if you have nausea from chemo therapy, swallowing a pill
won't help if you can't keep it down. Smoking or inhaling a
substance gets it to work ten times faster than swallowing it,
anyway.
Ah, but logic has never been a real concern in the government's
War On Drugs. Neither has medical fact or therapeutic efficacy.
Because of the War On Drugs, the Supreme Court has empowered
employers to conduct drug tests on new-hires without a shred
of evidence that those individuals have any history of drug use.
This is legalized unreasonable search and seizure in its purest,
most un-Constitutional form. To whom do your bodily fluids
belong? Your employer? The State? Or you?
Because of the War On Drugs, prosecutors are permitted to seize
private property which MAY NOT be related to person's drug use.
In fact, in some instances, the charges may merely be alleged,
without trial or conviction of any crime, in order for the
prosecutor to seize such assets.
Because of the War On Drugs, the U.S. Supreme Court has seen fit
to permit law enforcement agencies to violate the Exclusionary
Rule, which bans evidence from trial which was illegally
obtained.
Because of the War On Drugs, the D.E.A., (which is NOT a medical
research agency but a law enforcement agency), is empowered to
determine how and what drugs are classified for medical use. Does
this make sense to anyone who isn't a jack-booted thug with a
badge?
In short, we have sacrificed some of our most dearly won
liberties in order to fight a war which cannot be won. An
undeclared war on each and every citizen's right to a fair trial,
to be safe in our homes from unreasonable infringement by the
State, and the right to believe that our property is OUR property
and may not be divested without due process.
We have given up our rights in exchange for an unattainable
peace of mind. As Benjamin Franklin said, when we sacifrice
liberty for security we get neither.
In closing, let me say to Barry McCaffrey...
"Yada-yada-yada...!!"
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