Pubdate: Wed, 17 Oct 2001
Source: Peninsula News Review (CN BC)
Copyright: 2001 Peninsula News Review
Contact:  http://www.peninsulanewsreview.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1373
Author: Arthur  Black

THE DRUG WARS: WORSE THAN THE DISEASE

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
Socrates

Well, it's official. The Fraser Institute has declared that the War On 
Drugs has been a big fat waste of time. The Institute, for those who don't 
patrol the far-right fringe on the political tundra, is a collection of 
bigdomes who pronounce regularly on the vagaries of government and social 
policy. The Fraserites hang their mortar boards and three piece pin stripes 
in British Columbia, but ideologically they are Alberta Incarnate.

They never met a right wing initiative they didn't want to French kiss. Or 
a socialist policy that wasn't the first knell in the collapse of Western 
civilization.

And here they are, in a series of policy papers, announcing that the 
billions and billions of dollars and man-hours that stolid, right-thinking 
North American law enforcement types have spent trying to shut down the 
drug trade might as well have been flushed down the toilet.

That's an observation to which - since we started with Socrates - it is 
suitable to add something Homeric (as in Simpson).

Which is to say, "Well, DOH!" Where have these geniuses been? What have 
THEY been smoking for the past half a century? Anybody who didn't have his 
head up J. Edgar Hoover's fundament could have seen the War on Drugs has 
been the biggest farce since Samson asked Delilah for a trim. OF COURSE the 
War On Drugs is abysmally stupid. It always has been.

Unless you're a drug dealer. Or in law enforcement.

They are the only people who make a profit from The War On Drugs. For the 
rest of the world, it's been a disaster. Innocent bystanders around the 
world have been murdered and maimed, caught in the cross-fire between the 
aforementioned principals. Peasants in Colombia have had their farmlands 
poisoned because it 'might' be harboring cocoa plants. Kids in Texas are 
serving life sentences for possession of miniscule amounts of a weed that 
grows behind barns.

Canada, of course, fell right in lockstep with the FBI paranoia parade. 
Emily Murphy, an Edmonton magistrate (who, God knows why, is currently 
lionized as an icon of Canadian feminism), made a name for herself in the 
'20s by demonizing marijuana in a sleazy expose entitled The Black Candle. 
I quote: "Addicts to this drug, while under its influence, are immune to 
pain S While in this condition they become raving maniacs and are liable to 
kill or indulge in any form of violence, using the most savage methods of 
cruelty without S any sense of moral responsibility S".    Ms. Murphy was 
clearly a bit of a raving maniac herself, but an influential one. Her 
fervid fulminations meshed perfectly with what would become the official 
government line - and the prevailing public attitude - for the rest of the 
twentieth century.

This past summer, the magazine The Economist (bedtime reading for Fraser 
Institutionalists) declared flatly that "the laws on drugs are doing more 
harm than good."

Last spring, 70 years after Murphy's slavering histrionics, the Canadian 
Medical Association declared "there are no reported cases of fatal 
marijuana overdoses" and the "real harm marijuana users experience takes 
the form of lost educational, employment and travel opportunities due to 
the criminal record they acquire."

In other words, the war on drugs has done more damage than the drugs 
themselves.

Me? I don't care much about drugs - including marijuana. Aside from 
caffeine, red wine and the odd single malt scotch, I don't do them, and 
have no intentions of glorifying them. But let's get it straight: smoking 
up may or may not be expensive, narcissistic, non-productive, foolish and a 
colossal waste of time.

But what it isn't, is criminal.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart