Pubdate: Thu, 08 Nov 2001
Source: Austin Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2001 Austin Chronicle Corp.
Contact:  http://www.auschron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/33
Author:  Louis Black
Note: Headline supplied by MAP editor, column runs under the headline "Page 
Two"
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

TIME TO END WAR ON DRUGS

It is time to end the ridiculous, ineffectual War on Drugs in order to 
concentrate on the very real War on Terrorism (though casting it as a war 
is misleading and leads to ineffective activities like the bombing in 
Afghanistan). The WOD is a civil war based more on moral hysteria than any 
logic.

Why is a relatively nonlethal drug like marijuana illegal while alcohol, so 
much more potent and potentially dangerous, is not? The argument that pot 
leads to the harder stuff lies at the very root of why we have to stop this 
losing campaign, now!

Sometime in the Sixties, Allen Ginsberg argued that making pot illegal was 
promoting this very graduation. Ginsberg pointed out that lines of 
distribution would be set up for the relatively benign pot along which, 
later, harder and different drugs would flow. When I was in high school in 
1966, 1967, most kids scored in the City, though there were a few ambitious 
dealers who would buy a couple of dime bags and split them up to sell them 
at home. Almost nobody did drugs.

In 1970, when I was home visiting from college, you could get any drug in 
any quantity you wanted at the high school. Within a decade, this was true 
of most schools in the country.

Even where you would least expect it. The lines of distribution, once 
established, served all sorts of product.

Ignoring the moral and logical argument against the WOD, let's talk about 
the tactical one. Specifically, the War on Drugs works in opposition to the 
battle against terrorism.

Smuggling drugs is very, very lucrative.

This has made our borders porous because it is very worthwhile to figure 
out how to penetrate them. Smuggling goes on in enormous quantities every 
day. Obviously, even if all drugs were legal, all kinds of smuggling would 
continue. But drugs -- easily among the most lucrative smuggled products -- 
and politics are already comfortable bedfellows. Internationally, in many 
areas anti-government forces have long ago turned to the drug trade as a 
source of revenue (the Northern Alliance comes to mind). Terrorists will 
logically cultivate this relationship. Drug smuggling can provide both the 
funds and the means for terrorists. There are networks of distribution set 
up throughout the United States for drugs because there are so many drug 
users and sympathizers. But how can these networks be perverted or imitated 
or situated as decoys?

There are only so many wars a country should conduct on its own soil at the 
same time.

This WOD has proven to be a long-term, expensive war against we the people 
in which everyone loses.

Imagine, if tomorrow alcohol were made illegal and everyone who possessed a 
bottle went to prison.

Ridiculous? We have filled our prisons with just such neighbors.

Which makes it harder to isolate the real criminals, those who pose an 
ongoing danger to society. The world has changed.

Today is the day to change our priorities. The fight against terrorism is 
already expensive, and costs will simply keep escalating. It is time to 
turn our attention from our own people, who mean us no harm, to those who 
so clearly do. At the bedrock is my conviction that the War on Drugs 
should, at best, be considered frivolously reactionary if it weren't so 
expensive in human and financial terms.

It is wrong.

Besides being wrong, right now, it is very dangerous to the real health of 
our country.
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MAP posted-by: Jackl