Pubdate: Thu, 07 Mar 2002
Source: Daily Breeze (CA)
Copyright: 2002 Daily Breeze
Contact:  http://www.dailybreeze.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/881
Author: Stan Nelson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm (ONDCP Media Campaign)

DRUGS, TERRORISM GO HAND IN HAND

A few local residents seem concerned about the White House Office of 
National Drug Control Policy advertising in the Super Bowl last month in an 
attempt to connect drugs and terrorism. The suggestions that "casual drug 
users" are partly responsible for things like judges being murdered, and 
other atrocities, seem to have irked these folks -- especially when you 
consider that the U.S. government spent a few million dollars for these ads.

For over three decades, I was involved in the enforcement of the "drug 
war," on a local and international level at varying times.

The Super Bowl, given that our national interest in sports dwarfed our 
interest in national security until 9-11, was the appropriate place to get 
several hundred million people worldwide to view these ads, and the 
implication of illegal drugs with terrorism.

Terrorism and drugs began with the opium wars, and perhaps before. Whole 
countries have been seized and governments changed by the shipping of drugs 
and maintenance of drug profits.

The Mexican government and the Colombian government, until recent times, 
have been manipulated by the power of drug profiteering. Elections have 
been decided as a result. Asian governments have long been influenced by 
the control of drug lords.

Murders in foreign countries and high-level assassinations in several 
countries have all been the result of drug traffickers. The Taliban, more 
recently, showed rigid opposition to heroin trafficking in Afghanistan -- 
while winking at the terrorists operating within their country, moving 
opium and producing heroin for the purchase of masses of weaponry and funds 
to promote the inevitable incident of 9-11, among others.

Locally, the majority of daily crimes you hear about, violent and 
chillingly demonstrative as they are, are committed by drug users. Most of 
the police pursuits we see, which terrorize our highways and surface 
streets, are led by an initiated drug user.

Recently a person shot four police officers, kidnapped two very young 
female children and shot one of them. His excuse was that the "casual 
drugs" he chose to use affected his judgment. He said this to a hostage 
negotiator on a cellular telephone.

He unfortunately died in an intense gunbattle with SWAT officers. The 
coroner revealed the man had a .51 percent methamphetamine level in his 
blood -- an inhuman amount to have been ingested.

Drug Wars. Did they cause terrorism to succeed by concentrating on the 
traffickers? Highly unlikely. The traffickers were the terrorists.

STAN NELSON

Redondo Beach
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MAP posted-by: Beth