Pubdate: Thu, 1 Jan 2004
Source: Free Press, The (Houston, TX)
Issue: 11, Page 35 00
Copyright: 2004 The Free Press, Houston
Contact:  http://www.mapinc.org/media/3222
Note: This monthly newspaper does not have a website.
Author: Dean Becker
Note: Dean Becker's Drug War NEWS airs locally on Pacifica Radio station 
KPFT, 90.1 FM and on 89.5 FM in Galveston: Mon-Sat at 4:20 PM and on 
Tuesdays at 6:30.  Please visit: www.cultural-baggage.com

THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH

Broadcasting 7 days a week, from the Gulag City of Planet Earth, I am the 
host of Cultural Baggage and the 4:20 Drug War NEWS.  These programs air 
each week on KPFT, Houston at 90.1 FM, on the Sirius Satellite Network, on 
FM frequencies in 6 other states and one in British Colombia, Canada.

My goal is to expose the "Unvarnished Truth" about the drug war.  The war 
of terror is really just the war on drugs, with afterburners.  The 
mechanism of demonizing those who might have chemical weapons has been used 
for a century in America to go after mostly men of color, with drug 
concoctions considered so dangerous as to be a threat to the continuation 
of our society.

The purpose of this column is to bring you the latest, most pertinent data 
available in regards to drug prohibition and to showcase the efforts of 
others in trying to bring this jihad against our own people, to an end.  On 
December 17th, we started the 90th year of drug prohibition here in 
America.  On 12/17/14, the Harrison Narcotics Act began the demonization 
and destruction of individuals and their families who chose ( chemical 
weapons, ) drugs not approved by the alcohol, tobacco, energy and 
pharmaceutical companies.

We have been duped.  This drug war is exactly what the drug lords want, 
their fondest wish fulfilled.  Drug lords on both sides of the equation 
work to ensure the perpetuity of their scheme.  On the one side, the 
growers, smugglers and sellers want this war to continue, lest their golden 
goose die from legalization.  On the other side, the major pharmaceutical 
houses need this war to continue, lest they loose their stranglehold over 
the "truth" about these drugs.  Gangs, violence, overdose deaths and 
children having access to drugs is a requirement, a necessity to maintain 
this drug war through constant, and ever evolving fear, generated and 
constantly refreshed by the drug lord's minions in the corporate media.

December 17th, 2003 marked another reason to remember this date; this is 
when the 9th Circuit Court declared parts of the Interstate Commerce Clause 
of the Controlled Substances Act to be unconstitutional.  This marks the 
date when they told Attorney General Ashcroft and his henchman to back 
off.  The 9th Circuit decision will allow medical marijuana patients, in 
states like California to legally use their medicine with a doctor's 
recommendation if they either grow their own or have a caretaker with a 
green thumb.  The reasons are obvious, there is no commerce, there is no 
interstate transportation and they are using marijuana under a doctor's care.

I spoke with Angel Raich, who along with Diane Monson sued Ashcroft and won 
the right to grow and smoke their own marijuana.  Angel told me how for 
years she had been paranoid, because of the ongoing series of busts in 
California by the DEA.  She has a brain tumor that's inoperable and has 
been told by her doctors that if she were deprived of her medicine for even 
a few days it would be a death sentence.  As we closed our conversation she 
stated: "For the last couple of years, I have not felt safe in my own home, 
because of the federal government.  It just shows that someone as small as 
me can go up against a mighty giant like John Ashcroft and succeed."

During the month of January, the guests you will hear on Cultural Baggage 
beside Angel Raich, will include Judge James P.  Gray, the author of the 
drug reformers "Bible": "Why our Drug Laws Have Failed and what We Can Do 
About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs".  Judge Gray is 
running for the US Senate in the State of California.  In tandem with Angel 
Raich's battle against the Attorney General, Judge Gray has called John 
Ashcroft "the most dangerous man in America today".

Part of what we do with our drug war news programs is to educate and 
motivate the listeners.  An event of enormous import in the drug war is 
coming to Houston this coming April.  The Drug Policy Alliance, ( 
www.drugpolicy.org ) is sponsoring the "Breaking The Chains" conference on 
racial bias from April 1 to April 3, 2004 at the TSU campus.  Speakers will 
include congressman John Conyers, the head of the congressional black 
caucus.  Other congressmen, scientists, doctors, authors and drug reformers 
from around the world will participate in these events as well.  The reason 
Houston was chosen relates to the fact that we sent more people to prison 
for less than a gram of drugs than did the whole rest of the state combined.

For nearly 500 years, colonialist powers like England, Spain and later the 
United States, made it their business to impose their will on lesser 
countries, to force new religions and morals on all the "heathen cultures" 
of this earth.  In the process, they vilified and demonized the use of such 
drugs as marijuana, coca and opium which previously had been recognized for 
their medicinal properties and as sacraments of many religions, many 
cultures for thousands of years.

In the early 20th century, corporate heads foresaw gleaming profits in 
prohibiting the use of certain plants.  They claimed that Chinamen on opium 
were a threat to a decent society, that Mexicans and Blacks would rape 
white women after smoking marijuana, that prison or death were too good for 
drug users and that the religious and medicinal underpinnings of these 
drugs were sacrilegious and evil.

These men of influence and wealth had the contacts to force through laws 
based on nothing more than rumors circulated through newspapers controlled 
by these same interests.  The American people were fooled into believing 
they were saved and that the control and distribution of these herbs and 
their extracts should be prohibited.  This "prohibited" drug commerce now 
approaches five hundred billion dollars per year!

Today, the United States, through its drug convention treaties, forces its 
ideas of Judeo-Christianity, and all their attendant drug laws and morals 
on the whole world.  U.S.  media now ignores the ongoing drug reform in 
England, Spain, Portugal, Canada and much of the rest of the 
world.  Research, experience and common sense have shown these enlightened 
countries that the medieval drug laws are simply a mechanism that if left 
unchecked, would someday devour the meaning, the very fabric, of liberty.

The United States has now repudiated the nuclear arms treaty and refuses to 
sign five other treaties that otherwise have worldwide endorsement.  Our 
government paid no attention whatsoever when the U.S.  seats on the UN Drug 
Policy and Human Rights panels were lost.  We do not care.  We are willing 
to lock up more than two million of our own people in order to support a 
growing prison-industrial complex.  With the selection of Bush; his choice 
of Ashcroft for Attorney General and with John Walters heading up the DEAth 
squads, the future had seemed set here in the US; an ever more vigorous 
prosecution/persecution seemed assured.

However, with the great news, that always seems to come from California, we 
now have a situation where Angel and Diane can legally smoke their 
medicine, safe from the dictates of zealots like John Ashcroft.  Even Ed 
Rosenthal, the "Guru of Ganja" can now legally grow and smoke his 
own.  Certainly the feds will try to pull their fat out of the fire, but 
the recent decisions by the US Supreme Court to allow doctors to recommend 
cannabis would seem to portend a better day on the horizon for all cannabis 
consumers.

I ask you to be part of the solution, to dare to write a letter to your 
congressman and to the editor of the Houston Chronicle.  Tell them this 
charade of a drug war has gone on for far too long.  Demand that they find 
a better way to protect our children.

My sound bite, used when I meet a network camera goes something like this: 
"The day we regulate the distribution of these drugs to adults, is the day 
we destroy the worth of the drug lords' stash; is the day we eliminate most 
of the reasons for which street gangs exist and is the day we take away the 
job of every street corner vendor who wants to sell drugs to our 
children.  And that's just the first day."

I ask all government leaders, all citizens to please consider a rational 
approach to ending this drug war.  Help rid the earth of this monster of 
drug prohibition, spawned from a cesspool of hypocrisy.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake