Pubdate: Tue, 19 Apr 2005
Source: Australian, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2005sThe Australian
Contact: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/files/aus_letters.htm
Website: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/35
Author: Phillip Adams
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

ANOTHER US-LED WAR WE CAN'T HOPE TO WIN

DRUGS to Bali, coals to Newcastle. This wretched case highlights two 
important issues of politics and public policy. Both at their worst. First, 
the moral horror of capital punishment. Second, the endless moral panic 
driving drugs, a local and international issue.

Many of us oppose the death penalty in all circumstances. I even regretted 
Israel's decision to execute Adolf Eichmann. That prime example of Hannah 
Arendt's "banality of evil", that human black hole should have been left 
alive. As should Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and any other monster you 
care to name. Try them, find them guilty, imprison them for all eternity. 
But don't kill them like the dogs they are, like they've killed others. 
Keep them in a cage, if you must, parade them through the streets, but 
don't degrade yourselves with an act of official murder.

Least of all for the crime of drug smuggling. The crime that shouldn't be a 
crime at all. The crime that more than any other on this sad, silly earth 
of ours preoccupies the police, clogs the judicial and penal systems, 
chokes the courts and crowds the prisons. The prisons we can't build fast 
enough.

Were drugs to be decriminalised in this country, we would regain something 
of our collective sanity. Were it to happen in the US, where this insane 
war against drugs was first declared, millions of kids, overwhelmingly 
African-American, could be decriminalised as well. Then a state such as 
California could stop spending more money on jails for its young than it 
does on funding new universities.

Prohibition and interdiction of drugs has proved to be as foolish and 
futile as prohibition of booze. If anything, it encourages the black market 
in narcotics, pushing the pushers to push harder while pushing up the 
prices. And, of course, upping the ante on police corruption. A public 
health problem becomes a cause celebre for grandstanding politicians.

If we can't keep drugs out of our prisons, with their high walls and thick 
bars, with all the screws, surveillance and cavity searching, then what 
hope have we of keeping drugs out of Australia, with its thousands of 
kilometres of unguarded coastline? With millions of tonnes of unexamined 
containers piling up at our ports? With countless unsearched visitors 
arriving at our airports? That's right. Absolutely none. No hope at all.

So what that some of it is discovered en route, to be proudly displayed to 
the television cameras, along with hyped-up street prices. All that 
nonsense about the seizure being worth $2 million, $3million, $5 million. 
Thanks to market forces, the shipment will be replaced and the street 
price, at least for the short term, will increase, forcing addicts to steal 
more TVs and DVD players. Watching all that effort to grab a few plastic 
bags of white powder is like watching someone baling the ocean with a 
bucket. A bucket with a hole in it.

In any case, were every effort to bring in illegal drugs to be thwarted, 
were everyone convicted of any role in smuggling, selling or using to be 
dragged off to a local death row (and hence to a place of execution where 
they'd have, at taxpayers' expense, a final fix with a nice clean needle), 
do you imagine that would put an end to humans taking drugs? Human 
ingenuity would find another way to supply the market. Prescription drugs 
are always promising. And new drugs are always being invented. You can cook 
'em in the kitchen, brew them in the basement. Ask your local biker gang.

It's time to give the death penalty the death penalty. The fact we gave it 
up after Henry Bolte's hanging of Ronald Ryan in 1967 gives us some 
authority here. Unfortunately, we signed up to the US war against drugs 
long before we joined its war on terror and the US Commander-in-Chief has 
the world's worst record on capital punishment. So George W. Bush can't 
help us in Bali even if he wanted to.

It's also time to get out of that drug war. Even if you support the war in 
Iraq, surely you can see that we must extricate ourselves and our children 
from this unwinnable war against drugs. Certain drugs, that is. The few 
drugs our moral panic merchants choose to demonise.

America's great conservative - many would argue its greatest - has been 
urging Washington to admit the war is lost. In this stand William F. 
Buckley is joined by anyone with half a brain. Sadly, it won't happen in 
the US. But it should happen here. And it could if our political leadership 
contained any leaders.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman