Pubdate: Thu, 07 Apr 2016
Source: Bundaberg News Mail (Australia)
Copyright: 2016 The Bundaberg Newspaper Company Pty Limited
Contact: http://www.news-mail.com.au/contact/feedback/
Website: http://www.news-mail.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/657
Author: Dieter Moeckel

DRUG WAR FAILED

IN THE US prohibition of drugs led by Harry Anslinger was predicated 
on racial grounds, cocaine and marijuana associated with African 
Americans and jazz and opioids with Chinese.

Further cannabis had strong opposition from timber investments 
supplying the newspaper industries.

Nixon's war on drugs continued this precedent.

In an interview in 1994 with investigative journalist Dan Baum Nixon 
advisor John Erlichman admitted, "the Nixon campaign in 1968, and the 
Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and 
black people.

"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or 
black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with 
marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both 
heavily, we could disrupt those communities. "We could arrest their 
leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them 
night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying 
about the drugs? Of course we did."

Next month, the United Nations will dedicate a General Assembly 
Special Session (UNGASS) to discuss global drug policy.

The failure of the war on drugs cannot be ignored. Financially it has 
cost billions of dollars. The human cost is incalculable: thousands 
murdered, millions of lives destroyed by draconian punishment that 
doesn't end at the prison gate. And drug use has not diminished.

DIETER MOECKEL

Wonbah
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom