Pubdate: Fri, 08 October 1999
Source: Star-Ledger (NJ)
Copyright: 1999 Newark Morning Ledger Co.
Contact:  1 Star-Ledger Plaza, Newark, N.J., 07102-1200
Website: http://www.nj.com/starledger/
Forum: http://forums.nj.com/
Author: Sean Day

THE PHONY WAR

Thanks to Paul Mulshine for coming clean about drugs. Yes, the fact is
that pot smokers are not intrinsically criminal - not murderers,
rapists or thieves but lawyers, businessmen and computer whizzes. Why
should it be a crime to have a particular chemical in your
bloodstream? What business is it of the government indeed!

The war on drugs is nothing but a scam perpetrated on an uneducated
citizenry. As always, it's the money, stupid. Through taxation, the
federal government has helped itself to billions of our dollars yet
can't interdict the flow of drugs. And the government reaps a further
windfall with confiscatory laws that apply only to drugs. The powers
to be don't even need a conviction to wrest from you all that is
yours. The government has a financial incentive for
prosecution.

The criminal conspiracy is on the other side of the fence, with the
pharmaceutical combines, paper and chemical industries and textile
manufacturers. They don't want the competition hemp production would
provide. If this isn't so, can someone explain why, with only a few
varieties of hemp providing marijuana, all hemp production is banned?
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