Pubdate: Fri, 05 Nov 1999
Source: Standard-Times (MA)
Copyright: 1999 The Standard-Times
Contact:  25 Elm Street, New Bedford, MA 02740
Website: http://www.s-t.com/
Forum: http://www.s-t.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro
Author:  Myron Von Hollingsworth

WHAT DRUG DEALERS FEAR MOST: LEGALIZATION

The institution that makes drugs and dealers dangerous is the drug war. It
is prohibition that allows these "dangerous" dealers to exist in the first
place. After all, the government has declared war on them, their black
market businesses and their black market goods.

If the government wants a war, they've sure got one. One thing is going to
separate the dealers from their huge black market profits -- and it isn't
the government's war: It is decriminalization, legalization, regulation and
an end to the government's domestic war on citizens.

Drug dealers, warlords, kingpins and guerillas fear only one thing.

They don't fear the DEA, CIA, FBI, any other law enforcement or politicians
or armies because they either already own them or have them outgunned.

The one thing they do fear is legalization and regulation.

Truth to tell, the government rarely lists victory as an objective in their
expensive and oppressive trillion dollar war. When they do spout their
"zero tolerance/total victory" rhetoric, how many of your readers actually
believe them? How many actually believe that this year's
multi-billion-dollar drug war budget will be the one that will achieve
total victory after decades of billion-dollar budgets have totally failed?

Maybe the politicians are required to adhere to the party line of
prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison-industrial
complex, the drug testing industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the
politicians themselves, et al. can't live without the budget justification,
not to mention the invisible profits, bribery, corruption and forfeiture
benefits that prohibition affords them. The drug war also promotes,
justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement policies and is diminishing
many freedoms and liberties that are supposed to be guaranteed by the
constitution and bill of rights.

Myron Von Hollingsworth
Fort Worth, Tex.

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