Pubdate: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 Source: Santa Barbara News-Press (CA) Copyright: 2000 Santa Barbara News-Press Contact: P.O. Box 1359, Santa Barbara, CA 93102 Website: http://www.newspress.com/ Author: Harry D. Fisher Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1355/a02.html ALCORN ON TARGET ABOUT DRUG WAR Randy Alcorn's hard-hitting column was right on target! Seldom have I read anything on the war on drugs so clear, so succinct, and so true. Randy's commentary deserves to be printed in every newspaper in the country, be posted on every billboard and telephone pole, and pasted up on every bus stop. The war on drugs is a cruel, cynical and criminal assault on our liberties by a law enforcement apparatus, a state within the state, that has been given unbridled license by the politicians to savage the population. The Land of the Free has become the Land of the Prosecutor, where policies reign that are every bit as inhumane as the policies of totalitarian regimes. A reign of undercover police, informers, uniformed police in the schools lecturing to the children are the vital signs of a police state, a repressive, torturing state where harmless people are caught in the government's web of deceit, frequently without recourse. In America you get exactly the amount of justice you can afford, with the result that the prisons are jammed with the poor who generate income for the prison industrial complex and the owners of the private prisons, and this from our tax money. The drug prisoners are a commodity, fresh meat that serves as fodder for the punishment machine, a contemporary slave trade. The crimes of the politicians scream to high heaven, and the injustice of the war on drugs is intolerable to any but the most abject, craven slaves. I am ashamed to be an American and having to witness the crimes, the abuse and the injustices perpetrated in my name. Harry D. Fisher, Woodland Hills - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D