Pubdate: Wed, 13 Dec 2000
Source: Denver Rocky Mountain News (CO)
Copyright: 2000 Denver Publishing Co.
Contact:  400 W. Colfax, Denver, CO 80204
Website: http://www.denver-rmn.com/
Author: Mike Plylar

DRUG WAR NOTHING SHORT OF NATIONAL FRATRICIDE

In his Dec. 3 letter "Marijuana prohibition is a deadly approach," 
Robert Sharpe clearly detailed what a deadly, rights-robbing charade 
our elected and appointed officials, in collusion with the anti-drug 
industry, have created under the guise of the war on drugs.

There's no question that all Americans in one way or another are 
victims of U.S. drug policy. But drugs bear little direct 
responsibility for this harm. Drugs do not kill the majority of "drug 
war" casualties. Nor does an innocuous plant destroy almost every 
vestige of our Constitution.

A policy that was doomed from its inception, drug prohibition, 
consumes lives wholesale, exactly as it has destroyed, and continues 
to injure, countless innocent American citizens almost daily. The war 
on drugs is nothing short of national fratricide, pure and simple.

We surrender our rights, lives and tax dollars at an increasingly 
alarming rate. Whether it's the words that are censored from our 
conversations and communications; the firearm restrictions 
purportedly implemented to stop warring, black market drug gangs from 
murdering each other; the urine samples many are required to provide 
for the most preposterous of reasons; the property seized with no 
charges levied; the searches allowed on the flimsiest of evidence; 
the trillion or so dollars spent on this bureaucratic catastrophe; or 
the innocent Americans mistakenly gunned down by government agents in 
search of contraband, the war on drugs threatens the very foundations 
of our republic and our culture.

How and when it ends is entirely our decision. But one thing is 
overwhelmingly clear: We must end it before it ends us.
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MAP posted-by: Kirk Bauer