Pubdate: Tue, 10 Jul 2001
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Note: Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Nation.

AMERICA'S DIRTY WAR ON DRUGS

Good to see that sanity can sometimes be as infectious as insanity. All it 
takes, apparently, is one lucid moment on the part of one public figure, 
and a whole realm of illusion can be dissipated. The Peter Lilley moment on 
soft drugs, closely followed by the David Blunkett one, gives some reason 
to hope that the American nightmare is not in our future.

Here is what happened in my hometown of Washington DC during the 
Congressional elections of 1998. A local initiative was attached to the 
ballot, proposing the "decriminalisation" of marijuana for medical 
purposes. After the votes had been counted, it was abruptly announced that 
the result would not be disclosed. The United States Congress, which has 
ultimate jurisdiction over municipal government in the capital of the free 
world, ruled that, though it could not prevent a vote being taken, it could 
prevent the outcome from being made public.

Right away, I knew what I had already guessed - that the citizens had voted 
overwhelmingly to allow the use of cannabis for the treatment of cancer and 
glaucoma. But it took a protracted lawsuit to get the ballots counted and 
the voters decision made known, only to be negated by Congress once again.

In every other state where this simple question has been mooted at election 
times, it has carried the day by unanswerable majorities. In each instance, 
Congress or the federal government has intervened to have the decision set 
aside. The word for this, in commonplace vernacular, is "denial".

The domestic war against the enemy within, which was begun as Richard 
Nixon's last desperate gamble for panicky popularity, is now in the same 
shape as the rest of his legacy. It reeks of corruption, police brutality 
and overweening bureaucracy. It also involves a demented overseas 
entanglement, with off-the-record US military aircraft running shady 
missions over Colombia and Peru, and high-level collaboration with ruthless 
and unaccountable "Special Forces".

I simply cannot remember the last time, in public or private, that I spoke 
with a single person who believes this makes the least particle of sense. 
The opinion pages can occasionally drum up a lone, dull voice, but it's 
almost invariably that of a paid spokesman for a "war" machine that enjoys 
funding in inverse proportion to its victories. Again, I know very few 
habitual drug users, but I also don't know anyone who would be more than 
two degrees of separation from a reliable supplier, whether that turned out 
to be a gangsta or a cop.

A striking fact is the predominance of honest and intelligent conservatives 
on the sane side of the argument. The first editor with any "profile" to 
call for legalisation was William F Buckley, the old lion of the rightwing 
National Review. He has been joined by George Schultz, formerly Reagan's 
secretary of state, and by Gary Johnson, the Republican governor of New 
Mexico, among many others. The "libertarian" journals have been ahead of 
the "liberal" ones for the most part. In an eerie way, this matches the 
recent shift of opinion on capital punishment, where conservatives have 
again been taking the most moral and political risks. (In both cases, the 
common factor may be Bill Clinton, the Nixon of the liberals, who expanded 
the drug war just as he increased the scope of the death penalty.)

Three decades of this grotesque, state-sponsored racketeering have led to 
unbelievable levels of official corruption and to an unheard-of assault on 
civil and political liberties. Colombia doesn't look any more like the US 
as a result, but the US does look a lot more like Colombia. The actual 
resources expended would have more than paid for national health care: the 
potential revenue from legal, and therefore clean, narcotics would rebuild 
the cities from the ground up. 
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart