Pubdate: Sun, 02 Dec 2001
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2001 St. Petersburg Times
Contact:  http://www.sptimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419
Author: Robyn E. Blumner

GOVERNMENT FIGHTS WAR ON TERRORISM AND DRUGS AS ONE IN THE SAME

As the United States wages a war on two fronts, against both terrorism and 
drugs, Ethan Nadelmann poses a fair question of priorities. "Which white 
powder do we want the government looking for," asks Nadelmann, executive 
director of the Lindesmith Center, a non-profit drug policy organization. 
"Do we want them focused on anthrax or do we want them focused on cocaine?"

Our profligate $50-billion-per-year drug war is certainly diverting 
potential resources from our fight against terrorism. But what worries 
Nadelmann even more is the way these two wars are converging. He believes 
that in the near future all of the law enforcement and military 
infrastructure we have built to investigate and prevent terrorist 
activities will be incorporated into the war on drugs.

"The question becomes, whether down the road a few years, when we have in 
place a new, very well-funded, large-scale . . . security apparatus focused 
on counterterrorism, will pressures begin to emerge to refocus it at the 
war on drugs -- where what the government will be looking for will not be 
hundreds of people (terrorists) who might do massive damage to a large 
number of people, but millions of people (drug users) who could potentially 
do little damage to anyone but themselves," Nadelmann says.

Already there are signs that the drug war and the war on terrorism are seen 
by our national leaders as one in the same. In September, after the World 
Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert 
announced the formation of a new task force to combat drug trafficking. 
"The illegal drug trade is the financial engine that fuels many terrorist 
organizations around the world, including Osama bin Laden," Hastert said.

Actually, one need only keep up with the news to know that the outlandish 
profits generated by black market drugs are used to support terrorist 
campaigns. Hence the term "narco-terrorist."

The most obvious examples are within our own hemisphere. Colombia is a 
nation ripped apart by its high-volume drug trade, the profits of which 
have gone to underwrite leftist rebel movements as well as right-wing 
paramilitary death squads. Similarly, illicit drug profits supported the 
Shining Path guerrilla insurgency in Peru.

The United Nations estimates that the world trade in illicit drugs 
generates about $400-billion every year -- plenty of money to send a dozen 
men to flight school.

The government could plug this money spigot almost overnight but 
unforgiveably chooses not to. All we would have to do is move our 
prohibitionist drug war into more sensible territory, such as legalizing 
marijuana, and decriminalizing and regulating the use of harder substances. 
Ending alcohol prohibition showed us that organized crime will get squeezed 
out as profits plummet and legitimate businesses enter the market.

This is obvious to nearly everyone but our political leaders. The American 
people have pretty much had it with the zero-tolerance drug war, as evinced 
by the widespread public support for medical marijuana initiatives and the 
California initiative to put non-violent drug offenders in treatment rather 
than prison. But beyond a handful of brave truth-sayers such as Gov. Gary 
Johnson of New Mexico, politicians refuse to catch up. Too many of their 
powerful constituent groups -- police, prison officials, attorneys and 
manufacturers of materiel -- have fed their careers at the drug war trough. 
The Drug Enforcement Administration alone employs more than 9,000 people.

So, despite the way our policy of drug prohibition provides a source of 
funds for overseas terrorist activity, the United States will not cede an 
inch. Instead, we will continue to arrest more than a half- million people 
for simple marijuana possession every year and to raid medical marijuana 
facilities regardless of the people's expressed will.

The nomination of narco-hawk John Walters for drug czar is a signal from 
President Bush that no thoughtful, commonsensical approaches to the drug 
problem will be entertained.

But what is most chilling is the way the new police powers of extra- 
judicial detention and surveillance, justified through the need to combat 
terrorism, will inevitably leach over into drug enforcement. Nadelmann 
makes the astute point that, just as voters and the courts were beginning 
to draw limits around the way law enforcement could invade privacy or 
dispense with due process in pursuit of the drug war, the war on terrorism 
emerged with its no-holds-bar exigencies.

For those who think government power over the individual should have 
reasonable constraints, Sisyphus' rock has rolled down the mountain once again.
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