Pubdate: Mon, 26 Feb 2001
Source: Times Record News (TX)
Copyright: 2001 The E.W. Scripps Co.
Contact:  1301 Lamar, Wichita Falls, TX 76301
Fax: (940)767-1741
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Website: http://www.trnonline.com/
Author: Steve Clements
Note: Clements is the City Editor of the Times Record News

PLACE MORE IMPORTANCE ON HEALING ADDICTION THAN ENFORCING DRUG LAWS

Snapshots from a nation at "war"...

Eleven people executed on a mountain trail in Colombia -- for the crime of 
wanting to study a volcano.

Government-funded narco squads using heat-sensing technology to peer inside 
your home, just in case you're up to no good (they could be parked outside 
your house right now).

Skeletons bleached white in the hot desert sun of southwest Texas, the 
remains of peasant "mules" who traded their lives to drug-runners for the 
chance of finding a better life in the United States.

Blacks, Mexicans and poor whites, strip-searched and humiliated on the 
highways because they look like the drug-smuggling "type."

Prisons crammed with non-violent "criminals" who cost just as much to feed 
and house as the murderers and rapists we want locked up.

This is not the America we were supposed to inherit, this nation that locks 
up one of every three black men, sends people to prison for life for 
supplying commodities used by an estimated 20 to 40 percent of the 
population and destabilizes other nations so we can do the politically 
expedient thing.

You can say it doesn't affect you -- but you'd be wrong. Just ask the folks 
trapped during the shootout in an Irving sporting-goods store that claimed 
the life of a cop.

Because our prisons are already overcrowded again -- mainly from the 
fallout of our drug war -- guards are overworked and obviously unable to 
keep the worst of the worst corralled. I've heard from local corrections 
officers who recite scary statistics about keeping watch over dozens of 
prisoners -- by themselves.

State prison authorities will tell you seven inmates broke out of a 
facility in Kenedy because the guards weren't paying attention. The guards 
at that unit, however, say it was too crowded to watch all the prisoners 
all the time.

The men who busted out of the Kenedy unit weren't there for drugs. They 
were sent to prison because they killed, raped, kidnapped and tortured. One 
of them beat a small child to death.

But because we're determined to punish drug offenders like we punish 
killers, rapists and kidnappers, we can't really do a decent job with 
either group.

Nothing new about that, though, is there? You're probably getting as tired 
of reading these columns as I am of writing them.

What's changed is the leadership of the drug war. Bill Clinton put more 
people in prison for drugs than any other president, ever. He escalated 
anti-drug efforts in South America, ensuring more murder in Colombia by 
donating millions of our tax dollars to that nation's corrupt government.

Weren't we lucky to have a president who was so determined to keep a rein 
on our morals?

This is my fear for the next four years. I always suspected that Billy 
Bob's heart was never really in the war on drugs. But because his political 
opponents got a lot of mileage out of his "radical" past -- which, after 
all, was only as radical as his need to establish a politically correct 
stance against the Vietnam War -- Clinton always felt the need to bend over 
backwards to prove his opposition to drugs.

So now we have a new president -- who has the same kind of past. George 
W.'s record includes a drunken-driving conviction and a sneaking suspicion, 
shared by just about everybody in the nation, that he snorted a little 
go-go powder in his misspent youth.

Despite the drug-war posturing that he showed off during a recent visit to 
Mexico, I have high hopes -- no pun intended -- for at least a partial 
retreat in our drug war. These days, it's the conservatives in Bush' own 
party, not the "Acid, Amnesty and Abortion" liberals of the 1970s, who are 
beginning to call for a surrender.

My fear: Like Clinton, Bush will believe he has something to prove, and 
nothing to lose, by beefing up the front-line fight and closing down the 
medics' tent.

My hope: Unlike Clinton, Bush will realize that most Americans place less 
emphasis on the fighting here and abroad and more importance on healing at 
the homefront.

The elder Bush never grasped that concept. He lost his job while he was 
mucking around in foreign affairs and neglecting domestic issues.

His son, meanwhile, has a chance to perform a major overhaul on the 
nation's drug policy. More importantly, he's got the conservative pedigree 
to pull it off -- if he can avoid the Clinton trap and realize that his 
past doesn't need to dictate foreign policy.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager