Pubdate: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 Source: The Yuma Daily Sun (AZ) Copyright: {TEAR} The Yuma Daily Sun Contact: Yuma Daily Sun, P.O. Box 271, Yuma, AZ 86366 Fax: (520) 343-1009 Website: http://www.yumasun.com/ Author: Myron Von Hollingsworth DRUG WAR DISCRIMINATORY Editor, The Sun: I read your editorial about U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and his misguided plan to expand the drug war. Ashcroft is a clown and he must believe we are too. Anyone who knows anything about racial discrimination and the drug war, knows that the drug war was founded over 70 years ago on racist principles and ideologies. "DEA-land" criticizes ethnic cleansing around the world from Hitler to Milosevic but practices it daily with its drug war. In the October 1999 edition of "High Times" Jello Biafra says that "DEA-land's" drug war is ethnic cleansing American style. If your readers doubt this, they should ask themselves why white drug users outnumber non-white drug users but a majority of those dying or doing time for non-violent drug crimes are people of color. Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the party line of prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison and military industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the "drug treatment" industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA and the politicians themselves can't live without the budget justification, not to mention the invisible profits from bribery, corruption and forfeiture benefits that prohibition affords them. The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are supposed to be inalienable according to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. MYRON VON HOLLINGSWORTH Fort Worth - --- MAP posted-by: Terry F