Pubdate: Wed, 26 Jun 2002
Source: Post-Star, The (NY)
Copyright: 2002 Glens Falls Newspapers Inc.
Contact:  Local - Region
Page: B1
Website: http://www.poststar.net/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1068
Author: Mark Freeman
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

THE DRUG WE USE THAT SUPPORTS TERRORISTS

Suppose no American ever again drank alcohol. Think of the good that would 
do. Thousands, perhaps millions, of deaths and injuries from drunk driving 
would be avoided. Fewer men would beat up their wives in drunken rages. 
Home life would be improved.

So why don't we just prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol in our 
country? The answer is so simple and obvious that the reader is annoyed 
that I should raise the question. We tried that; it didn't work. Human 
beings are weak. Some of them feel the need of alcohol, and they will get 
it, regardless of what tie law says.

Besides the fact that it simply didn't work, there were other drawbacks 
to  Prohibition. The wealthy and the elite got their booze, one way or the 
other, and seldom if ever went to jail. The same was not true of the poor 
and unfortunate.  In addition to the other problems,  people often got 
alcohol that was contaminated, and went blind or died from drinking it. 
Obviously, if there is no legal alcohol, there are no government standards 
for its production.  The police, trying to enforce laws they themselves 
didn't believe in and often violated, became corrupted from the large 
quantities of easy money available from the criminal types who ran the 
bootleg factories and speakeasies.

The consumption of marijuana by Americans, like the consumption of alcohol 
and tobacco, and like gambling, probably does more harm than good, so why 
don't we just prohibit the sale and consumption of marijuana? We do.

The question should be, "Why do we allow the sale of some harmful 
substances, trying to control them to some extent, and prohibit the sale of 
others?"

Nobody can come up with any answer other than "Because we do."

Marijuana is not as addictive as tobacco. Drivers under its influence are 
far less likely to kill themselves or others than are drivers under the 
influence of alcohol. Yet our government, under all recent administrations, 
has been engaged in an incredibly costly "War on Drugs." The result has 
been to fill our jails with people who, for the most part, used small 
quantities of pot or cocaine.

If you don't think the so-called "drug war" has corrupted our police, you 
haven't been looking at the news from Schenectady over the past couple of 
years. Longstanding civil protections have gone by the board. Police 
departments are finding the drug war a source of new-found wealth. I'm 
not  talking about bribery by drug although that exists, but about the 
confiscation of cars, boats, and real estate with out due process that is 
legal under existing drug laws.

We may never know if 9/11 could have been prevented, or how it could have 
been prevented,  but we know this: From the time John Ashcroft took office 
until the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, there was just about no talk about 
terrorism in the Justice Department, but mil lions and millions of dollars 
and -hours were expended in the war on drugs.

Let a state pass a referendum making marijuana legal for terminally ill 
patients, and Mr. Ashcroft's minions descended on it in force, harassing 
old ladies who were bald from using chemo.

The drug warriors don't object to lying to serve their ends.

Just the other day, Bush's drug czar warned parents that marijuana has 
potency  levels 10 to 20 times stronger than in earlier times." Funny, the 
latest U.S. government study says that it's about twice as strong.

Nothing is more revolting than those ads that say that taking drugs helps 
terrorists. Under the Taliban, opium production in Afghanistan was illegal. 
The drug lords of Colombia are capitalists, not religious fanatics.

The drug you're hooked on that helps al-Qaida terrorists is -- gasoline. 
Money that goes to Saudi Arabia and other Middle  Eastern countries for 
petroleum finds its way very quickly to Osama bin Laden.

And that's a fact.
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