Pubdate: Sun, 14 Jul 2002
Source: Daytona Beach News-Journal (FL)
Copyright: 2002 News-Journal Corp
Contact:  http://www.n-jcenter.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/700
Author: Myron Von Hollingsworth and Adam Wiggins

MOTIVES FOR DRUG WAR

Re "Drug war lows: Milton Friedman's 30-year-old advice," July 6 editorial:

Truth to tell, the drug warrior police, politicians, officials, media and 
civilians ("secretly") don't list victory as an objective in their 
expensive and oppressive trillion dollar war. When they do spout their 
"zero tolerance/total victory" rhetoric, how many readers actually believe 
them? How many actually believe that this year's multibillion dollar drug 
war budget will achieve total victory after decades of billion dollar 
budgets have failed?

The drug czars' and warriors' jobs depend on the perpetual prosecution of, 
but never a victory in, the drug war. The politicians depend on the drug 
war and its rhetoric to scare up votes (by scaring voters). The politicians 
also rely on the drug war to sustain their constituent industries and 
institutions that depend on the economics of prohibition in order to make 
generous profits and campaign contributions.

Remember what H.L. Mencken said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to 
keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by 
menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

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 Immigration and Naturalization Service, the CIA, 
the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the politicians themselves et 
al. can't live without the budget justification, not to mention the 
invisible profits, 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, Texas
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Should End War On Drugs

Bravo to the author of the July 6 editorial "Drug war lows: Milton 
Friedman's 30-year-old advice":

Mr. Friedman was 100 percent correct in thinking drug prohibition is both 
morally wrong and unworkable. Thirty years of the war on drugs have proved 
him right a thousand times over. If only President Bush and our other 
representatives would do what is right: Put an end to the drug war.

ADAM WIGGINS

Pasadena, Calif.
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MAP posted-by: Beth