Pubdate: Mon, 10 Feb 2003
Source: Crimson White, The (Edu, Univ of Alabama)
Copyright: 2003 The Crimson White.
Contact:  http://www.cw.ua.edu/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2451
Author: Myron Von Hollingsworth

WAR ON DRUGS SUPPORTS DRUG TRAFFICKING

The war on drugs is not a war on terror. Actually, it is our drug warrior 
prohibitionists who sanction, condone, finance and perpetuate death, 
violence and terror.

The institution that makes drugs, dealers and terrorists dangerous, violent 
and rich is the drug war. It is prohibition that allows these "dangerous" 
dealers and terrorists to exist in the first place. After all, the 
government has declared war on them, their black market businesses and 
their black market goods. If the government wants a war, they've sure got 
one. One thing is going to separate the dealers from their huge black 
market profits - and it isn't the government's war - it is 
decriminalization, legalization, regulation and an end to the government's 
domestic war on citizens.

Drug dealers, terrorists, warlords, kingpins and guerillas fear only one 
thing. They don't fear the DEA, CIA, FBI, any other law enforcement or 
politicians or armies, because they either already own them or have them 
outgunned. The one thing they do fear is legalization and regulation.

Truth to tell, the government rarely lists victory as an objective in its 
expensive and oppressive trillion-dollar war. When it does spout its "zero 
tolerance/total victory" rhetoric, how many people actually believe it? How 
many actually believe this year's multi-billion dollar drug war budget will 
be the one that will achieve total victory after decades of billion-dollar 
budgets have totally failed?

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, 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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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens