Pubdate: Thu, 15 Dec 2005
Source: Free Press, The (Houston, TX)
Column: Unvarnished Truth
Copyright: 2005 The Free Press, Houston
Contact:  http://www.mapinc.org/media/3222
Note: This newspaper does not have a website.
Author: Dean Becker

FEAR AND LOATHING... EVERYWHERE

December 17th makes 91 years of success in the drug war.  Ninety-one
years since the signing of the Harrison Narcotics Act.

We have spent more than 11 TRILLION dollars in making prohibition a
success.  We have arrested and destroyed the lives of tens of millions
of Americans for possessing flowers or other plant extracts.  We have
sentenced young people to prison terms totaling more than 100 million
man-years behind bars.  Drugs are cheaper now, more pure than ever
before and our children have easier access to drugs than at any time
in our history.

Success, at last.

We, the people of Houston, Harris County, Texas lead the world in
glorious drug war success.  We send ten times more blacks to prison
than did the nation of South Africa under racial apartheid.  We pride
ourselves on being a civilized society, even though we have a crime
lab that is an international scandal, a jail that is massively
overcrowded, disease-ridden and a school for violent behavior.

We are all responsible for this madness, this sanctified mayhem.  The
representatives, the senators, the attorneys general.  The County
Judge, commissioners, mayor, council, sheriff, police chief and a
district attorney without compassion, without conscience.  Mostly,
though it is we, the people who sit and watch and allow this
abomination to unfold without the blinking of an eye, without
reservation, without a clue.

This drug war began, and continues to this day as an unconstitutional
affront to our dignity, our rights as free people.  Offered the false
hope that professional opinions and supervision over what we should
put into our bodies would bring us health and prosperity, the American
people succumbed to the pressure to accept the dictates/mandates of
the Harrison Act, forgoing our basic, God-given and basic American
rights in hopes of a better tomorrow as promised by the pharmaceutical
houses, the pontificating politicians and the bleating hearts of law
enforcement.

Today, the Drug Czar in DC has determined that not even doctors can be
trusted to make medical decisions for the citizenry.  Bands of gypsy
snitches now roam the countryside, pretending to be in pain, begging
good doctors for pills to alleviate their suffering, only to appear in
court, fit as fiddles and thus "exposing" the good doctors intentions
as evil, their prescriptions as willful violations of law and their
practice to be trafficking in drugs.

The drug war has been handed down, from generation to generation, from
one group of elected officials to the next.  Nobody bothers to
investigate the racial bigotry involved, the lack of substantive data,
the ever-escalating costs.

Nobody wants to appear soft on crime, so the drug war continues,
forever.

The drug war is in and of itself, perhaps the greatest crime of all
time, and yet it continues day after day.  Why?  Because of public
ignorance and truthfully because of wide-spread, deeply ingrained
racial bigotry and fear.

I try each day to face down the lions, to expose the fraud, I try to
buy, bribe, cajole, beg, whimper and cry out that this abomination
exists and needs correction, to no avail.

How could everyone be out of step, but me?  You must help me realize
that constitutional safeguards are a thing of the past that human
rights are no longer necessary and that leading the world in the
incarceration of our own people is a good and positive thing.

I have been left out of that comfort zone by my own deviant beliefs.
Surely you are in a good place, a place wide enough and comfortable
enough that you can find room for me to hide with you.

It damned cold here where I am.

Please visit our website: www.drugtruth.net 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake