Pubdate: Wed, 23 Apr 2008
Source: Badger Herald (U of WI, Madison, WI Edu)
Copyright: 2008 Badger Herald
Contact:  http://www.badgerherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/711
Author: Kyle Szarznski
Note: Kyle Szarzynski is a junior majoring in Spanish and history.

'WAR ON DRUGS' CLOAKS OPPRESSION

In 2000, the leading cause of death in the United States was tobacco, 
killing an estimated 435,000 people, according to the American 
Medical Association. The No. 3 cause of death was alcohol, accounting 
for 85,000 deaths. Much further down the list were illicit drugs -- 
including heroine, cocaine, etc. -- resulting in the deaths of 17,000 
people. Marijuana was not responsible for a single fatality.

The term "war on drugs" is a misleading one, as the above should have 
made clear. The battle against drug use applies to only a select 
number of body-altering chemical substances, specifically the less 
dangerous ones. More potent killers -- namely tobacco -- have been 
annually lavished with tens of millions in subsidies from the federal 
government, according to its own statistics.

And U.S. foreign policy has been, to say the least, less than helpful 
in inhibiting the growth of an international drug market. During the 
Vietnam War era, the CIA participated in the heroine trade in the 
Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia to fund its anti-Communist military 
operations in the region, as documented by UW professor Alfred W. 
McCoy. He writes, "As an indirect consequence of American involvement 
in the Golden Triangle until 1972, opium production steadily increased."

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration's support for the Contras 
likely materialized in clandestine cocaine sales, much of which ended 
up in the streets of inner city America. During the same decade, the 
opium trade was again utilized by U.S.-backed Islamic fundamentalists 
- -- the same types who are now the targets of the equally dubious "War 
on Terror" -- in their mutual campaign against the Soviets.

More recently, U.S. neo-liberal policies in South America, especially 
in Bolivia, have pushed many impoverished farmers into coca production.

Despite a long history of U.S. support for the international illicit 
drug trade -- though only when it suits its purposes -- and a more 
open tolerance for its far less dangerous counterparts, the official 
rationale still goes something like the following: The war on 
(certain) drugs is necessary to protect people from what they choose 
to put into their own bodies. And about $50 billion annually in 
taxpayer money is needed to carry out the policy, according to 
government statistics.

Obviously, the invasion of Iraq isn't the only war in recent American 
history based on faulty intelligence. The stated rationale for the 
drug war, along with the war itself, is an utter farce. If the 
government was truly interested in the health effects of illegal 
drugs, it might pay heed to the reports of the Rand Corporation and 
countless other studies: Education, prevention and treatment are far 
more effective than police enforcement in both limiting the number of 
users and curbing the most deleterious consequences of drug use.

But the real aims of the policy are something else entirely -- the 
war on drugs serves as a method of social control. Hard drug use, 
especially its trafficking, is most prevalent among the underclass. 
This group is largely marginal to the U.S. economic system, so the 
current drug laws do an effective job -- via aggressive police 
enforcement -- in containing a superfluous yet potentially rebellious 
population. They also effectively demonize the often poor and largely 
minority cohorts associated with them, a necessary mechanism in 
justifying the existence of millions of impoverished people in the 
wealthiest country in the world. The results have been a massive 
influx into the stupendously profitable prison-industrial complex -- 
more than one in 100 adults are now behind bars -- many of which are 
nonviolent drug offenders.

For the rest of the population, the hysteria surrounding drug use 
induces fear and, consequently, malleability. Similar in effect to 
the bellowing about Islamic terrorism, the drug war forces people to 
look to the paternalistic and ever-benign state for protection, 
justifying the building up of the police state and military-industrial complex.

Drugs become illegal only when they come to be associated with the 
poor. This allows for their demonization and accounts for the current 
road toward the criminality of tobacco, a drug increasingly unpopular 
among the educated and affluent. It also explains the wildly 
disparate consequences for possession of crack cocaine and powdered cocaine.

No one can really predict the effects of complete drug 
decriminalization. Illegal drugs are easy enough to obtain as it is, 
and the only way to completely prevent their use is to alter the need 
to experiment inherent in human nature. It is clear, however, that 
the current policy is futile, wasteful and blatantly immoral. If 
society is really interested in achieving the most humane and 
rational solution to drug use, a good place to start would be an 
honest discussion about the issue. For now, state policy and 
propaganda serve as the biggest impediment to the beginning of such a dialogue.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake