A Virtual Breeze Comes To Washington Pubdate: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 Source: USA Today (US) Author: Sam Vincent Meddis, USA TODAY
One of the real nice things about working at USA TODAY is the view.
From my cube on the 22nd floor of the company's tower in Arlington, Va., I'm afforded what can only be described as a spectacular panorama of Washington, D.C.
What I like best is that on a clear day you can almost see the hot air rising from the various government buildings there.
As you might expect, the bombast, deception and exaggeration of official Washington get particularly thick when some hot-button issues pop up on the political agenda, anything from taxes to gun control to Monicagate.
But it seems to me that nothing has caused more sustained government hot air thanthe so-called drug war.  Now thanks to the Internet, a cool breeze may be moving in.
Let me explain.  I personally braved many an anti-drug wind as a reporter for the paper covering criminal justice issues.
It even seemed fitting that the last story I wrote before becoming online tech editor here was about our nation's misguided drug policies.
The story, which ran on Nov.  20, 1995, was about the FBI's annual report of crime across the USA.
What caught my eye were statistics showing that, contrary to drug warriors' get-tough pronouncements, police were arresting more low-level users and fewer dealers, while busting as many people for marijuana as for the hard-core drugs cocaine and heroin combined.
Over the years I saw how billions of dollars were misspent on law enforcement efforts to battle drugs: thousands of arrests from inner-city dragnets with military-sounding names, sweeps that turned neighborhoods into war zones; huge increases in prison populations because of mandatory sentences that rivaled punishment for rape and homicide, incarcerations that often only made inmates more crime-prone and violent; extravagant and largely futile measures to prevent illegal drugs from entering our country, such as the ill-conceived dirigibles strung on our southern border that smugglers all-too easily sidestepped.
All the while, insufficient attention was paid to the underlying reasons why our nation has such a gigantic drug appetite.  Or as Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council of Crime and Delinquency http://www.nccd.com/, once described it to me, "why so many people in America want to blot out their existence with drugs."
What we need is increased education and less scare tactics, more treatment and fewer busts.
But the leaders of America's drug war are, in a sense, addicted to their get-tough policies.  What has been lacking on the national scene to help cure them is a stronger reform voice.
Until now.
The Internet is starting to level the playing field between drug warrior and reformer.
''It's an incredible tool for the reform movement,'' says Kevin Zeese of the group Common Sense for Drug Policy http://csdp.org/factbook/.  ''It's been a way to get people communicating, getting the information flow flowing and coordinating.''
The Lindesmith Center http://www.lindesmith.org/, for example, promotes what it calls "harm reduction," an alternative approach to the drug problem that tries to minimize the adverse effects of both drug use and prohibition. Another reform site, DrugSense http://www.drugsense.org/, serves as a kind of clearinghouse for breaking stories and editorial opinion.
Paul Armentano of NORML http://norml.org/, which advocates the legalization of marijuana, says it's not a matter of drug-reform Web sites preaching to the converted.
NORML's site gets several thousand visitors each day, and the feedback from many first-time visitors is quite positive, he says.  "Eventually this is going to cause a very big groundswell for this issue."
In addition to providing news reports and backgrounders on issues such as the medical use of marijuana, the site also takes advantage of the Web's interactive capabilities by allowing a visitor to send a free fax to members of Congress.
David Borden of the Drug Reform Coordination Network http://drcnet.org/ says that federal authorities have historically downplayed studies that contradict their get-tough approach.  As then-President Richard Nixon did in 1972 by ordering limited printings of a report calling for decriminalization of personal amounts of marijuana, Borden says.
Another government technique is to release critical studies late on a Friday, when little media interest is likely, he says.  Because of the organization's Drug Library http://www.druglibrary.org/, studies now are widely available to the public.
The internet, says Borden, "is changing things in a fundamental way."
Can the Net blow away the anti-drug cloud that hangs over our nation's capitol?
I'll be watching.
By Sam Vincent Meddis, USA TODAY
On the Web is a weekly column on issues and topics that will help you become a better informed, more adept Web traveler.
UN Drug War satirized in Ad featuring President Clinton at the General Assembly
In coordination with Common Sense for Drug Policy a pro reform ad ran on CNN 108 times between Thursday 6/4/98 and Sunday 6/7/98 in NY and DC. It depicted President Clinton with a voice over of what he _should_ be saying at the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs The DrugSense web page was prominently displayed at the end of the ad.
Published in the Isreali magazine, "Anashim" on April 28, 1998. English Synopsis by the Author, Adi Alia
MAP is all about documentation. This site documents every piece of info about drugs, without taking a stand, although its owners are liberal. They collect articles written by scientists, stuff that was published in newspapers, anything... Their purpose is to make people react and comment on those subjects.
You can also contribute: if, for instance, you've come across a news item that says a policeman in Ofaqim (a small town in southern Israel) "planted" drugs in people's houses just to impress his boss (it just happened here last week) - you can translate it and send it to MAP.
The hot story of the month is the "letter assault" on the New York Times, after publishing an article by A.M Rosenthal. One of the most interesting comments came from a police chief with 35 years of experience, who said that the war on drug only brought more corruption, racism and violence. MAP says that if anybody wanted to buy the space these letters were printed on - the price would have been $13,000.
Source: The Northwest Florida Daily News Pubdate: 22 Mar 1998
THE NETROVERT - INFORMATION ON POLITICS EASY TO GET
The Internet is changing the face of American politics.
The culture of sound bites and spin doctors that has dominated the electoral follies for generations is beginning to lose its influence.
The Internet gives voters a new way to acquire political information, independent of the moneyed interests that have had such a corrupting influence on the process.
Consider, for example, that on the Internet, the war on drugs was lost a long time ago.
Online, it's very difficult to find someone to defend this massively destructive and massively expensive social experiment, and impossible to find someone who can defend it ably.
The drug warriors have nothing but reefer madness propaganda to support their position, and on the Internet, with its instantaneous access to scientific materials, this is an overwhelming disadvantage.
Polls conducted among Internet users show a huge majority want to end the war, and a lot of them have set up polished and professional Web sites dedicated to that purpose.
One particularly good one is the Media Awareness Project (http://www.mapinc.org/), which collects and archives news on the war.
A while back, for example, the site recorded a truly astonishing example of political stupidity on the part of Steve Forbes, the man who would be America's CEO.
It seems that the good citizens of Washington, D.C., were entertaining a petition to permit the medical use of marijuana. Evidently Forbes saw thi s as a golden opportunity to establish his drug warrior credentials.
He made the usual arguments, assuring us that allowing the sick and dying to smoke pot without fear of incarceration would lead inevitably to the collapse of civilization.
That's all well and good, from a political viewpoint. Lots of voters believe the same thing.
But then Forbes goofed. He claimed that "well-financed legalization forces" want to "make America safe for Colombian-style drug cartels."
The drug lords' greatest fear is that we might end the war, and take away the countless untaxed billions they have come to expect as their due.
That Steve Forbes is apparently ignorant of this basic economic fact does not argue well for his candidacy. If he doesn't understand that "legalizers" and drug lords are the bitterest of enemies, how will he ever grasp the more subtle aspects of statecraft?
His opponents in the primaries will, unfortunately, never take him to task for his foolish remarks.
In American politics, to criticize even the most obviously deranged drug war rhetoric is to leave yourself open to the charge that you're "soft on drugs."
That accusation can be fatal to your career, and few politicians are brave when their career is at risk.
But the Internet is slowly flooding America's political grassroots. It's becoming America's political memory, and it never forgets. Voters can now share their opinions directly with thousands of other voters, cheaply and efficiently.
Some of them are going to be wondering if it's really such a good idea to elect a dullard to the highest office in the land, even if they like his political philosophy.

Media Awareness Project 14252 Culver Drive #328 Irvine, CA, 92604-0326 (800) 266-5759	Contact:	Mark Greer ()
	Webmaster:	Matt Elrod ()
	Copyright	DrugSense/MAP Privacy Policy