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War on "Drugs"
The war
on "drugs" is really a war on people who use drugs, mainly poor people,
and on civil liberties precious to almost everyone. This distinction has
profound and complex consequences. This war is a well intentioned war in
many respects, prompted by obvious and usually legitimate fears about
urban decay and social distress. But the casualties of this war have been
profound; they number in the tens of millions of lives destroyed or
gravely damaged even for a relatively benign drug like marijuana. And like
every war, there comes a time to call it off.
Many studies have shown that the main reason for
the explosion in the American prison populations is incarceration of
non-violent drug offenders. This has some profound racial and class
dimensions.
For example, 1/3 of young black males in America
today are under some kind of judicial supervision, either prison or parole
or court mandated treatment or sanctions of various kinds. No one objects
when a murderer is caught and jailed, but the fact is that many of those
young men of various colors have had their lives ruined by vigorous
application of the War on "Drugs," while the mostly wealthy and mostly
white higher level dealers very seldom get caught, or if caught, get
prison time. The bankers who launder the money, the accountants who keep
the books, and the lawyers who advise them almost never "do time" for
"their crimes."
Consider the extraordinary and bizarre dynamics
which occur when you look at the details. For example, Federal penalties
for 5 grams of crack cocaine (mandatory minimum sentence = 5 years) are
essentially 100 times more severe that for powder cocaine (where 500 grams
are required to get the mandatory minimum 5 years jail). Thus, rich, well
connected white wholesalers can bring in pound quantities of cocaine
powder, yet be at far less risk of criminal sanction than the poor young
black retailers who are asked to "rock it up" into crack
cocaine.
Our book On the Causes
of War has a short chapter devoted just to the War on "Drugs"
because its consequences are so profound, yet so insidious due to the
general appreciation for the bad things drugs can certainly lead to, and
lack of appreciation for how much of the violence associated with drugs is
a byproduct of making them so illegal. For another example, the Attorney
General of Colombia has remarked that the war on "drugs" in America kills
thousands of people in his country every year, due to its weird
distortions and hypocrisies (of which CIA drug running is merely the most
obvious).
There are many good reasons to fear drugs,
especially given the dozens of varieties which modern times bring us. But
...
There are also many better ways to fight violent
crime, than by criminalizing scores of millions of non-violent people by a
swarm of dietary laws, and indirectly making many potential witnesses to
murder, rape and other violent assaults afraid to testify due to their own
vulnerability to prosecution because of drugs. Retaliation from gangs is
fearful enough for many witnesses, without the added disincentive of
risking all should police or prosecutors turn against you.
The international consequences of the War on
"Drugs" may be as profound as any American national consequences. By
criminalizing this consentual behavior, and insisting that other countries
do the same, America provides about a $500 billion dollar per year annual
windfall profit to the "narco-trafickers." They have close connections to
the international market in weapons, and both have close connections to
the banks which service this underground part of the "global economy." The
result is close connections to many more overt wars, and to corruption of
governance on a global scale. Where drugs flow one way, weapons often flow
the other. And where this occurs, banks are always involved in both
industries, and civil war is a common consequence. For more information,
try:
The Drug Policy Foundation: 4455 Connecticut Ave.
NW, Suite B-500, Washington D.C. 20008, USA; www.dpf.org; email = [EMAIL PROTECTED]; tel = (202)
537-5005
The Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy: 70
MacDonald St., Ottawa, Ontario K2P 1H6, Canada; fox.nstn.ca/~eoscapel/cfdp/cfdp.html;
tel = (613) 236-1027
The North American Industrial Hemp Council: naihc.org (This page has everything you ever
wanted to know about the uses of an excellent agricultural crop with
manifold markets, which was destroyed by the hysteria over
pot.)
The next 2 sites reflect growing awareness that
the secret government imports many of the drugs which the overt government
prosecutes so severely.
De-Central Intelligence Agency: www.dcia.com. The DCIA is the successor
site to the highly acclaimed "Free Speech Newspaper" that disappeared from
the WWW in 1996. Created and maintained by Brian Dowling Quig out of
Phoenix, a courageous investigative writer who should have a much wider
audience than he does. As the name implies, he's big on government imports
of the drugs they imprison poor people for using.
Cocaine Importing Agency: speech.csun.edu/ben This site with
extensive links to other valuable sites is maintained by Ben Attias, Asst.
Prof. of Speech Communications at Cal. State University at Northridge. He
has been investigating "the public discourse surrounding the 'war on
drugs' as an exercise in disciplinary social control" for many
years.
Good starter literature includes:
A Wiser Course: Ending Drug
Prohibition, a report of the Bar of New
York, 1994.
Drug Warriors and their Prey, by Richard Lawrence Miller, Praeger Pubs., Westport CT,
1996. Or websters can obtain it through www.amazon.com.
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