from:
http://www.sfbayguardian.com/nessie/22.html
Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.sfbayguardian.com/nessie/22.html">sfbg.com |
July 10, 2000 | The Nessie Files</A>
-----
Life during wartime
The War on (Some) Drugs is as un-American as King George III
By nessie
Hello. My name is Nessie and I'm a drug addict. I've been using for forty
years and I have no intention of quitting. Why not? Because my addiction has
enhanced my life infinitely more than it has detracted from it. Sure, it's a
hassle sometimes, but not all that much. Why? Because I'm lucky. My drug of
choice is legal, cheap, and easy to find. It's caffeine. It's sublime stuff.
I recommend it to all. I've tried various substitutes, legal and otherwise.
Nothing compares.
But just because caffeine can be purchased in any grocery store, don't for a
minute believe that it is not an addictive drug. It is very addictive. When I
wake up in the morning, I'm pretty much a moron until I've had my fix. I'm
all thumbs, I have two left feet, I can't count my toes without a calculator,
and I can't for the life of me remember where the calculator is. Then I have
a couple cups of French roast and presto! I'm a walking, talking Einstein, as
graceful as Baryshnikov, as eloquent as Shakespeare. This lasts about three
or four hours. Then I need another fix. This goes on all day and late into
the night. About four hours after my last fix I get dumb as a clam. Then I
fall asleep. Often the last thing that happens in my day is a headache. On
days when I don't do caffeine, I don't do anything else either. I lie there
and vegetate. Even that is exhausting.
Caffeine gives some people jitters. That doesn't happen to me, though
sometimes I do get indigestion. When I do, I take a little baking soda in
water and it goes away instantly. Aspirin cures the headache just fine. Some
people believe that "excessive" caffeine use is bad for the health. If they
are right, the amount I do is definitely bad for my health. If they are
wrong, it's not. Either way, it's none of their business, or yours either.
It's between me and my doctor. It doesn't concern anyone else, least of all
the government.
Like I said, I'm lucky. My drug of choice is legal. So as long as I keep
getting my fix, I'm a happy, healthy, productive member of society.
Not all drug addicts are so lucky. Far from it. Those who are addicted to
drugs not approved of by the state are the most persecuted minority in our
entire culture. They can be imprisoned without evidence on the word of a
single informant. Their property can be seized even if they have been
convicted of no crime whatsoever. Their children can be taken away from them.
They can be forced into psychiatric treatment that can include incarceration
sans habeas corpus, psychosurgery, and ironically enough, forced drugging
with drugs that are approved of by the state.
A decades-old propaganda campaign, perpetrated by certain persons and
institutions for their own financial benefit, has so demonized drug use and
drug users that it has become extremely difficult for most people to examine
the phenomenon rationally and analytically. To the media, use and abuse are
synonymous. To the media, every drug user is an addict and every addict is a
thief. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Nevertheless, it is irrefutable that many addicts do steal. Unless they were
born wealthy or are very well paid they have to. It's either that or sell
drugs. Prohibition has turned some of the most harmless people on earth into
a plague of locusts upon the land. There is nothing a junkie would rather do
than stay home, mind his own business, and stare at the floor. Instead,
they're out ripping people off or peddling dope to people who do.
In 1986 my motor tools were stolen by a drug addict. I was making a living
with these tools at the time. It was a great hardship to lose them. I had to
go into debt to stay in business. Some of the money that person made by
selling them trickled up to a branch of the United States Government.
This is nothing less than taxation without representation, the single most
un-American act a government can commit. To put an end to taxation without
representation was the very reason the United States was formed to begin
with. Yet now our own government is doing it to us.
As long as the government sells dope, every junkie burglar is a de facto tax
collector. This is intolerable. King George III didn't treat Americans this
badly.
Before Prohibition, there was no economic motivation for the drug user to
proselytize. Consequently, drug use spread slowly if at all. Then Prohibition
created a profit motive. Consequently, Prohibition has not stemmed drug use
at all. Au contrair, it has caused an epidemic. It has also caused an
epidemic of crime. Aside from the rampant theft, there is endemic, ubiquitous
corruption at every level of our society from the cop on the corner to the
Oval Office and beyond.
The government is involved in the drug trade up to its eyeballs. The CIA is
certainly not the only arm of government involved in this egregious hypocrisy,
but it has taken a prominent role. This has been more or less public
knowledge long, long before Gary Webb made headlines with it at the expense
of his job. But you won't hear about it on the evening news. You have to dig.
So dig. The short version is that the government sells cocaine and heroin and
actively suppresses all competition. The evidence is overwhelming. They've
even confessed.
But have they stopped doing it? Apparently not.
What does this mean to ordinary people like ourselves? It means we have to
lock our doors at night. This was not always true. I remember. Worse, we live
in a virtual police state. We now have drug exceptions to the Bill of Rights.
What would hemp farmers like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson think of
this? We can only imagine. With the Anti-Methamphetamine Act, it will only
get worse. This Act clearly denys freedom of speech. The act of speaking to
minimize the alleged harms associated with use of these substances – even how
to clean a needle and prevent HIV infection – would carry a ten-year prison
sentence if convicted.
Recently, the Higher Education Act of 1998 suspends or denies federal grants
and loans to college students convicted of any drug offense that occurs after
July 1, 2000 – even possession of one marijuana cigarette. Interestingly,
students that are not on federal aid will not be affected. This is clearly a
financial bias that will prohibit many poor and at-risk young people from
attaining an education and becoming contributing members of society. What
does it say about our government's priorities that it is willing to fund the
education of rapists and murderers, but not of somebody who was caught with a
single joint?
It took America 200 years to jail its first million prisoners, but a scant
ten years for its second million – with 80 percent of the federal prisoners
being drug offenders. But there are more drugs than ever. Even so, they do
nowhere near the harm to society that Prohibition itself does. So destructive
to liberty is the War on (Some) Drugs that you don't even have to use drugs
to suffer. If you fit a profile, you can be searched without due cause. If
the cops find cash on you they can legally confiscate it without even
charging you with a crime. They can also take your car, your house, or
anything else they choose. It is then up to you to prove in court that what
they stole was not drug money, or bought with drug money, or used in drug
business. This is very expensive to do. Unless what the cops stole from you
is worth at least $10,000, it's cheaper to just let them keep it.
It gets worse. We've been turned into a nation of snitches. We can't even
trust our own children not to turn us in. When I was a child I was taught
that this is why Communism is so evil. Under Communism, children turn in
their parents to the state. The horror! The horror! We had better pay our
taxes to keep our armed forces strong, we were taught, or else the Communists
will invade and enslave us in a system so heinous that children turn in their
parents.
Yet here it is, happening in America today. We are not even safe in the bosom
of the family. And in the workplace, we are considered guilty until proven
innocent. Never, not even in his most paranoid moments, did George Orwell
imagine that one day our very bladders would be subject to search for
evidence of thought crime.
Fear strikes even deeper at those who attempt to speak out against it. Last
time I told you about being photographed at the recent symposium on the CIA
and the drug trade. There's more. I was also videotaped. Let me tell you what
happened to one of the videotapers.
High Times magazine sent a guy named Preston Peet to cover the symposium. He
wrote an excellent article. In the course of covering the story, something
rather strange happened to him. He's not sure it's such a big mystery.
Neither am I. There are any number of nonsinister explanations for what
happened. Nevertheless the story bears repeating, if for no other reason than
that the questions it raises succinctly illustrate the level of fear among
those few honest journalists attempting to drag the truth of the drug war
into the light of day.
Peet got some numbers from someone at High Times and called all three of
them. He left messages, saying that he was going to be covering the CIA-Drugs
symposium in Eugene, and needed a photographer. This is normal operating
procedure. Then Peet got a call from someone saying he was "cleared" by the
US Defense Department, "or something like that." Peet remembers it as the guy
having said he had "security clearance," and was allowed to take pictures of
things like this.
"I still don't know," says Peet, "if he thought I was covering an actual CIA
meeting and wanted a photographer. But why would I call an outside
photographer? Why would he charge $10,000? Why did he think it was something
it wasn't when I left very clear messages as to what it was I was doing, and
what I wanted a photographer for?"
Why indeed? It was weird enough that I, personally, would probably have
suspected immediately that this guy was himself CIA or something equally
ominous. Peet says he would hate to speculate something like that publicly,
and then find out that the guy is just some lunatic. I don't blame him. Who
wants to be thought paranoid? That's my job, not his. Maybe the guy was a
genuinely confused pro photographer who just happens to charge an exceedingly
high rate for shooting pictures of secret meetings with intelligence
community types, and misunderstood Peet's message. Maybe it was a prank.
We'll probably never know.
But a reasonable person hearing this story cannot help but entertain concerns
that, in a different political climate, would be considered pathologically
paranoid. This speaks volumes about what the War On (Some) Drugs has done to
objective discourse in America today. It is not, and never has been, a war on
drugs. It is a war on truth and liberty. Truth and liberty are losing badly,
and we're losing with them.
Our way of life appears to be under an orchestrated attack. Its perpetrators
appear to be winning. Those of us who have read up on the history of the drug
business find it very difficult indeed to conclude otherwise. We are rapidly
succumbing to a strategy of combined psychological and chemical warfare.
There is nothing to be gained by bemoaning where we went wrong. It's too late
for that. Now we must mount a successful counterattack, quickly, before it is
too late.
The nessie files runs alternate Mondays. To discuss this column in altcity,
our virtual community, click here.
return to top | more Nessie Files | more Web exclusives | sfbg.com
Copyright © 2000 San Francisco Bay Guardian. QNV
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
