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From: falk@sun.uucp (Ed Falk)
Newsgroups: net.general,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: The war on drugs
Message-ID: <7222@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 12-Sep-86 21:53:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.7222
Posted: Fri Sep 12 21:53:36 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Sep-86 07:02:10 EDT
References: <5305@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 74
Xref: watmath net.general:807 talk.politics.misc:61
Followups: talk.politics.misc,net.rec.drugs

> Has anyone considered the possibility that the war on drugs is being
> staged as a diversion from real government issues like increased
> military spending? The amount of propaganda I've read in the past two
> weeks is enough to flood the conscious stream of the average ignorant
> american. I have yet to see any accurate analysis of the problem.
> 
> I think it's a diversion, a chance to make the american collective
> conscious focus on a problem other than the ones the government
> should be concentrating on, and a chance to obtain more authority.
> It would be ridiculous to consider this anything less than a political
> manuever. Most of the problems associated with drugs are due to fact
> that they are illegal.
> 
> Again, I resent that the government sees fit to protect me from
> myself. Their efforts would be better spent documenting the effects
> of drugs *ACCURATELY*. The current propaganda is such a wave of
> distortion it makes me want to puke. Reagan is a buffoon. I can't
> believe what I'm seeing. If this administration weren't so real, it
> would be a comedy of errors.
> 
> I guess this means trouble in River City, that's with a capital T,
> which rhymes with P, and that stands for Pool. Dirty Pool.
> 
> 						John Williams
> 
> decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-kirk!williams
> 
> PS. Just another case of profiteering in law enforcement.
> 
> PSS. I do not use illegal drugs.

I think all of these observations are true.  What I find most disturbing of
all is that (in California at least) the government is CONFISCATING land
used to grow marijuana.  That sounds awfully draconian to me.  It reminds
me of how the church used to expand its wealth during the Inquisition; by
confiscating the property of heretics.  A lot of well-to-do but politically
weak people were tried for heresy in those days.

What also bothers me is the media reports on how dangerous drugs are.
They give you all sorts of death rates, and violent crime statistics
and so forth, but if you look at them in any detail, you see that these
come about *because* of the illegality of drugs.  The crimes are almost
exclusively due to the "underground" nature of drug dealing.  A dealer
who gets ripped off can't go to the law for redress, so he resorts to
violence instead.  This was demonstrated quite well during prohibition
which gave us the worst crime wave in history.  When prohibition was
repealed, the problem vanished as quickly as it had been generated.

The government uses a kind of circular logic here.  They make drugs
illegal, anybody who does drugs is suddenly a criminal, and the government
gets to justify it's repression by saying "look at all the crime this
drug causes".

Now, there are some drugs that *deserve* to be outlawed, at least to sell.
I refer to the *very* adicting and debilitating ones such as Heroin etc.
I'm not even sure I disagree with the new unbelievably harsh sentences for
people who push in schoolyards.  But some drugs are so completely harmless
that to make them illegal is political repression, pure and simple.

In the Child's Garden of Grass, the authors say that alcohol is the official
State Drug and marijuana isn't.  That about sums it up right there.
Marijuana is by *far* the less harmful of the two (alcohol is a neurotoxin,
it can cause permanent brain damage, death from overdose, permanent liver
damage and is highly addicting).  Marijuana laws are nothing more or less
than persecution of people who's lifestyles and politics are offensive
to conservative lawmakers.

p.s. I'm forwarding this to net.rec.drugs and talk.politics.misc.  Followups
should go there.

-- 
		-ed falk, sun microsystems
			falk@sun.com
			sun!falk