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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: The war on drugs
Message-ID: <1066@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Sep-86 12:59:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.1066
Posted: Sat Sep 13 12:59:11 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Sep-86 08:17:08 EDT
References: <5305@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Mt. View, CA
Lines: 44

> 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.
> 

And you won't see an accurate analysis of the problem.  (Except in
radical libertarian publications.)  There's a lot of people in America
who know someone who has ruined his life, and made a lot of friends
and relatives pretty miserable because of drugs.  Trying to rationally
talk to someone who has seen the suffering is just about impossible.
Most parents don't really want to believe that little Johnny became
a heavy doper because of the parent's bad example in the use of 
mind-altering drugs.  It's a lot easier to blame it on drug traffickers.

> 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.
> 

Uh, would you care to tell me how this is any different from the
War on Poverty, and the environmental movement?  Amazing, isn't it,
how every problem has a solution that involves more government?

> 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.
> 

The current lunacy is more the Democrats than President Reagan.  The
House (still controlled by the Democrats) just passed a bill that
includes death penalties for second offense drug trafficking, and
repeal of the exclusionary rule *just* for drug cases.

> 						John Williams

Clayton E. Cramer