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From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.general
Subject: The war on drugs
Message-ID: <1275@bu-cs.bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Sun, 14-Sep-86 18:59:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.1275
Posted: Sun Sep 14 18:59:49 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Sep-86 06:38:02 EDT
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 18


The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist a few months ago had an
interesting point on this. The article argued that Reagan was using
issues like drugs (that is, issues "no one could argue with") to
subtly turn common criminal issues into issues of National Security
(eg. Reagan's argument that the fact that drugs are coming across our
borders indicates that we have national security problems, the recent
interdiction into Bolivia, etc.) With this he has been transferring
what we traditionally consider domestic police responsibilities to the
military.

It is not the first administration that has ventured into this sort
of dabbling, in fact it's fairly common (one could argue that Vietnam
was this sort of extrapolation, we never declared war.) Of course, that
doesn't make it any less disturbing. As they say, the road to hell is
paved with good intentions.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University