On the Border of Madness (Today's Inquisition: War on Drugs)

[Politically Incorrect]

I hope this gets Munro and others thinking about their beloved drug war.

-PI

Found on http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38dc332673e1.htm

On the Border of Madness (Claire Wolfe)

News/Current Events Opinion (Published)
Source: Loompanics Unlimited
Published: 2000 (Main Catalog) Author: Claire Wolfe
Posted on 03/24/2000 19:31:50 PST by Sandy

Is it really a war against drugs?
Or is it an Inquisition dressed in modern clothing?
When, at the first large town, soldiers asked how they could distinguish between heretics and orthodox, the Cistercian [Abbot of Citeaux, leading the 13th Century crusade against the Albigensians] thundered: “Kill them all, God will know his own”1…

Seventy-five percent of the people in the Texas border town of Redford are narco-traffickers. It's a known fact. The town is hostile. If you see anyone there with a gun, he's probably a drug runner or a scout for drug runners.

At least, that's what the Marines were told.

So when four soldiers on a drug-interdiction patrol spotted 18-year-old goatherder, Esequiel Hernandez, one afternoon in 1997, they assumed the worst. When young Zeke -- an honor student and classic good boy -- raised his WWI-vintage .22 rifle and fired into the brush, they knew he was shooting at them. Never mind that they were 200 yards away, camouflaged by shaggy ghillie suits. Never mind that country boys herding goats shoot guns for many reasons, from playful plinking to varmint control. They knew. Zeke was a drug runner, a gunman. The Enemy.

The Marines never considered yelling, “Hey, kid! Cut it out, there are people out here!” They never considered shouting, “Drop your gun or we'll shoot!” They claimed the wind would have made it impossible to hear. Never mind that no one else noticed any wind that afternoon.

Marine Corporal Clemente Banuelos radioed that he was going to “take him” next time Zeke raised his rifle in their direction. He got a roger. And - after following Zeke for 20 more minutes as the boy moved away from the Marines hidden in the brush - they “took him.”

At least, that's what they said. The autopsy on Esequiel Hernandez indicated that he was facing away from the man they said he was aiming at. But never mind that - and never mind all the other discrepancies in the Marines' accounts of the shooting. A Congressional report2 found “mistakes” and “inadequacies in training.” Small matters like a wound on the wrong side of a body troubled them somewhat, but didn't seem obvious evidence of criminality. A grand jury found “no bill” against the shooter.

Oh, yes, the Justice Department and the Pentagon (whose joint operation it was) quickly paid the family of Esequiel Hernandez more than a million dollars. But no individual government agent paid any price for the shooting. The Drug War went on.

And so did the intimidation.

In the months after Zeke's killing, children weren't allowed out to play for fear of soldiers hidden in the gullies. Unmarked helicopters continued to buzz homes and herds. Nearly three years later, Father Mel LaFollette, retired Episcopal priest and neighbor of the Hernandez family, says, “I don't think anybody's hiding in their house…but there's still a great bitterness and suspicion. The military people have said they don't go on patrols anymore, but no one really believes that.

“Washington sent a new boss for the Marfa sector of the Border Patrol who is a public relations expert. He has at least made things a little smoother for the residents. They haven't been subject to the harassment they used to be - stopping the same person four or five times during a routine trip to Presidio for shopping - 16 miles away. Someone who might decide to walk a mile or two might be questioned over and over again. That has lessened, but I wouldn't say it doesn't happen any more. The word is out not to harass the natives too much. But a stranger comes through here at his own peril.”

He concludes: “We're kind of a lab experiment here on the border [for forces who want control], and if they succeed with us we'll live in a real police state instead of this partial police state.”3

“Police state,” however, is simply a modern term for an ancient form of terror. What's happening today in the name of a War on Drugs has happened before - an exercise of raw power and putrid corruption in the name of a “righteous” cause.

We can see through the ancient lies. Why is it so much harder to see through the lies that are brutalizing us today?

In the beginning it was a war against heretics

Pope Lucius II in 1184… laid down the penalties as exile, confiscation, and infamy (loss of civil rights):… Then came Innocent III, who…completed the foundations of the Inquisition by reaffirming, with heavier emphasis, that the bishops were not to wait for charges of heresy, but were to seek out heresy, or make an inquisitio. They were to have special officials, or “inquisitors,” for this purpose….Its birth is variously put by historians in 1229, 1231, and 1232. By the latter year, at all events, the Inquisition was established, and the hounds of the Lord felt the bloody rag at their nostrils.

In the late twelfth century - with its crusades against the Eastern Infidel losing their appeal and profitability - the world's superpower, the Catholic Church - turned upon its own. Beginning with the crusade against the Albigensians of Southern France and continuing with the Inquisition, the Church began to root out, imprison, slaughter and seize property from “heretics” within its midst.

Indeed, the Church had a very real “heretic problem.” Millions secretly or openly held anti-Roman views, disgusted by Church corruption. This was insupportable to an institution whose power lay in its ability to dictate what people should think.

In the late twentieth century - with the Cold War losing its appeal and profitability (and its chief villain, the USSR) - the world's superpower, the United States government - turned upon its own. The federal government began to compete with the states to root out, imprison, slaughter and seize property from recreational drug users and sellers within its midst.

The government had a real “drug problem.” Millions were using recreational chemicals, as if what they put into their bodies was their own business. This was insupportable to an institution whose power increasingly lay in its ability to dictate how people should live.

Of course, in order to bring a violent anti-drug crusade into our living rooms without arousing alarm, the modern Inquisitors had to do exactly as their ancestors did. They first had to persuade us that:

Druggies are bad people who must be crushed at all cost

And the meanest thing of all is that [Catholic scholar] Canon Vacandard, and most of your modern…apologists, raise over the bones of those hundreds of thousands of murdered men, women, and children the smug and lying inscription that they were “dangerous to society.”

The best estimates say that some 70 million Americans have smoked marijuana, that at least 18 million have smoked it in the last year.4 Millions have used other illegal recreational drugs. Perfectly ordinary people, the vast majority of them. Do some lead high-risk lives? Sure; so do mountain climbers and adulterers. Are some violent criminals? Sure; that's what happens when you legislate black markets.

Which is more dangerous? The drug or the war against it?

In a country where alcohol kills 150,000 per year and doctors kill hundreds of thousands - and where cocaine and heroin kill fewer than 5,000 combined and marijuana has never killed a single soul,5 we casually justify travesties like the one that hit Preston Mays on March 1, 1995, saying such people get what they deserve. Bust them all; God will know his own.

On that day, Mays, a poultry farmer with a ninth-grade education and a minor criminal history, was sitting in the living room of the home he rented to a woman acquaintance. The woman had called him to fix a broken sink at the property.

The renter left to run an errand, saying she would be right back. Hours passed, but she didn't return. Suddenly, he says:

[At] about 10:30 the police ripped through the unlocked door with a huge battering ram. About 20 helmeted, jackbooted, armor-plated, machine-gun wielding monsters came running, yelling, “Hands over your heads mother-****ers, just twitch and we'll blow your ****ing brains out!” I felt like my heart had stopped. I had no idea who I'd killed, I must have - right? That is all that came to my mind - what did I do? What did I do?

They searched the house and found a pound of marijuana and two-and-a-half pounds of meth in a file cabinet after ripping it open… My tenant had been arrested shortly after leaving the house and told them her “boyfriend” (meaning me) “was still at the house and if there were any drugs there, they must be his because I have all mine with me.”

The police later found six more pounds in the woman's truck. The federal government charged Mays with eight different counts. They offered him a deal with “only” 13½ years in prison if he'd plead guilty. But, “I wasn't guilty so I refused.” Refusing to cooperate - as you will see - is the worst confirmation of heresy.

“None of my clothing was in the house,” Mays recounts. “Nor did I have keys to the doors… proved beyond a reasonable doubt that I had not shared that home. The lady I did live with at my farm 43 miles away testified too, so did my farm neighbor who belongs to the Highway Patrol… My prints weren't on anything, but still the good citizens of California that sat on that jury said I was guilty. Guilty because someone said that I was.”

He is now serving 24 years for possession with intent to distribute, 24 years for conspiracy and 10 years on charges related to guns found in the home. The woman with the drugs got 5½ years with a year off for treatment, rewarded for informing on this evil drug kingpin.6

Creating a society of informers

If he was denounced, he was guilty. Impossible, you say…But it is a truism. Listen to…Canon [Vacandard]: “If two witnesses, considered of good repute by the Inquisitors, agreed in accusing the prisoner his fate was at once sealed; whether he confessed or not, he was at once declared a heretic.” Trial by the Inquisition did not mean an examination to find out if a man was a heretic. If two secret witnesses said that he was, he was…
As with the vague charge of “heresy” - which meant virtually anything persecutors and accusers wanted it to mean - it is unnecessary to have any actual evidence to get a drug conviction. Just create a society of informers.

On July 27, 1990, tractor-trailer driver Anibal Almanzar-Reyes was stopped by the DEA. He was hauling a truckload of onions. Just onions. No drugs. However, the friend who hired him to haul the load had told a DEA informant there would be drugs in the truck that day. The men were arrested on drug charges. Facing a long prison term, Almanzar-Reyes' friend turned on him, claimed the truck driver had knowledge of the drug-deal-that-didn't-happen, and offered to testify against him. An attorney, knowing his client had a previous drug conviction, advised making a plea-bargain - and Almanzar-Reyes got 14 years for driving a truckload of onions, while the friend who set him up earned a five year sentence for his cooperation.

Debbie Vineyard took a phone call from her husband's friend Rick, asking about a pair of cowboy boots. Debbie said they'd send the boots. “I had no idea,” she said later, “that this person Rick had just been arrested for drugs that he claimed to have received from my husband. Our phone conversation was recorded by the federal government…Rick evidently told the DEA that these cowboy boots were being sent with speed and heroin in them. After I was picked up, they searched my home and found the cowboy boots. They were stuffed full...of the daily newspaper. But, none of this mattered. I was still charged with Conspiracy to Distribute Methamphetamine (speed) and Aiding and Abetting.” Her 10-year federal sentence was later reduced to a “mere” five.

It seems that, today, a witness doesn't even have to be “of good repute” for his unsupported testimony to be considered evidence enough to send someone to prison. He must simply be unprincipled - or desperate - enough to rat out either the innocent or the guilty.

And what makes a man so desperate? Why, fear of the Inquisitors, of course - who hold the power to take his life or give a portion of it back, if he “cooperates.”

Using fear of punishment to get people to inform

Unless, therefore, a man had in him the rare stuff of a real martyr, he meekly acknowledged that he was a heretic, and he abjured the heresy. He was then required to denounce others, or “name his accomplices.” If he thus confessed his heresy and named a few others, he merely got a heavy penance… If he persisted in denying that he was a heretic, or refused to name others, he was taken into the next room.

Zulima Buitrago, a single mother of two young children, was convicted for conspiracy to distribute cocaine. A friend's husband asked to use her garage to repair his truck. While there, he conducted a drug deal. Facing a life sentence unless he could implicate someone else, the man told police Buitrago had been present at the deal, where 350 kilos of cocaine had changed hands. Buitrago received a 24-year sentence, though there was not a shred of evidence - neither drugs nor money - to support the man's claim that Buitrago had been involved in a drug sale.

For some informants, of course, the motive is gold, not terror.

Using rewards to encourage informing

To all who would “take up arms,” as [Pope Alexander III] said, against [heretics] he promised two years' remission of penance and even greater privileges.

Oscar Moncoda is serving 12½ years on drug charges, with the sole evidence against him being the testimony of an informant who was paid $80,000 for his testimony. He is not alone.

Traditionally, either fear of punishment or small payoffs have been used to get cooperation. But with law enforcement agencies becoming as rich as the Medieval Church with forfeiture money, they are now paying stunning sums. The street crook who still settles for $100 for selling his friends is a fool. And what would you do if you were a marginal type, always broke, who could “earn” several years' income in one swoop, simply by lying about someone you didn't care about or didn't even know?

But why on earth would a jury of 12 sensible people convict on such an absence of evidence?

Juries convicting on next to no evidence

Meantime the Inquisitors…had to choose an advisory council of “good and experienced men”…and come to a decision only in conjunction with these.

A most beneficent provision, says the Jesuit! Actually the beginning of the jury-system in Europe, says the Canon! But who were these men, and what did they do? They were, as a rule, mostly priests and monks, with a few very orthodox laymen. In a few places quite a number of local pious lawyers - the decree stipulated that they must be “zealous for the faith”… The “jury” never hampered the Inquisitors.

Kevin B. Zeese, President, Common Sense for Drug Policy,7 writes of the aftermath of the Esequiel Hernandez shooting:

A grand jury was convened [to explore charges against the Marines], but this made the injustice worse. The grand jury was at best a mockery. It included the Assistant Sector Chief of the Border Patrol who was part of the administration that asked the Marines to come to the border and one of the people responsible for their supervision.
It also included the wife of a Border Patrol officer, a Border Patrol retiree, and two Customs Officers. The judge found no conflict of interest and District Attorney Valadez said it was good to have people on the jury who “knew how to get things done.”

Jeffrey Steinborn, a Seattle attorney who has been called “The Public's Defender,” commented on why juries are willing to convict in drug cases when the only evidence is the word of an informant, whose integrity may be completely compromised.

The people who make it on a jury are the ones who lie and conceal their real agendas. They're lying because they're just dying to pass judgment on people - and usually it's that minority - that [color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color], that spic, however they think of it….
We've been made to fear the black man and his drugs or the Mexican and his drugs, the poor woman who smokes crack and ignores her child. Once you put them in that moral category, where they don't get the same treatment as your brother, the government can do anything to them.8

“On the rare occasion we win a case,” says Steinborn, “[The informant with something to gain] is what the juries seem to choke on. But the prosecutor says, 'Well, you know you're not going to get choir boys infiltrating this scum, you're not going to get priests infiltrating this scum.'” As another attorney, Terrance Geoghegan of Ventura, California, puts it, “We joke that the police wouldn't have arrested someone if he weren't guilty. But around here, people actually believe that.”

Of course in any Inquisition - conducted by the powerful for the interests of the powerful - there is a different standard for the sons of the powerful.

The privileged get off lightly

There were two kinds of prisons, strict and less strict. Rich heretics generally got the latter, and money will buy comforts and privileges in most places. But [even] they have, for a “heresy” which they have abjured, if it ever existed, lost all their property, seen wife and children reduced to beggary, and been imprisoned for life.

Lonnie Lundy is serving life in prison without possibility of parole. He was never found with drugs, drug money, drug paraphernalia or anything else. His sentence is based on the word of one man (an employee he had fired years earlier), who later bitterly recanted, saying his testimony was concocted by the prosecution team.

Lundy's father contacted his U.S. Senator, Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), seeking help, but the Senator responded, “I'm sorry that your family has to go through this ordeal… But, any person who is caught with drugs [sic] should spend the rest of their life in prison. I have no sympathy for them.”

A few months later, in July 1998, Senator Shelby's son Claude landed at Atlanta's Hartfield Airport from London carrying 13.8 grams of hashish. Claude Shelby was also arrested. He received a misdemeanor possession charge and a $500 administrative fine. Senator Shelby later refused to respond to letters from Lonnie Lundy's father.

And do we even need to mention the sanctimonious Bush family, whose scion, George W., dismisses his own “youthful indiscretions” while (as governor of Texas) increasing minimum sentences for the “indiscretions” of less monied, less connected young people?

Money is more than a means of buying exemptions from punishment. Money is, at bottom, what keeps Inquisitions and crusades rampaging, long after their moral depravity has been exposed.

Forfeiture

[Pope Innocent III] was plainly sickened by the slaughter and the vile passions of his instruments, but he made vast material profit for the Papacy out of the monumental crime…In fine, these “confiscations” which Innocent III had recommended were becoming a very profitable source of revenue, and the Papacy wanted its share. The sordid scramble for gold amongst the bones of the dead had already begun.

In the now-famous 1992 case of Donald Scott, Los Angeles County deputy sheriff Gary Spencer was unable to verify an informant's claim that Scott, a 61-year-old rancher, was growing marijuana on his Ventura County estate. However, Spencer did take the time to have the property appraised before conducting a raid. When he and his force of 30 (including agents from the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the DEA, the National Guard and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) came crashing in to seize the 200-acre ranch, Scott - just awakened, naked and possibly drunk - came out of his bedroom with a gun. Spencer and another deputy shot Scott to death. There was no marijuana. The L.A. County sheriff and California Attorney General Dan Lungren both issued reports saying Spencer and his raiders had done nothing wrong. The Ventura County D.A. also found that the shooting was self-defense, but resoundingly declared that the prime motive for the raid was the law enforcers' desire to profit from Scott's ranch.9

Bringing suit against possessions

[According to Vacandard] torture was not regarded as a mode of punishment, but purely as a means of eliciting the truth.

Torture is so vulgar, so passé. No one uses it any more in America - except, of course, for the occasional broomstick up the butt, or flick of a button on an electronic stun belt to make an uncooperative prisoner writhe on the floor screaming.10 Law enforcement agents now have a more sophisticated method for gaining the cowed cooperation of innocent and guilty alike. Civil forfeiture.

Under federal law the government can seize property based solely upon probable cause to believe that the property was used unlawfully. This probable cause standard for seizure allows the government to dispossess property owners based only upon hearsay or innuendo - “evidence” of insufficient reliability to be admissible in a court of law. The probable cause standard relieves the government of the burden of proving anyone's criminal guilt to obtain a forfeiture judgment over his property.

…When asked to justify the extraordinary powers granted to them by such laws, law enforcement officials find themselves invoking peculiar legal fictions that date back to feudal times or earlier, wherein inanimate objects are given life and then forfeited to the government for “their” criminal misconduct.11

Thus, rational people are asked to accept - without laughing or crying -- such legal cases as United States v. 9844 South Titan Court and United States v. $405,089.23 in U. S. Currency.

The motive for such uncivil treatment? As defense attorney Jeffrey Steinborn bluntly puts it:

Criminal forfeiture statutes allow the government to simply combine the forfeiture and the criminal prosecution in the same case. But civil forfeitures are preferred by the government, because the property owner is presumed guilty, and, therefore, can seldom prevail, and because they have the added benefit of impoverishing the property owner as he or she faces a criminal prosecution.12

And of course, the agencies making the seizures get part of the take.

No, the Drug War inquisitors rarely use torture. But now they don't even bother to wait for a guilty verdict before seizing everything the drug heretic owns. For many years 80 percent of all forfeitures have been done against people who are never even charged with any crime, let alone convicted.13 And make no mistake, this scramble for gold among the dead, the imprisoned and the merely terrified is highly lucrative. According to forfeiture expert, Leon Felkins:

It is estimated that the Federal government now confiscates nearly a billion dollars per year (1996 is last year for which an accounting has been released) with states and cities likely confiscating as much or more. Estimates are difficult because government agencies are real shy about making such accounting readily available to the public, but the totals are roughly comparable to the “victim costs” from “Crimes of Violence and Robbery” as reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.14

Forfeiture is just one of several forms by which police agencies are being increasingly corrupted.

-------------------------------------------


Militarization and corruption of police

Imagine the president of the United States informing the gunmen of Chicago - Christian knights in those days had no higher ethic - that he permitted them to invade and sack Los Angeles, Hollywood, and Pasadena, and you have something of a parallel.

Dinuba, California (population 15,000) had just 12 cops. But, thanks to gifts of surplus submachine guns and combat gear - all courtesy of the federal government - half those cops got to play at being members of a Special Enforcement Team - their version of a SWAT squad. Not much going on in Dinuba, though. So they found something to occupy themselves. In 1997, hearing that a sawed-off shotgun used in an attempted murder might be in a certain home, they crashed through the door in the middle of the night, wearing black masks and cammies. Terrified, the 64-year-old farm worker who lived there grabbed a folding knife. Dinuba's finest machine-gunned him to death. The weapon they were seeking (which reportedly belonged to the man's son) was not in the house.15

The Dinuba debacle wasn't a drug case. But what happened there was a direct result of the federal Drug War. Not long ago, a quest for evidence would have brought a pair of uniformed policemen to the front door in broad daylight, knocking, explaining their mission, warrant in hand. No more.

In his New York Times article, “Crack's Legacy: Soldiers of the Drug War Remain on Duty,”16 Timothy Egan explains:

…what started as a response to the violent front of the war on drugs has evolved, here and in cities across the nation, into a new world of policing.
Special Weapons and Tactics squads, once used exclusively for the rare urban terrorist incident or shootout, transformed themselves through the crack years into everyday parts of city life….

Encouraged by federal grants, surplus equipment handed out by the military and seizure laws that allow police departments to keep much of what their special units take in raids, the Kevlar-helmeted brigades have grown dramatically, even in the face of plummeting crime figures.

“It is the militarization of Mayberry,” said Dr. Peter Kraska, a professor of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University, who surveyed police departments nationwide and found that their deployment of paramilitary units had grown tenfold since the early 1980s. “This is unprecedented in American policing and you have to ask yourself: What are the unintended consequences?”

Not only are police acting like soldiers, but thanks to Reagan and Bush, who weakened the Posse Comitatus law (that for more than a century had forbidden the military any role in U.S. law enforcement), soldiers are now entering police work - as they did in Redford, Texas.

In 1994, a survey of 300 U.S. Marines17 raised alarms with its finding that 26.34 percent of the respondents would unhesitatingly fire upon U.S. citizens if ordered to do so. But what's the problem? Presumably 100 percent of civilian police are willing to fire upon criminal American citizens. It's part of their job.

The problem isn't only who's doing the enforcing. It's attitude. Remember the old police motto, “Protect and Serve?” It's a far cry from the soldiers' “Kill 'em all; let God sort 'em out.” While “protect and serve” has always been, to some degree, a myth - ask anybody from Harlem, or any poor white trash boy - it's nevertheless been a guiding vision. Police have seen - and should see - themselves as part of the community. Not like this:

Members of the NYPD's Street Crime Unit are known as “the commandos of the NYPD.” In existence since 1971, the unit has undergone a 300 percent build-up since 1997. Former NYC Police Commissioner William Bratton encouraged the men to “become far more aggressive.” Currently made up of roughly 400 mostly white officers, this unit, along with the 7,000 strong Narcotics Unit, represent the front line in Mayor Giuliani's “quality of life” crackdown on - and criminalization of - people of color, especially young, poor, and homeless people. They wear (and peddle) tee shirts that say: “Certainly There Is No Hunting Like the Hunting of Men.” And their slogan is, “We own the night.”18

Of course, that's New York. Surely, the Dinuba, California's of the world are wising up? In fact, Dinuba did wise up. It had to. The family of the grandfather that Dinuba's play-SWAT boys killed won a $12.5 million federal judgment against the city - a figure more than twice the town's annual budget. Dinuba decided it didn't really need a military SWAT team after all.

But although some small cities have dumped their SWAT teams in the wake of lawsuits, others aren't getting the message. According to an AP report, October 10, 1999:

Police in this Snohomish County city [Mill Creek, Washington], population 10,600, aren't taking any chances. The department has bought surplus military gear for its 17 officers, including plastic riot shields for $18 apiece, gas masks for $50 and helmets for about $8. The city has stockpiled military rations and canvas tents. Mill Creek police are also considering a $1,200 tear-gas gun that can shoot canisters through windows or into crowds.

All this for a city whose only violent crime last year was a robbery.

And yes, the U.S. military - in the name of the War on Drugs - continues to hand local police helicopters, machine guns and training. In the wake of the Cold War, Congress, the White House and the Pentagon are also casting about for new duties for the United States' standing army.

What next?

The fearful massacres of the Albigensians…had by no means extinguished the rebellion. In 1241 and 1242, especially, the Inquisitors provoked such anger by their conduct that one of them was assassinated. The Pope compelled the Count of Toulouse to lead his troops against them, and the war or “crusade” was resumed.

Every year or so, Congressman James Traficant (D-Ohio) proposes legislation that would station 10,000 U.S. soldiers on the Mexican border to keep out drugs and illegal aliens. In February 1999, he introduced HR 628, granting soldiers the authority to “prevent entry into the U.S.” by illegal aliens, drug traffickers and terrorists. The bill would also have authorized the military to inspect all vehicles and cargo entering the U.S. So far, Traficant's wishes have not made it intact into law, though they've found strong support in the House and have begun to creep piecemeal into Defense Department appropriations bills.

The Defense Department has done an analysis of what it would take to close the U.S./Mexico border. Their conclusion:

• 96 infantry battalions (48,000-96,000 soldiers)
  
• 53 helicopter companies (800-1600 aircraft, approximately 21,000 soldiers)
  
• 210 patrol ships
  
• 110 surveillance aircraft

And this doesn't count logistical support. In a brilliant article, “War on Drugs: Military Perspectives and Problems,”19 analyst Joseph Miranda estimates that it would take nearly 500,000 soldiers simply to fulfill the Defense Department's own estimates. Then he goes on to show why those estimates are far, far too low.

Miranda's arguments are too complex to quote in detail here. His article is well worth reading by anyone concerned about the potential for Police State U.S.A. But in the end, Miranda concludes that a serious effort to close the border to drug trafficking would at least double the size of the current U.S. military and require maintaining that large a presence along the border, and in drug-supplying nations, in perpetuity. And that's without accounting for the extra force needed to fight the guerrilla warriors that would arise in rage against so crushing an occupying force.

Of course, no politician would dare propose that force today. No, you propose 10,000 to score political points today. And when 10,000 prove inadequate, you propose 100,000. And when 100,000 prove inadequate…

Unfortunately, it worked

If in those centuries there had been the same freedom as we enjoy, Roman Catholicism would…have shrunk long ago into a sect.
The Inquisition is an indelible disgrace to the religion which created it;… in its procedure this holy court, presided over by the holiest of men, under the direct control of their holinesses the Popes, was the most infamous instrument of injustice and the worst fomenter of murderous cupidity that the world has ever seen.

Across the country, increasingly the public, church groups, think tanks and strong-minded officials (such as former San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara and New Mexico governor Gary Johnson) are waking up. They're speaking against the terror created in the War on Drugs. Some are crying for an emphasis on treatment instead of arrest. Some want limited legalization. Some say, hell, just decriminalize the stuff and get out of our way.

Yet the prison population continues to soar, as do arrests for the most harmless of drugs. According to the New York Times, someone in America is arrested every 20 seconds for a drug violation, and a new jail or prison is opened each week.20 In 1998, the FBI reported an all-time high number of marijuana busts - 682,885 nationwide.21 Eight-eight percent of those were for mere possession, not sale or cultivation. That's more than the number of arrests for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, combined.

Is there any sign that anyone in the federal government is listening?

On October 7, 1999, at the order of Congress, a new military command was born in Norfolk, Virginia. Its purpose: to expand the use of the military in domestic law enforcement even beyond the Drug War. Thanks to the latest exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, the military will now have a toehold in such broadly defined areas of domestic law enforcement as “terrorism,” “chemical weapons” and “cybercrime.”

Of course, the military's initial role is only “advisory” - just as we merely had military “advisors” in Vietnam, Waco and Redford, Texas.

Defense Secretary William Cohen told reporters, “The American people should not be concerned about [soldiers enforcing laws in their cities]. They should welcome it.”

But in an article by Jon E. Dougherty in WorldNetDaily, October 13, 1999,22 Gregory Nojeim, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C., put it more succinctly and accurately, “When the crisis hits, those with the biggest guns will be subordinate to no one.”

Oh, yes. The federal government is listening. To the Divine Will to Power - a force that echoes through the centuries with an ominous familiarity.


Notes

[list=1][*]Quotes about the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade are from: The Story of Religious Controversy, Chapter XXIII, by Joseph McCabe (1867-1955). http://www.infidels.org/library/hist...apter_23.html.
[*]www.house.gov/judiciary/docs105.htm.
[*]Interview with author for this story.
[*]U.S. Department of Health and Human Services figures.
[*]Most numbers were provided by Bob Newland, chairman of the Mt. Rushmore State Chapter of NORML; they are from various sources, but are in general agreement with those of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
[*]Stories of Drug War prisoners, unless other sources are specified, are from “The Wall,” maintained by the November Coalition, http://www.november.org.
[*]“Where Does the Slippery Slope of Militarization Lead?” http://www.mapinc.org/DPFT/hernandez...ery_slope.html
[*]Interview with author for this story.
[*]Ventura County District Attorney's report on the Scott case, found at http://www.illusions.com/opf/Scott.htm; also a variety of news sources.
[*]Amnesty International report on the increasing use of electronic stun weapons: http://www.amnestyusa.org/rightsforall/stun/summary
[*]Cato Policy Analysis No. 179; September 29, 1992, American Forfeiture Law: Property Owners Meet The Prosecutor, by Terrance G. Reed, found at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-179es.html.
[*]“U.S. Supreme Court to Review $405K” by Jeffrey Steinborn, found at http://www.fear.org/405k32.html.
[*]For the complete story on civil forfeiture, see http://www.fear.org.
[*]“No One Wins When the Government Can Freely Loot Private Property,” by Leon Felkins; http://www.curleywolfe.net/cw/F_Leon_NoOneWins.shtml. 1. The Bureau of Justice Statistics he cites can be found at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/coctv.txt.
[*]Sacramento Bee, April 9, 1999.
[*]"Soldiers of the Drug War Remain on Duty," by Timothy Egan. http://www.pubdef.state.mn.us/homepa...n_drugs_2.htm.
[*]Information on the survey can be found at http://www.ccnet.com/~suntzu75/q-46.htm.
[*]“The Militarization of the Police,” by Frank Morales; Covert Action Quarterly, Spring-Summer 1999.
[*]"War on Drugs: Military Perspectives and Problems," by Joseph Miranda. http://www.drcnet.org/military/.
[*]"The War on Drugs Retreats, Still Taking Prisoners," by Timothy Egan http://www.pubdef.state.mn.us/homepa...n_drugs_1.htm.
[*]www.drcnet.org/wol/113.html#drugarrests
[*]“New Military Unit for Domestic Deployment;” http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky..._milita.shtml.

[Munro Williams]

I was born into a period of American history when the nation’s basic problems were improving things like the national defense, drinking water and sewerage, infrastructure like roads and bridges, getting kids to study more math and science so we could beat the Russians to the moon, economics, the care of widows and orphans, and eliminating institutional racism in local and state government. If those were still the problems facing the nation, governing the USA would be easy. It would be nice if the people born in the USA since then would live their lives in such a way that those were still the primary problems.

Today, the primary problems are: people having children with the same seriousness as they follow the latest rock band; how to prevent murderous fops from importing zillions of dollars in recreational drugs that find their way to elementary schools; how to approach discussing the realities of abortion to people who have sick sex lives; how to provide day-care for uncared-for children so that permanently adolescent parents can continue their permanently adolescent life styles; what to do about children being born heroin or cocaine addicts; how to keep people from killing each other with AIDS with sex partners they don’t know well enough to loan ten bucks to; what to do about children of divorced couples in a nation of adults who are incapable of maintaining real relationships of any depth for any period; what to do about thirteen-year-old girls giving birth in large numbers; and how to induce the sexually depraved to use at least marginal protection if they can't be talked out of swapping body fluids with total strangers--sometimes at the rate of several partners a night.

All of these problems are concomitant to, and are first cousins of, the popularization and epidemic use of recreational hallucinogens and psychotropics. Objection to this sort of behavior and mindset, which are the primary causes of these nightmarish problems, is considered moralistic and tyrannical. Supporting laws that prohibit these primary causes is considered totalitarian. Enthusiastic approval of law enforcement efforts to enforce these laws is considered little different than applauding the Waco inferno. So be it.


Most American social problems started with large scale perverse narcissism which excuses the self-indulgent behavior which cause those problems. We have a two-hundred billion dollar per year drug problem because drugs are depicted as not being dangerous in the first place, and certainly far less dangerous than government attempts to halt their abuse, and because the forty year old psychotic rationalizations of recreational drug use have prevailed over the reality of drugs. It has recently become fashionable to frown on "crack" and cocaine, but many of the drugs that have been fashionable since the 60s are not to be acknowledged as having destructive consequences. Condemning crack introduces an artificial comfort zone of psychological safety from accountability between the present drug problem and the generational arguments rationalizing drug use since the 60s. Any references to that critical cause has effectively been forbidden. That basic primary cause is still dynamic and is still the major drug problem.

None of this started with crack. During the last 35 years or so there has been a direct evolution of drug use, from the first psychedelics, through varying drugs of fashion, to today’s crack. Drug experimentation and pathological denial of the most obvious consequences of drug use became a well-established precedent several decades ago, and continues to flourish. This deluded thinking, not reality, has governed American drug use ever since.

To put it simply, during the madness of the 60s and 70s a significant proportion of a generation demanded to get high and insisted that it was not their thinking that was warped, but that it was reality that was twisted, and demanded that the destructive effects of drug use did not exist. This did not change reality. The consequence is that America continues to splash around in the cesspool of a massive drug problem. The perverse narcissism and the same insane pro-drug arguments still exist. This is what needs to be thoroughly analyzed, and this is where changes must be made.

[Politically Incorrect]

Perhaps you might change your mind if you were to change places with Lonnie Lundy.

[Master Blaster]

I see you live in Japan Munro, have you ever gone down to the entertainment district in Tokyo and watched the respectable salary men stagger in and out of the hostess bars drunk on legal beer or saki? What about their wives and children at home.

Alcohol kills far more people than other illegal drugs.

Substitute the word alcohol for all of the other drugs mentioned in your post, AAh well I frgot alcohol is legal.

Any attempt to legislate against human vices will always fail.

What the hay we can all work for the government as prison guards.

[Charmedlyfe]

Ms. Wolfe obviously has an axe to grind with religion, and for that matter anyone or anything that might interfere with her doing anything she felt like. I noted ONE book on history, and nothing more. I guess she just presents facts that are convenient to her side of the issue.

Those who support legalization of drugs are almost always one of three sorts:

1) the USER---one who is actively using drugs, and wants them legalized so he/she can continue to use them without fear of the law.

2) the INTELLECTUAL----like most people in the gun control camp, this person has little if any actual experience with the subject matter. They formulate opinion based on 'facts' provided by those with an interest in legalization of drugs, and reject data from any established organization. This usually stems from a desire to prove to everyone how avant guarde they are.

3) the DISILLUSIONED----probably the worst of all. This person is one who has actually seen how bad this problem is, but has also seen current strategy fail. Rather than continue to defend what's left of society, they believe that it should be legalized just to avoid having to make the effort/pay the price. We call these people burnouts.

Why not legalize burglary? We aren't going to stop it through current strategy. Of course, the burglars are just victims of social injustice who we should feel sorry for. Well, how about it?

Munro, you could save bandwidth by boiling your arguments down to their essence: "Yes, but drugs are destructive".

[Christopher II]

Charmedlyfe,

Why not legalize burglary? Because burglary involves the use of force against another person or their property. Thus, burglary fits the definition of a criminal act. Drug use does not, no matter how much people try to rationalize about "damage to society" (usually just a codeword for "damage to the state.")

The only moral definition of crime is, "To deprive another person of life, liberty, or property, through the use of force (or threat of force) or fraud." Any crime that falls outside that category is nothing but collectivist social engineering.

Also, where exactly do you get the idea that Claire Wolfe has a problem with religion? The fact that she thinks the Inquisition was an act of nearly unsurpassed evil?

I'll be waiting to hear you present some facts that show...

- despite all of the innocent citizens who have been imprisoned or killed as a side effect of the drug war,
- despite the fact that drug use is still on the rise,
- despite the inherent immorality of criminalizing an act that does not involve the use of force,

...despite all that, that the drug war is still something worth pursuing.

Later,
Chris

[Munro Williams]

Obviously, American politics as discussions of defense, public works, and caring for the halt and the lame is a thing of the past. Instead, we have causes. To really understand American politics today one needs to be familiar with abnormal psychology and totalitarian political theory, particularly Lenin’s Vanguard and Spontaneity. Our country is under total attack by madness and institutionalized, vindictive, permanent adolescence. The real focus of contemporary political life in the USA is defending against that attack.

There are two types of troubled people in this contest. There are those who have been insane, or who have been trying to drives us insane, for the last thirty-five to forty years, and there are those of us being driven crazy, who are trying to find an explanation for it all, or who can’t believe their eyes and ears. Personally, I feel like hiding in the closet sometimes after participating in these Libertarian sponsored doper threads.

Conservative people are scared, or should be, regardless of the new President. They know, or should know, that they are under attack. They exhaust themselves trying to reason with those attacking them. No modus vivendi is possible because the political noises attacking them are insane protestations to and denials of reality. Some talk of the coming of the Beast foretold in the Bible, which is the closest they can come to describing the wide spread utter rejection of all things they know to be good and true, but this has a strange, and for some people, disturbing tone that the political and lifestyle left exploits to misrepresent and ridicule opposition and basic human decency as primitive superstition and religious intolerance.

What these good God-fearing people are trying to understand is very real, nonetheless, and if the words “institutionalized insanity compounded by mass angry disturbed adolescence," are substituted for "Anti-Christ," suddenly their observations and apprehensions are very accurate indeed.

Many Conservatives are understandably frightened because they are too busy with life, making a living, raising families, and paying the bills to spend the years of study necessary to refute the unified, carefully orchestrated attack from the political and lifestye left. The academics in the educational system are against them. They have limited access to in-depth alternatives. I participate in these threads to serve as an alternative resource. In the last 40 years, with the reliance upon TV and other institutions controlled by the political-lifestyle left as the major intellectual focus in the USA, some very important premises have been displaced and forgotten.

One of those premises is that without the self discipline, morality, and rationality required for self government, liberty crumbles into madness, and people clamor for the police state to restore order.

If you think that police procedures are repressive now, wait until psychedelic and hypnotic drugs like LSD and THC are legalized, the last remaining floodgates of insanity are opened, and the nation turns into one mass open air rock concert. That would require police procedures beyond most folks’ comprehension, Claire Woolf included. For a good idea of what something like that would look like, spend a weekend in Phnom Penh.

[Mikul]

Charmedlyfe, you've forgotten the last type.

the WITNESS: this person has seen a fair amount of illegal drug use and watched each of these people live normal lives, keep their money, jobs, cars, and families. The only difference he sees between these drug users and the average person is that they have to hide a recreational activity.

[Oleg Volk]

A side effect of the prohibition (be it on alcohol, guns, anti-Soviet literature or drugs) is the alienation of the law enforcement from other citizens. For instance, a police officer with a dog is seen as a hazard rather than as an ally. That means a self-perpetuating cycle of decreased coopration between LEOs and those who supposedely hire them. Even the trend towards elected Sheriffs is countered by Federalization of enforcement.

[LawDog]

The only moral definition of crime is, "To deprive another person of life, liberty, or property, through the use of force (or threat of force) or fraud." Any crime that falls outside that category is nothing but collectivist social engineering.

Treason is collectivist social engineering? No person is deprived of life, liberty or property during the commission of treason.

Ditto with espionage.

What about crimes committed against governments or corporations? If someone firebombs a County-owned police cruiser parked outside the jail? Since no person was deprived of life, liberty or property -- was no crime committed?

LawDog

[glock glockler]

Munro, you're skirting around the issue.

Before 1937, Marijuana was completely legal. Was society falling apart in a bastion of moral decay? It was around this time period that other drugs were made illegal, was it a huge problem then? If you like, you can go to a library and look up newspapers that were printed in that time period, did drug dealers push to school children then? Did they fight over distribution teritory, killing anyone who got in their way? The answer is "No".

Why is it that, from when you were growing up during the Cold War, society took such a turn for the worse if drugs were illegal the whole time? Why did society change if drug's legal status did not?

Perhaps it it the ever encroaching "Nanny state" that promises to take care of people from the cradle to the grave that has nurtured personal irresponsibility. In case you're not aware of it, responsibility for one's actions does not include needing to be told what substances they can and cannot ingest.

You also site the other aspects of the "Nanny State" that exist to support those that destroy themselves with various drugs, why? How can you claim to support personal responsibility if you justify the State supporting those that choose to destroy themselves? All that you are doing is providing an excuse for them to engage in that bahavior, why refrain from it if you dont have to pick up the pieces?

Well, I know about a fellow named "Darwin" who was pretty smart and had a magnificent solution for people like that: you leave them alone and they will eventually destroy themselves. Why fight the scum of society from removing themselves from the genepool?

Munro, you are argueing from an emotional point of view. The "drug war" does not work, it does not prevent those who want to use drugs from doing so, I can get drugs easily if I so choose, all that it does is create a never ending war on freedom.

[scud]

LawDog:

In treason espionage and vandalism there very well could end up being people deprived of liberty life etc. In the case of vandalism the community has been deprived of property so it really isn't the same as this.

****************************

What it boils down to for me is that I think the power of the .gov needs to be reduced, legalizing this crap seems to be a good way to shrink them down and whatever these people do in their own homes is none of my business anyway. Maybe crime will increase, maybe not. There are not many drug addicts that can't get drugs running around out there. The drug war is a failure, it is a new thing also, before 1930 or so no one even dreamed of making these things illegal. I think that if drugs were to be legalized as they used to be that while there may be a surge in use to begin with that things would level off after a while and with propper truthful education ( not the BS of reefer madness or something ) people would avoid them at about the same rate they do today. What potential drug user is there now that can't get drugs ? As screwed up as our current situation is I don't think it would or even could make things any worse. With alcohol legal everyone is not a alcoholic, why would it be different ?

Besides all of that then when I get into a situation when I actually need painkillers I don't have to be treated like a drug feind when I ask for some from some idiot doctor that has no idea what is wrong w/ me. ( happened when I ripped my tendons the other day - never did get anything that would work because none of the quacks at the walk in clinics could figure out what was wrong w/ me. By the time I found a specialist that knew what was wrong - 3 weeks later - the pain was not bad enough to need it )

[Christopher II]

LawDog, you're not using sarcasm again, are you?
Just in case...

While the crime of treason is predicated upon the existence of the central state (which I oppose,) that does not mean the treason cannot result in harm coming to an individual. Espionage works the same way. Take as an example, a gov't employee decides to sell information to a foreign gov't that identifies an agent in their intelligence service. If that agent is then imprisoned or killed, the gov't employee who sold the secrets would be guilty of a crime (he caused the initiation of force against another individual.)

Next, corporations are simply a collection of individuals. Ditto communities. My taxes paid for your theoretical Police cruiser, so the twerp who firebombed it, in a very real sense, destroyed my property! Now if the same twerp firebombed a Police cruiser that he bought at auction, then he hasn't committed a crime.

I stand by my statement. There should be a Constitutional amendment enacted that states that the gov't shall not make any action criminal that does not directly harm another's life, liberty, or property.

Later,
Chris

[LawDog]

While the crime of treason is predicated upon the existence of the central state (which I oppose,) that does not mean the treason cannot result in harm coming to an individual. Espionage works the same way.

Now, are you saying that a person can have committed treason or espionage only if the results of the treason or espionage result in harm coming to another person?

Or are you saying that a person can have committed treason or espionage if the treason or espionage may result in harm coming to another person?

Likewise,

Next, corporations are simply a collection of individuals. Ditto communities. My taxes paid for your theoretical Police cruiser, so the twerp who firebombed it, in a very real sense, destroyed my property!

To clear this up in my mind, are you stating that an action involving an item (or services) which has been paid for, in whatever small amount, by your taxes can be a crime?

LawDog

[John/az2]

One of those premises is that without the self discipline, morality, and rationality required for self government, liberty crumbles into madness, and people clamor for the police state to restore order.

At last, there is something from the psychobabble that I completely agree with you on. Even then, the order that comes from a police state is a mere shadow or facade that will eventually crumble.

The only lasting freedom and order come from the self discipline, morality, and rationality that you talked about in the quote above.


http://www.cphv.com/whatif/whatif.html

[Christopher II]

LawDog,

To your first question, close, but not quite. A person can only be charged with a crime if his actions cause harm to another's person or property. If the mode of his crime is giving aid and comfort to the enemy, etc, then yes, his crime would be treason. I'm sure you realize what it would lead to if doing anything that might harm another person was a crime.

Second, yes, actions that involve theft or property damage. An item purchased via tax revenue is, for all intents and purposes, owned by the community at large (I'll skip the rant about taxation being evil for now .) If someone steals or damages community-owned property, then they have indeed committed a real crime.

As for services, well, I'm not sure how you would steal or damage a service that has been paid for thru tax revenue.

Later,
Chris

[Paul B.]

Let's see. The Government enacted prohibition and outlawed boozes. Speakeasies flourished and the Mob got it's financial start. Prohibition was a failure.
Modern day prohibition is the so-called war on drugs. No Constitutional Amendment to give it some form of credibility as when booze was outlawed, It too has been a totally disastous failure allowing LEO's of all types to confiscate private property, kill sometimes innocent people and all within the boundries of law. Something is radically wrong here folks.
Paul B.

[Charmedlyfe]

Mikul: Sorry. I only deal in fact. I'll leave fiction to you.


Christopher: What about all the innocent people who would be harmed through the insane actions of those who get high? Ever deal with someone on PCP? They AREN'T calm and quiet.

You also seem to have confused burglary with robbery. No 'force' used.....just your stuff taken. Of course, what about trespassing? 'That silly dope-fiend is standing on my property and won't leave.....no, he's not doing anything.'

By the way, druggies won't stop comitting crimes to feed their habit. Will you give the drugs out free, provide free housing, food, clothing, and health care? Well???

Munro: Thanks. I generally don't have a lot of time to put into researching this stuff, and over the years I've lost my talent for writing. I hadn't thought how difficult it is to debate someone who has plenty of time to prepare.

[twoblink]

What all of you fail to understand is this:

From a gov'ment perspective:

We have a war on drugs, Amsterdam doesn't. This is what makes us superior to them.

As a result, we have a much higher crime rate. This is benefit of us being superior to them (see statement above).

Amsterdam is jealous of us because we have something they don't have (more crime) and more is better right?

Anybody who doesn't understand that, doesn't understand gov'ment math.

Albert

[Christopher II]

Charmedlyfe,

What about all the innocent people who would be harmed through the insane actions of those who get high?

Yes, yes, yes, what about all the innocent people who are harmed by people who are on legal drugs, like booze or Prozac? What about all the people harmed by people who are just twits? What about all the people who get high and then don't harm anyone else?

Only people who initiate force should be punished by the state. Period.

You also seem to have confused burglary with robbery. No 'force' used.....just your stuff taken. Of course, what about trespassing? 'That silly dope-fiend is standing on my property and won't leave.....no, he's not doing anything.'

Quite the contrary, mon ami. The use of force doesn't necessarily mean that the burglar puts a gun to your head, just that he takes your possessions without permission (thereby denying you of your right to property.) The same goes for trespassing. If somebody is occupying your property without your permission, he's infringing upon your right to control your private property as you see fit.

By the way, druggies won't stop committing crimes to feed their habit. Will you give the drugs out free, provide free housing, food, clothing, and health care? Well???

Sigh. First, I'm an adherent of Austrian-school, lazziez-faire capitalism. As such, I'm opposed to welfare, socialized medicine, rent control, and all the rest of that swill.

But an ounce of chemically pure Cocaine Hydrochloride goes for around eighty bucks, when purchased by a qualified physician or medical researcher. An ounce of street Cocaine goes for around a grand plus, and that's after it's been stepped on four or five times. The reason for this price difference is the same as the reason for the price difference between a post-sample LEO-only M-16A2, and a pre-86 transferable M-16A2. Government controls.

So yes, a 1000% drop in the street price of most drugs would probably yield a substantial drop in violent crime rates. Not to mention that street pushers would end up being supplanted (or bought out) by our very efficient pharmaceutical industry.

But alas, all this misses the point. I could care less whether legalization would halve our crime rate or double it. It is simply immoral for the government to throw a citizen in prison for putting chemicals into their own body. Everything else is just window-dressing.

Later,
Chris

[Ed Brunner]

How many of the angels on the head of this pin are actually dancing...

[LawDog]

Ed, does moshing count as dancing?

[zot]

clinton smoked marijuana,I think bush still does, and now
marijuana is allmost as bad as herion if your caught with it
I think there should be some kind of reservations,"prisons"
that put all addicts that are on crack and herion, not pot
and feed these people ALL the drugs they want, till the time comes they want out, and that would be 1 year sobriety
before release,shooting citizens, bashing down doors,and
the probable cause to search you anytime, has been stretched
past 5th ammenment rights,its a war that won't be won, and
the feds KNOW it, they like taking property, big business,
in my county the sherrif has to make a certain amount of drug busts per year to keep his federal aid, that means
alot of poor people get busted for ditch weed, and at least 10 year prison term for more than a ounce, all rights gone!
a non citizen, when the hell is clinton EVER going to prison
for the white water deal?

[Munro Williams]

We didn't have a major drug problem in the USA until the 60s because people had more sense than to get high and stay high for fun. Besides, the adults back then would have beaten to death anyone selling it to kids and no jury would have convicted them. Rampant drug use exploded in the 60s, as did robbery, murder, and rape.There is no credible connection between the Harrison Act and the tidal wave of recreational drug use thirty years or so later.

America has a dope problem for the same reasons it has a rape problem that increased by the same amount that drug usage did in the 60s, for the same reason that mental disorder skyrocketed during that time, for the same reason that the Clintons were elected president. We found ourselves under siege from a politically powerful generation of rebellious soft-headed brats, and sanity, morality, and farsightedness lost their function as the dominant behavioral paradigms in American life.

What I am reading on this thread is the doper equivalent of Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, and Gloria Steinem. Modern degenerate libertines first portray themselves as victims, then demand that the first thing that pops into their heads be accepted as sage wisdom, and later expand it into an abstract “ethical” premise in which to drape themselves to portray themselves as the aggrieved party, suffering the horrors of a modern Inquisition. This does not impress me. Trailer trash is still trailer trash. Depravity remains depravity, and the resulting calamity from dope legalization will still be the resulting calamity.

The Japanese have a proverb for talk of this kind, their equivalent of “making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” baji tofü uma mimi nembutsu, literally “praying to Buddha for horse’s earwax.” One wouldn’t say this in a formal or polite situation.