Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006
Subject: #336 Defund Terrorists – End Prohibition
DEFUND TERRORISTS – END PROHIBITION
*********************PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE*************************
DrugSense FOCUS Alert #336 – Wednesday, 27 September 2006
Yesterday morning, the largest newspaper in Florida – The St.
Petersburg Times – was one of three papers that printed a notable and
timely column from John Tierney of the New York Times. Also yesterday
the column was printed in the Arizona Republic, Arizona’s largest
newspaper. Details are at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1283/a04.html
Mr. Tierney has written several excellent columns highlighting various
critical flaws of status-quo public drug policies in the past.
Tierney’s coverage has included the DEA’s war on chronic pain
patients, various aspects of Washington-inspired reefer madness and
the excessive militarization of domestic police forces against U.S.
citizens.
This time, he takes a more global look at the impact of U.S. drug war
policies in relation to Afghanistan, to South America and to Mexico.
He observes the incredible financial empowerment to criminal cartels
and to terrorist organizations inspired by the drug war. And in two
paragraphs he identifies the smartest and most productive response
left unapplied – ending drug prohibition.
Please consider writing letters to the St. Petersburg Times and other
newspapers when they print John Tierney’s columns. Past columns may be
reviewed at this link, where future columns will also be posted:
http://www.mapinc.org/author/John+Tierney
Thanks for your effort and support.
It’s not what others do it’s what YOU do
**********************************************************************
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1280/a09.html
Pubdate: Tue, 26 Sep 2006
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2006 New York Times News Service
Contact: http://www.sptimes.com/letters/
Author: John Tierney
IN WAR ON LEAF, ALL LOSE
U.S. Drug Policies Are Helping Terrorists and Other Enemies Abroad.
Repeal of Prohibition Is the Only Workable Solution.
The most enlightening speech at the United Nations this week, I’m
sorry to say, was the one by Evo Morales of Bolivia.
I don’t mean it was a good or even a coherent speech. That would be
too much to expect from the world leaders’ annual gasathon.
The rhetorical bar is extremely low. Morales, like his friend Hugo
Chavez, spent much of his time ranting about a new world order based
on the economic policies that have worked such wonders in Cuba.
But Morales at least brought a visual aid – and thank God, it wasn’t a
book by Noam Chomsky. Unlike Chavez, he didn’t assign reading homework
to the U.N. Instead, he held up a small green coca leaf, and when he
talked about international drug policies, he made more sense than
anyone in the United States government.
We’ve sacrificed soldiers’ lives and spent billions of dollars trying
to stop peasants from growing coca in the Andes and opium in
Afghanistan and other countries. But the crops have kept flourishing,
and in America the street price of cocaine and heroin has plummeted in
the past two decades.
Meanwhile, we’ve been helping terrorists and other enemies abroad. The
Senate has voted to send Afghanistan more money for programs to harass
opium growers, whose discontent is already being exploited by the
resurgent Taliban. In the Andes, American drug policies made Bolivians
so mad that they elected Morales, a former leader of the coca growers,
who campaigned for president on the kind of anti-American rhetoric he
spouted this week.
At the U.N., he denounced “the colonization of the Andean peoples” by
imperialists intent on criminalizing coca. “It has been demonstrated
that the coca leaf does no harm to human health,” he said, a statement
that’s much closer to the truth than Washington’s take on these
leaves. The white powder sold on the streets of America is dangerous
because it’s such a concentrated form of cocaine, but just about any
substance can be perilous at a high enough dose.
South Americans routinely drink coca tea and chew coca leaves. The
tiny amount of cocaine in the leaves is a mild stimulant and appetite
suppressant that isn’t more frightening than coffee or colas – in
fact, it might be less addictive than caffeine, and on balance it
might even be good for you. When the World Health Organization asked
scientists to investigate coca in the 1990’s, they said it didn’t seem
to cause health problems and might yield health benefits.
But American officials fought against the publication of the report
and against the loosening of restrictions on coca products, just as
they’ve resisted proposals to let Afghan farmers sell opium to
pharmaceutical companies instead of to narco-traffickers allied with
the Taliban. The American policy is to keep attacking the crops, even
if that impoverishes peasants – or, more typically, turns them into
criminals.
Drug prohibition in Bolivia and Afghanistan has done exactly what
alcohol prohibition did in America: it has financed organized crime.
The only workable solution is to repeal prohibition. Give Afghan poppy
growers a chance to sell opium for legal painkilling medicines; give
Andean peasants a legal international market for their crops in
products like gum, lozenges, tea and other drinks. As Ethan Nadelmann
of the Drug Policy Alliance proposes, “Put the coca back in Coca-Cola.”
That’s what Morales wants, too, and he’s right to complain about
American imperialists criminalizing a substance that has been used for
centuries in the Andes. If gringos are abusing a product made from
coca leaves, that’s a problem for America to deal with at home. The
most cost-effective way is through drug treatment programs, not
through futile efforts to cut off the supply.
America makes plenty of things that are bad for foreigners’ health –
fatty Big Macs, sugary Cokes, deadly Marlboros – but we’d never let
foreigners tell us what to make and not make. The Saudis can fight
alcoholism by forbidding the sale of Jack Daniels, but we’d think they
were crazy if they ordered us to eradicate fields of barley in Tennessee.
They’d be even crazier if they tried to wipe out every field of barley
in the world, but that’s what our drug policy has come to. We think we
can solve our cocaine problem by getting rid of coca leaves, but all
we’re doing is empowering demagogues like Evo Morales. Our drug
warriors put him in power. Now he gets to perform show and tell for
the world.
**********************************************************************
Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:
http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides
Or contact MAP Media Activism Facilitator Steve Heath for personal
tips on how to write LTEs that get printed.
**********************************************************************
Join Steve and other LTE writing friends of MAP Tuesday evenings at 9
p.m. EDT (8pm CDT, 7pm MDT, 6pm PDT) for a roundtable discussion of
how to write LTEs that are likely to be printed.
See: http://mapinc.org/resource/paltalk.htm for all details on how
you can participate in this important meeting of leading minds in
reform. Discussion is conducted with live Voice (microphone and
speakers all that is needed) and also via text messaging.
The Paltalk software is free and easy to download and
install.
The password for this gathering will be: welcome-pal (all lower
case)
**********************************************************************
PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER
Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent
letter list ( [email protected]) if you are subscribed, or by
E-mailing a copy directly to [email protected] if you are not
subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list so others
can learn from your efforts.
Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( [email protected]) will help you
to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or
approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing
efforts.
To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see
http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form
**********************************************************************
Prepared by: S Heath, Media Activism Facilitator www.mapinc.org/resource
=.