ETHNIC CLEANSING U.S. STYLE

Dear Editor,

DEAland criticizes ethnic cleansing around the world from Hitler to
Milosevic but practices it daily with its drug war. In the October
1999 edition of "High Times" Jello Biafra says that "DEA-land's" drug
war is ethnic cleansing American style.

If your readers doubt this, they should ask themselves why white drug
users outnumber non-white drug users but a majority of those dying,
doing time, losing voting rights, and losing college aid for
non-violent drug crimes are people of color. African-Americans make up
12 per cent of the population, but it is estimated that they make up
38 percent of those arrested for drug offences and 58 percent of those
convicted of drug offences. Now to use a favorite ploy of the
paranoid, propaganda peddling prohibitionists: What kind of message is
it sending to "the children".

Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the
party line of prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison
and military industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the "drug
treatment" industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA and the
politicians themselves et. al. can't live without the budget
justification, not to mention the invisible profits bribery,
corruption and forfeiture benefits that prohibition affords them. The
drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement
policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are
supposed to be inalienable according to the Constitution and Bill of
Rights.

I read your editorial about U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and
his misguided plan to expand the drug war. Ashcroft is a clown and he
must believe we are too. Anyone who knows anything about racial
discrimination and the drug war, knows that the drug war was founded
over 70 years ago on racist principles and ideologies.

MYRON VON HOLLINGSWORTH

Fort Worth , Texas