A WAR WITHOUT END

Gwynne Dyer's column headlinedAmerica's War on Drugs Mindless(The
Tribune,Sept. 11 issue) doesn't mention the half of Nixon's documented
bigotry and paranoia, the wellsprings of the U. S. A.'s subsequent
drug policies.

America's war on drugs long pre-dates Nixon's classification of
marijuana on the same federal schedule as heroin, and his creation of
the Drug Enforcement Administration national police force. (The DEA
has enjoyed a funding increase every year since its creation in 1970.)

U. S. state and federal prohibition and criminalization of narcotics
and marijuana date to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act which outlawed
opiates and cocaine in 1914. (Previously they were lawfully available
to Americans, in oral or injectible products manufactured by
pharmaceutical corporations, at the corner drug store.) In 1937, the
Marihuana Tax Act outlawed cannabis.

The U. S. A.'s War on Drugs is joylessly celebrating its 95th birthday
(still shy of Europe's Hundred Years War, which lasted 116 years).

Presidents come and go. Nixon went, under threat of impeachment, in
1974, and a dozen White House and campaign cronies, including Nixon's
Attorney General, served felony prison sentences. But the U. S. War on
Drugs, and its rubber-stamp escalation by both political parties, goes
on forever.

While not appearing to, the war panders to white voters because it
imprisons and disenfranchises non-whites in dramatic
disproportion.

From the get-go, drug convictions and decades-long prison sentences
have fallen dramatically on African-Americans and Hispanics -- though
women have recently become the fastest-growing segment of the world's
largest prison system, the Land of the Free. After 95 or 39 years,
have Americans reduced their drug use? No.

Likewise, today's percentage of drug-addicted Americans is the same as
it was when these substances were available at the corner drug store.

War without end. Amen.

Robert Merkin

Northampton, Mass.