HOW WAR ON DRUGS IS HURTING ASPARAGUS FARMERS

As food was passed around the table at Thanksgiving, I passed on the asparagus.

I actually like asparagus; a lot really. But, I have found myself at
increasing odds with the flowering perennial plant species. It began
with my personal fight against pork-filled farm bills that help bloat
our annual budget deficits and the our national debt. The national
debt was darn close to $13.9 trillion as of 12:45 p.m. Thursday.

American taxpayers subsidize the growth of asparagus in more ways
than one, as I recently learned. I did not ask the family if they
knew where the asparagus was harvested, as it would have sparked
fiery political debate, which can ruin any Thanksgiving meal.

Apparently, my past column's latest dig at dirt farmers who grow
asparagus was more than one industry lobbyist could take without
retorting. I'm glad Alan Schreiber, director of the Washington
Asparagus Commission, or WAC, called me on my tirade against the
tasty vegetable. We should all be.

Schreiber offered further disturbing insight into the mismanagement
of our federal government, which is simply too big, too unfocused,
tries to solve every problem with little regard for creating others
and has no apparent view of the big picture. Schreiber informed me
that cocaine and snorting Americans are to blame for twofold American
subsidies of asparagus.

According to Schreiber: "In 1990, the U.S. government entered into a
drug control policy decision called the Andean Trade Preferences Act.
The intent of the act was to give trade preferences to Andean drug
trafficking countries and give them incentives to grow crops other
than those that produce drugs. One of the crops that they targeted
was asparagus. Get the Peruvians to grow asparagus and they will stop
growing coca leaf and poppies. In the years since then the
preferences our government gave the Peruvians has decimated our
domestic asparagus industry. Now the Peruvians export more asparagus
to the United States than our country produces.

"I represent the Washington asparagus growers, an industry that now
has the fewest acres than any time in the past 70 years and is 25
percent of the size it was the year the act was past. The asparagus
growers are receiving compensation by our government in return for
what was done to our industry."

That's just great! Coke addicts crush hard-working, middle class
American farmers and taxpayers. The addicts are probably white-collar
Wall Street minions looking for another little pick-me-up to get
through the machinations of insane hand gestures to buy or sell. And
this is all in the game of making Wall Street barons richer while
growing the gulf of income disparity with middle class Americans.

All I knew previously about Peruvian flake cocaine was that it was
mentioned in the 1978 Cheech and Chong film "Up in Smoke." But,
apparently, America's love of coke continues to burden future
generations with unsustainable debt. It's not the asparagus that is
killing the country's future, but the coca leaf.

Let me just say, the 1970s are over. The 1980s are too. Put your Izod
collar down, throw the tiny spoon away and turn to exercise for
adrenaline and endorphins. It's time to "get real," as was the
popular saying as Baby Boomers abandoned the doomed 1970s for the
untold promises of the 1980s.

No, you can't make this stuff up. Not even Cheech and Chong. Not even
the Drug Enforcement Agency and not even Rick Fabrizio, though I wish
I could get busy on Peruvian flake and write Hollywood movie scripts
sort of like a coked-up post-modern Jack Kerouac with a tendency for
mind-altered, run-on sentences with little to no regard for proper
punctuation, particularly the use of commas. Of course, it would end
all too tragically as coke has proven to be highly addictive and
would certainly fuel my demise, but hopefully my end would not come
until after I am immortalized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame, ideally between Jack Nicholson and Angelina Jolie.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the U.S.
government has spent more than $46.8 billion on the "War on Drugs" so
far this year. It actually has a "War on Drugs" expenditure clock
that you can watch grow by the second at
www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock. What's really sad is that there is no
doubt our tax dollars maintain the clock, as part of, or in addition
to the $46.8 billion spent to keep people off coke, crack, smack,
pot, meth, X and something called Purple Drank.

Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron, in his 2008 study, estimated the
United States could inject $76.8 billion a year into its economy by
legalizing drugs (street drugs that is, as 'scripts like Wellbutrin
and Viagra are already legal), including $22.5 billion from coke and
heroin. That's akin to subsidizing American asparagus farmers because
we subsidize Peruvian coca leaf farmers to instead grow asparagus.

Legalizing street drugs would seem likely to create other problems
like addiction and crime and personal ruin as well as hepped-up,
run-on sentences.

"It is easy to take pot shots at earmarks, particularly those you
know nothing or little about," Simpson wrote. "I think the next time
you should dig a little deeper before taking aim for your next story."

Despite our shared passion for asparagus, I maintain that Americans
should not subsidize national or international asparagus farmers.
Instead of piling on more debt, wouldn't it be better to stop
subsidizing the Peruvians? And wouldn't it be better if Americans
swore off the coke?