WAR ON OURSELVES

In 1972 the Consumers Union issued an extensive report on the state
of drug use in America called Licit & Illicit Drugs, in which they
made several recommendations including: One. Stop publicizing the
horrors of the "drug menace," such as calling marijuana the "Killer
Weed." Two. Stop calling alcohol and tobacco essentially non-drugs
while demonizing other chemicals. Three. Stop pursuing the goal of
stamping out all illicit drug use.

Needless to say we continue our War on Drugs with gusto and now have
one in a hundred of our adults in jail or prison making America the
most jail happy nation in the world. From here you and I can all fill
in our own statistics and ideas about the success or failure of the
War on Drugs just as we can continue to publish in this paper the
fill-in-the-blanks stories of people on probation being approached by
police in their homes, the police finding implements of drug use,
cash on hand in the hundreds of dollars, and the probationer being
carted off to the Hill Road Jail for another round of another useless
round. We are then asked to report any other suspicious activities so
the police can arrest even more sad-sacks.

Now enters the case of Glenn Neasham. We have the Publisher of this
paper asking "Where's the crime?" We have Dean and Jeanne calling
Glenn a "trustworthy, honest, and devoted religious, church-going
family man." And we have Rosemary Hyden writing that Glenn "is the
victim of the new witch hunt." But Glenn Neasham has been declared
guilty by a jury of his peers with all of the consequences that fall
from this decision such as loss of his business, possible jail time
and his poor children living without a father. We can easily
sympathize with the white business man.

Perhaps now we can see more clearly the Human Rights Watch statement
of 2000: "The racially disproportionate nature of the war on drugs is
just not devastating to black Americans. It contradicts faith in the
principles of justice and equal protection of the laws that should be
the bedrock of any constitutional democracy; it exposes and deepens
the racial fault lines that continue to weaken the country and belies
its promise as a land of opportunity; and it undermines faith among
all races in the fairness and efficacy of the criminal justice system."

Greg Blinn

Kelseyville