MEDIA SERVING UP PROPAGANDA IN WAR ON DRUGS

Re: Police begin search for pot crops, Noblesville Daily Times, July 18.

Another day, another piece of propaganda served up by the media to
persuade us to prostrate ourselves before Big Brother government and
support one of the most oppressive and brutal programs ever conjured
by the mind of man, drug prohibition. It's propaganda because, as
usual, those of us who oppose these ridiculous laws are not permitted
to be heard.

If drugs are banned because they're harmful, why don't we ban alcohol
and tobacco? No, let's face facts here. The government decided to ban
some harmful recreational drugs but not other harmful recreational
drugs for one reason and one reason only: To distract and entertain
the majority by persecuting an innocent minority.

Drug prohibition was initiated a hundred years ago to "control"
certain non-white minorities by banning the drugs used by those
minorities, but today, the cops are happy to make use of this racist
legislation to harass those whose lifestyle or skin colour offends
them.

One thing for sure, drug prohibition has nothing to do with protecting
anyone from anything. Rather, drug scares are about the use of
something by a group of people who are already perceived by a ruling
elite as some type of threat. In short, drugs are highly useful,
functional and beneficial scapegoats. They provide a ruling class with
fig leaves to place over the unsightly social ills that are endemic to
the social system over which they preside and they give the general
public a focus for blame in which a chemical 'bogeyman,' or the
'deviants' who ingest it, are the root cause for a wide array of
complex social problems.

Why do we put up with this brutal pogrom?

Because the media support it.

Why do the media support this Hitler-like program? Let us count the
ways:

1. It provides many "exciting" news stories about various busts,
murders and assaults as well as adrenaline-pumping accounts of sailors
boarding ships on the high seas, cops traipsing through the woods in
search of marijuana plants or battering down doors in the poorer areas
of our cities and towns.

2. It enables editors to wax poetic as they pledge their undying
support for these fascist-like horrors "to protect the children,"
taking care to omit the hell some children are thrust into when their
parents are jailed for the "crime" of using or selling a drug the
majority doesn't approve of.

3. It provides many opportunities to publish "moving" accounts of born
again former drug users giving their just-say-no nonsense to a roomful
of children and imploring the kids, "don't do what I did, do what I
say" as they pocket speaking fees and expenses far in excess of what
they could earn if they hadn't clambered aboard the taxpayer-funded
drug war gravy train.

4. It provides many drug scare stories passed along by the cops who
are anxious to keep prohibition going because it provides them with
bigger budgets and more power - not to mention free drugs.

5. Those drug-sniffing pooches are so cute!

6. Misery, suffering and hatred sell more newspapers than happiness,
contentment and love.

7. The mainstream media has dropped all pretense of objectivity and
has become a worthless tool of the state.

Whenever I read manipulative and misleading propaganda like this, I
become more and more convinced that the world would be a much nicer
place today if newspapers had never been invented.

Please begin serving the people instead of our gutless politicians and
venal drug cops - even if you sell fewer issues.

ALAN RANDELL

Victoria, British Columbia