THE WAR ON DRUGS MEETS THE WAR ON TERRORISM, HITS THE DYING AMERICANS

It's time we all get together on the same page and talk to our
representatives about a problem we have in this country.

This problem is rooted in ignorance and it is made worse by
irresponsible policymakers. I'm talking about the fight to make
marijuana legal, if for nothing else but for the plenty of us who
absolutely need it to stay alive or at least bearably comfortable in
our last days.

The Supreme Court recently as much as said that if the citizens of
this country pressured our Congress enough to see the sense in
legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes, the fight that has lasted
for far too long would be over. The American Medical Association
supports the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, but it doesn't
seem to help the image of pot for good overall when the government
itself actively distorts the facts for our children in commercials and
magazine ads. With the whole world watching the Super Bowl that
followed September 11, the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy tried its best to help the President and the American people
fight the war on terrorism.

Thing is, the White House and the American people aren't exactly
fighting the same fight.

The White House wants to fight terrorism with the help of drug war
rhetoric because it is assumed that terrorists get the majority of
their money from our desire for drugs.

They assume that we are getting all, or a big part of, our drugs from
the terrorists. It also follows from this logic that we are
responsible for their actions, just as an employer would be directly
responsible for an employee's sudden homicidal rampage because their
weekly wage helped pay for their guns and ammo. The most popular drug
of choice in our nation, outside of tobacco and alcohol, is
marijuana-the drug that is known as the Gateway drug, by way of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy's indictment. Mike Gray, author
of Drug Crazy, puts the number of regular marijuana users at around 10
million and the users of other drugs at 3 million, but, he says,
"marijuana is the linchpin of the federal government's $17 billion
drug war."

The Super Bowl commercials were screened by 1,350 teenagers picked by
random from malls across America. They were asked to rate their
intentions to use drugs within the year on a scale of 1 to 4, 4 being
a definite intention, 1 being a definite intention not to. Teens
viewing the AK-47 ad (where an illustrated link between terrorists in
arms and a teen smoking a joint was established) averaged a 1.5
intention not to use. The teens who saw no ads at all averaged a 1.9
intention not to use. This is not a significant difference for such a
cool penny of a commercial. It would seem from the responses that we
don't even have to worry about all that many teenagers even being
tempted to try marijuana. I believe we should be worrying about other
drugs whose use are on the rise, that have significantly more negative
effects on the body and the mind, like methamphetamines, for instance.

In a report commissioned by drug czar Barry McCaffery in 1997, it was
revealed that in 1996, almost 69 million Americans over the age of 12
had tried marijuana, but only five percent of the current population
were users.

If this is so, a good chunk of the American population (currently 280
million), including some former Presidents (and perhaps some
congressmen) should rightly be sitting in prison right now because
they once had possession. Moreover, one may assume that there isn't a
tremendously overwhelming problem with the use of marijuana, say in
comparison with over the counter drug addictions, despite the
government's opinion, especially when the government report itself
finds "the adverse effects are within the range of effects tolerated
for other medications."

I was ushered into the age of the drug war by way of Nancy Reagan's
Just Say No program of the early 1980s. I have to admit that before
the advent of Just Say No, I was largely ignorant of the existence of
drugs for "recreation", let alone drugs that are truly harmful.

Trafficking in drugs supports organized crime in our own nation with
an estimated 80 billion dollars annually, 1993 numbers.

Perhaps, if I was born and raised in a more urban setting, it would be
another story, but nonetheless, Just Say No's rhetoric was what really
made me more immediately aware of drugs, not their pervasiveness on
their own in my neighborhood streets.

An October, 2002 issue of USA Today reported a U.S. official estimate
of up to a mere $30 million a year in taxes and tolls collected from
the drug traders of Afghanistan. These drug traders are largely
controlled by the Taliban, which also vowed to ban opium cultivation.
The U.S. then gave the Taliban $40 million to help fight the drug war.
Where's the Taliban now?

Preliminary estimates for that year's harvest put opium productions at
near-record levels, after the Taliban had banned cultivation.
Moreover, cultivation and production is on the rise in areas formerly
under Northern Alliance control, our allies from the fight against the
Taliban. Now, the U.S. government is looking into granting incentives
to the Afghan people to plow over the crop that is grown in 22 of its
30 provinces, a crop that requires little water or maintenance in the
dry desert climate.

Afghanistan supplies a mere 5 percent of the heroin found on American
streets, but it is responsible for producing over 70% of the world's
opium, which heroin is derived from. In Afghanistan, opium isn't
merely used for the drug that it is. It is not only traded for guns to
fight us with, but it is also traded for food and shelter in a nation
still licking its wounds from our war on terrorism, that started
there, but is lingering in Iraq.

Afghanistan is in for another wallop because cooperation in the
counter-narcotics efforts of the U.S. is a necessary prerequisite for
U.S. aid. Afghanistan failed to make the grade.

Iran, a member of the 'axis of evil,' will receive no aid either, even
if it does cooperate in our efforts to stop the drug trade from
seeping through its borders, according to Assistant Secretary of State
for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Rand Beers.

Reading about all these things in the newspapers and in the books, I
can't help but think that the only thing that keeps terrorists going
is our drug war. They rely on drugs for money, but if we
decriminalized street drugs, as scary as the idea sounds, a lot of
terrorists would lose their power and a lot of criminals would be out
of work because it would become a more private, noncriminal
enterprise. A lot of prisons would have a lot more room for people who
commit far more heinous crimes than smoking a joint as well. After
all, even Jimmy Carter once said that penalties against possession of
a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of
the drug itself.

I agree.

At least we don't have very many drug users in our nation relying on
drugs for their everyday welfare in comparison to nations who are
worse off. If we want to help other countries, we have to teach them
how to live without having to grow or sell drugs.

Meanwhile, some people over here are having to learn how to live
without being able to grow their own drugs for their own health and
benefit alone.

Some are giving it a go to go ahead and grow at the risk of losing
their liberties as they lay dying on top of it. If we want to help
ourselves, we may have to start realizing that a problem that is of an
economic nature (like the drug war problem is) can't always be solved
by cutting back the demand for a drug, especially when the demand for
a drug hasn't been proven to be all that significant. Sometimes the
supply of a drug is too great and easy to come by and the suppliers of
the drugs have far greater demands (for themselves) than our own.

Maybe we could learn a lesson from Amsterdam. In a country that has a
population that is over 700,000, less than 6,200 are confirmed hard
drug users. Their drug policy focuses on discouraging use of hard
drugs, on rehabilitation for users, not punishment, and on combating
the drug trade. Their addicts are on the decline and most drugs are
legal there.

Wrap your brains around this one, in 1904, marijuana, heroin and
morphine were all available over the counter, and there were only 230
reported murders in the entire United States. There were many other
differences between then and now as well. Ninety percent of all U.S.
doctors had no college education, only six percent of our citizens
graduated from high school and the average life expectancy was 47, but
look at the low incidence of murders.

I'm sure the prison population and the number of the sick who lay
dying, their proven medicine kept from them by the strong arm of the
unjust law, had to be significantly smaller as well.