DRUG HYPOCRISIES--THEN & NOW

And 'For Donald: He is an honorable man'

In considering the insanity of a legal system punishing people for
ingesting illegal substances--a matter off the agenda of the
mainstream media--it's worthwhile to look back at how those once
legal, became illegal and, in the case of alcohol, once illegal was
re-legalized. The prescription license my father, a New York dentist,
displayed, explicitly included in its title, "marihuana"--which only
became illegal in 1937. Which means that pot was once accepted as
having medical benefits. Today, despite its proven value in treating
glaucoma and the nausea associated with chemotherapy, pot is federally
banned from use as a medicine--a ban not applied to opiates, even
though they're in the same class of hard drugs as heroin.

During Prohibition, a few distilleries were allowed to continue
producing bottle-bonded liquor for distribution to doctors and
dentists for "medicinal purposes," at the rate, I recall my father
saying, of two fifths a week. Neighborhood bootleggers throughout
America would make regular rounds of doctors and dentists--including
my old man--buying up the booze for five bucks or so a bottle, the
equivalent of $40, today. In fact, prior to 1913--except in a few
states where alcohol bans had been enacted before nationwide
prohibition--no substances were illegal. Magazines were full of ads
for patent medicines loaded with opium and cocaine. (The original
Coca-Cola formula included the drug in active form.) Up through the
'60s, you could go to any drugstore and buy the opiate codeine in a
widely used, over-the-counter cough suppressant. Paregoric, another
opiate, was sold OTC for administration to teething infants. Nose
inhalers saturated with liquid benzedrine, were also available without
prescriptions.

Before 1913, there were no drug rings corrupting whole neighborhoods
and the criminal justice system.

Today, we just freed Afghanistan so it could supply, according to the
U.N., three-quarters of the world's opium.

- - Speaking of Afghanistan, why has so little attention been paid to
the fact we've not only lost the "War on Drugs" there, but that its
president, Hamid Karzai, has invited the Taliban to participate in
Afghan affairs--and that outside of the capital of Kabul, it's not
democracy, but the warlords with their personal militias, who rule
now? Which means we lost the overall war, as well.

- - How did our freedom-loving economic ally, China, "celebrate"--their
word!--Anti-Drug Day? By executing 17 drug dealers and sentencing
"scores more" to death!

- - Some good news: The CIA has stopped withholding anti-pain drugs from
prisoners undergoing interrogation. The bad news: The CIA had been
withholding anti-pain drugs from prisoners undergoing
interrogation.

- - Still more about drugs--in this instance, legal ones. Here's
something I wish someone would explain: The "liberal position" on
excessive drug costs is to allow pharmaceutical imports from Canada,
where prices are up to 80% lower. But I've yet to hear anybody go the
next step that common logic calls for: the United States is the only
Western nation that doesn't regulate drug prices. Yet no public figure
points this out and then demands legislation to require our government
to do what the rest of the world's industrially advanced countries do.
I can understand why Republicans don't. More than 80% of the massive
drug industry's political contributions go to the GOP. And, as we
know, the only lives Republicans seem to care about are those of the
unborn, not any live folks who are sick or elderly. But where are the
Democrats?

- - All but one of the Iraqi torture probes are Army investigations of
itself. The one "independent" examination, by a four-person panel
appointed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, includes ex-GOP
congresswoman Tillie J. Fowler, who's ruled Rumsfeld out as a target.
He is, The New York Times quotes her proclaiming, "an honest, decent,
honorable man, who'd never condone this type of activity." I know the
word associations that always leap to my mind when I hear "Don
Rumsfeld," are "honest" and "honorable."

- - Why didn't those aware of the prisoner abuses in U.S.
military-administered facilities speak up? Well, it seems that the
high U.S. Defense Department and military officials who've expressed
their horror over this are the same folks who, according to USA Today,
had told soldiers and interrogators serving at Guantanamo, that they
"are not required to give defense attorneys statements about 'personal
treatment of detainees' or any 'failure to report actions of others.'"

- - The next time a local anchor throws out the logical-less banality about a
murder victim's relatives joyfully anticipating the murderer's execution, so
that they can experience "closure"--all anchors seem to read robotically
from the same cliche-ridden script--they might keep in mind what Journal
Sentinel columnist Mike Nichols quoted Bud Welch, the father of Marquette
student Julie Welch, who died in the Oklahoma City bombing, had to say on
the matter. He'd spoken with many other relatives of those who were murdered
in the tragedy, after the execution of the bomber, Timothy McVeigh: Yet, he
told Nichols, "I have yet to have a family member ... say, 'I feel better
because Tim McVeigh is dead. I have had a number ... say, 'It didn't do for
me what I thought it would.'"

Kathy, Joyce, Carole, Unca Jerry: You might want to keep this in mind next
time you're tempted to slake your viewers' blood thirst.

- - Why are no GOPers livid over the bad example Dick Cheney's naughty
language is setting for America's children?