THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH

Broadcasting 7 days a week, from the Gulag City of Planet Earth, I am the
host of Cultural Baggage and the 4:20 Drug War NEWS. These programs air
each week on KPFT, Houston at 90.1 FM, on the Sirius Satellite Network, on
FM frequencies in 6 other states and one in British Colombia, Canada.

My goal is to expose the "Unvarnished Truth" about the drug war. The war
of terror is really just the war on drugs, with afterburners. The
mechanism of demonizing those who might have chemical weapons has been used
for a century in America to go after mostly men of color, with drug
concoctions considered so dangerous as to be a threat to the continuation
of our society.

The purpose of this column is to bring you the latest, most pertinent data
available in regards to drug prohibition and to showcase the efforts of
others in trying to bring this jihad against our own people, to an end. On
December 17th, we started the 90th year of drug prohibition here in
America. On 12/17/14, the Harrison Narcotics Act began the demonization
and destruction of individuals and their families who chose ( chemical
weapons, ) drugs not approved by the alcohol, tobacco, energy and
pharmaceutical companies.

We have been duped. This drug war is exactly what the drug lords want,
their fondest wish fulfilled. Drug lords on both sides of the equation
work to ensure the perpetuity of their scheme. On the one side, the
growers, smugglers and sellers want this war to continue, lest their golden
goose die from legalization. On the other side, the major pharmaceutical
houses need this war to continue, lest they loose their stranglehold over
the "truth" about these drugs. Gangs, violence, overdose deaths and
children having access to drugs is a requirement, a necessity to maintain
this drug war through constant, and ever evolving fear, generated and
constantly refreshed by the drug lord's minions in the corporate media.

December 17th, 2003 marked another reason to remember this date; this is
when the 9th Circuit Court declared parts of the Interstate Commerce Clause
of the Controlled Substances Act to be unconstitutional. This marks the
date when they told Attorney General Ashcroft and his henchman to back
off. The 9th Circuit decision will allow medical marijuana patients, in
states like California to legally use their medicine with a doctor's
recommendation if they either grow their own or have a caretaker with a
green thumb. The reasons are obvious, there is no commerce, there is no
interstate transportation and they are using marijuana under a doctor's care.

I spoke with Angel Raich, who along with Diane Monson sued Ashcroft and won
the right to grow and smoke their own marijuana. Angel told me how for
years she had been paranoid, because of the ongoing series of busts in
California by the DEA. She has a brain tumor that's inoperable and has
been told by her doctors that if she were deprived of her medicine for even
a few days it would be a death sentence. As we closed our conversation she
stated: "For the last couple of years, I have not felt safe in my own home,
because of the federal government. It just shows that someone as small as
me can go up against a mighty giant like John Ashcroft and succeed."

During the month of January, the guests you will hear on Cultural Baggage
beside Angel Raich, will include Judge James P. Gray, the author of the
drug reformers "Bible": "Why our Drug Laws Have Failed and what We Can Do
About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs". Judge Gray is
running for the US Senate in the State of California. In tandem with Angel
Raich's battle against the Attorney General, Judge Gray has called John
Ashcroft "the most dangerous man in America today".

Part of what we do with our drug war news programs is to educate and
motivate the listeners. An event of enormous import in the drug war is
coming to Houston this coming April. The Drug Policy Alliance, (
www.drugpolicy.org ) is sponsoring the "Breaking The Chains" conference on
racial bias from April 1 to April 3, 2004 at the TSU campus. Speakers will
include congressman John Conyers, the head of the congressional black
caucus. Other congressmen, scientists, doctors, authors and drug reformers
from around the world will participate in these events as well. The reason
Houston was chosen relates to the fact that we sent more people to prison
for less than a gram of drugs than did the whole rest of the state combined.

For nearly 500 years, colonialist powers like England, Spain and later the
United States, made it their business to impose their will on lesser
countries, to force new religions and morals on all the "heathen cultures"
of this earth. In the process, they vilified and demonized the use of such
drugs as marijuana, coca and opium which previously had been recognized for
their medicinal properties and as sacraments of many religions, many
cultures for thousands of years.

In the early 20th century, corporate heads foresaw gleaming profits in
prohibiting the use of certain plants. They claimed that Chinamen on opium
were a threat to a decent society, that Mexicans and Blacks would rape
white women after smoking marijuana, that prison or death were too good for
drug users and that the religious and medicinal underpinnings of these
drugs were sacrilegious and evil.

These men of influence and wealth had the contacts to force through laws
based on nothing more than rumors circulated through newspapers controlled
by these same interests. The American people were fooled into believing
they were saved and that the control and distribution of these herbs and
their extracts should be prohibited. This "prohibited" drug commerce now
approaches five hundred billion dollars per year!

Today, the United States, through its drug convention treaties, forces its
ideas of Judeo-Christianity, and all their attendant drug laws and morals
on the whole world. U.S. media now ignores the ongoing drug reform in
England, Spain, Portugal, Canada and much of the rest of the
world. Research, experience and common sense have shown these enlightened
countries that the medieval drug laws are simply a mechanism that if left
unchecked, would someday devour the meaning, the very fabric, of liberty.

The United States has now repudiated the nuclear arms treaty and refuses to
sign five other treaties that otherwise have worldwide endorsement. Our
government paid no attention whatsoever when the U.S. seats on the UN Drug
Policy and Human Rights panels were lost. We do not care. We are willing
to lock up more than two million of our own people in order to support a
growing prison-industrial complex. With the selection of Bush; his choice
of Ashcroft for Attorney General and with John Walters heading up the DEAth
squads, the future had seemed set here in the US; an ever more vigorous
prosecution/persecution seemed assured.

However, with the great news, that always seems to come from California, we
now have a situation where Angel and Diane can legally smoke their
medicine, safe from the dictates of zealots like John Ashcroft. Even Ed
Rosenthal, the "Guru of Ganja" can now legally grow and smoke his
own. Certainly the feds will try to pull their fat out of the fire, but
the recent decisions by the US Supreme Court to allow doctors to recommend
cannabis would seem to portend a better day on the horizon for all cannabis
consumers.

I ask you to be part of the solution, to dare to write a letter to your
congressman and to the editor of the Houston Chronicle. Tell them this
charade of a drug war has gone on for far too long. Demand that they find
a better way to protect our children.

My sound bite, used when I meet a network camera goes something like this:
"The day we regulate the distribution of these drugs to adults, is the day
we destroy the worth of the drug lords' stash; is the day we eliminate most
of the reasons for which street gangs exist and is the day we take away the
job of every street corner vendor who wants to sell drugs to our
children. And that's just the first day."

I ask all government leaders, all citizens to please consider a rational
approach to ending this drug war. Help rid the earth of this monster of
drug prohibition, spawned from a cesspool of hypocrisy.