HIDDEN MOTIVES IN DRUG WAR

Editor,

Truth to tell, the drug warrior politicians, officials, media and civilians
secretly don't list victory as an objective in their expensive and
oppressive trillion-dollar war.

When they do spout their "zero tolerance/total victory" rhetoric, how many
of your readers actually believe them? How many actually believe that this
year's multibillion-dollar drug war budget will be the one that will achieve
total victory after decades of billion dollar budgets have totally failed?

Just remember that the drug czars' and warriors' jobs depend on the
perpetual prosecution of, but never a victory in, the drug war. Also,
remember that the politicians depend on the drug war and its rhetoric to
scare up votes (by scaring voters). The politicians also rely on the drug
war to sustain their constituent industries that depend on the economics of
prohibition in order to make generous profits and campaign contributions
that keep the drug warrior politicians in power and, therefore, keep
themselves in business.

Remember what H.L. Mencken said: "The whole aim of practical politics is to
keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by
menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Cannabis has no lethal dose and its pharmacological effects have never
caused a single death in over 5,000 years of recorded history.

The unseen driving force against medical (or unrestricted adult)
legalization of cannabis is the fact that cannabis can't be patented. This
precludes the need for big business to be involved and that fact makes
cannabis commercially unattractive to the pharmaceutical, tobacco and
alcohol industries (lobbies). It seems that if it can't be profitized
successfully the government can't justify legalization even for the sick and
dying.

Furthermore, the war on cannabis drives the war on drugs. Without cannabis
prohibition, the drug war would be reduced to a pillow fight. This is the
politics and the economics of cannabis prohibition.

Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the party
line of cannabis prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison
and military industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the "drug
treatment" industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the politicians
themselves et al can't live without the budget justification, not to mention
the invisible profits, bribery, corruption and forfeiture benefits that
prohibition affords them.

The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement
policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are supposed to
be inalienable according to the constitution and bill of rights.

Myron Von Hollingsworth

Daily Lobo reader