POLICE, NOT DRUGS, ARE THE PROBLEM

We really don't have a "drug problem." We have a police problem, because
the police have a problem with the truth.

Suzanne Pheil, a partially paralyzed post-polio patient who was handcuffed
to her bed by the DEA, says we are not the victims of drug traffickers; we
are victims of the DEA. With a gun to her head, the DEA stole the medicine
that over 250 sick and dying people worked to grow.

Our marijuana policy is the use of state violence, even against paralyzed
women, to maintain prohibition at all cost. Narcs with only a high school
education are regularly quoted as authorities on child psychology,
psychopharmacology, botany, medicine, social policies, economics, and above
all else, the motives of those who criticize them.

After more than 30 years of prohibition, I am all the more convinced that
until we address the problem of official lying to justify state violence
against marijuana users, we will continue to lose our freedom and our
ability to function as a democratic society. In short, we really don't have
a "drug problem." We have a police problem, because the police have a
problem with the truth. And that includes the DARE program.

BUSTER JONES, Albany, Ga.