BIZARRE BLATHER FROM AMERICAN DRUG CZAR

It's like a beautiful, terrible dream... as Canadian-American
relations slide down the toilet bowl, Canadian politicians are losing
their vaunted politeness and snapping back with the truth.

Defence Minister John McCallum snarls back off on our
defence-spending. Chretien's spokesperson calls Bush a moron and the
remark reverberates around the world.

The description might be more accurate if it included the words
"single-minded" and "vicious".

The PM's damage control ("The president is not a moron. He is my
friend") was entertaining but still puzzling defence, considering the
two are not necessarily exclusive propositions.

These diplomatic lapses pale beside the more pointed truth-telling the
ever-astounding Mayor Philip Owen and numerous hecklers directed
toward visiting Drug Czar John Walters of the White House Office of
National Drug Policy, in town to address the Vancouver Board of Trade
last week.

The old-school drug warrior has horrified editorialists across the
board since Bush nominated and won him the post last year.

Walters supports harsh sentences for non-violent drug offenders,
supports escalation of the Latin American drug war, and denies that
racial disparities exist in the criminal justice system. He has
campaigned heavily and successfully against sensible drug-law reform
initiatives proposed in several states using lots of taxpayer dough.

The Czar and his heavy security contingent were in town to discuss the
B.C. bud trade and apparently let a little air out of the COPE
landslide, forged on the long-overdue promise of providing
safe-injection sites. Among his pithy messages: safe injection sites
are a waste of money and will attract addicts from all over North America.

Wow. Free use of a spoon, syringe and a stainless steel table... and
brochures! Yeah, I'd hitchhike from Baton Rouge to get in on that
action, fo sho!

But wait... then he goes on to concede that safe-injection sites might
save lives if you have people who overdose.

It's news to his Czarship that Vancouver and lots of American cities
specialize in addicts and apparently normal folks who do just that
frequently.

And when the police do their periodic sweeps of Vancouver's infamous
open-air drug market, that overdose rate soars as desperate junkies
take a chance on any white powder a predator deals.

He also comes bearing the laughably bogus statistic that 60 per cent
of U.S. addicts are addicted to marijuana.

He fails to point out, as our righteous outgoing mayor does, that the
U.S. is more aggressive in arresting people for simple marijuana
possession than forcing them through drug courts where harmless
pot-users are given a choice between jail or treatment.

Some choice. And he's got the nerve to say safe-injection sites are a
waste of money?

Walters adds some reason to his rhetoric when he talks about
prevention and treatment. But his idea of prevention includes
diverting money from Columbian social programs to buy Black Hawk
helicopters and to spray farmland with lethal herbicide and gatling
guns. Of course, he's not trying to tell us what to do. But when we
sort of liberalize our pot laws to provide compassionate access to the
ailing, or when the Senate produces yet another report calling for
pot-decriminalization, Walters responds with veiled threats of
snarling the border trade with ruinous security delays. But make no
mistake, he's not trying to intimidate us; he just doesn't want us to
make the same mistakes the Americans have.

All we have to do is steer the identical course they've taken into
drug insanity.

Oh yeah, and don't forget if you use drugs you're supporting
terrorism! The state-sponsored variety. I'd be tempted to call him a
moron but that would let him off the hook.

Guys like Walters and the Bush clones are cogs in an imperialist
mass-murder machine. They know their failed Drug Free America policies
don't work. They direct their agents against the weakest members of
society. They attack drug cartels that won't play ball while providing
military protection to others that will. They have been caught
laundering cash and consorting with druglords so often the judiciary
has had to write them special exemptions to break the law.

The CIA's own declassified documents admit this. They are the worst
kind of scum. We all need protection from them.