DRUGS, TERRORISM GO HAND IN HAND

A few local residents seem concerned about the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy advertising in the Super Bowl last month in an
attempt to connect drugs and terrorism. The suggestions that "casual drug
users" are partly responsible for things like judges being murdered, and
other atrocities, seem to have irked these folks -- especially when you
consider that the U.S. government spent a few million dollars for these ads.

For over three decades, I was involved in the enforcement of the "drug
war," on a local and international level at varying times.

The Super Bowl, given that our national interest in sports dwarfed our
interest in national security until 9-11, was the appropriate place to get
several hundred million people worldwide to view these ads, and the
implication of illegal drugs with terrorism.

Terrorism and drugs began with the opium wars, and perhaps before. Whole
countries have been seized and governments changed by the shipping of drugs
and maintenance of drug profits.

The Mexican government and the Colombian government, until recent times,
have been manipulated by the power of drug profiteering. Elections have
been decided as a result. Asian governments have long been influenced by
the control of drug lords.

Murders in foreign countries and high-level assassinations in several
countries have all been the result of drug traffickers. The Taliban, more
recently, showed rigid opposition to heroin trafficking in Afghanistan --
while winking at the terrorists operating within their country, moving
opium and producing heroin for the purchase of masses of weaponry and funds
to promote the inevitable incident of 9-11, among others.

Locally, the majority of daily crimes you hear about, violent and
chillingly demonstrative as they are, are committed by drug users. Most of
the police pursuits we see, which terrorize our highways and surface
streets, are led by an initiated drug user.

Recently a person shot four police officers, kidnapped two very young
female children and shot one of them. His excuse was that the "casual
drugs" he chose to use affected his judgment. He said this to a hostage
negotiator on a cellular telephone.

He unfortunately died in an intense gunbattle with SWAT officers. The
coroner revealed the man had a .51 percent methamphetamine level in his
blood -- an inhuman amount to have been ingested.

Drug Wars. Did they cause terrorism to succeed by concentrating on the
traffickers? Highly unlikely. The traffickers were the terrorists.

STAN NELSON

Redondo Beach