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WHY WE MUST NOT END PROHIBITION

"The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper
into our lives than most people believe. It's possible they are calling the
shots at all levels of government." - William Colby, former CIA Director, 1995

I know enforcing prohibition sounds just like the opposite of what I have
been preaching for years in my personal life and for the last year here in
this paper. There is a very sound reason for this new attitude. It is a
very old reason: money.

If we end the drug war, a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on it will
get hurt. I'm not talking your average street-level drug dealer or the
police officer who might not find a job because of reduced crime. I'm not
even talking about the lawyers who will be looking for a new set of clients
when the million or so people arrested for drug possession every year
become rather ordinary citizens again.

I'm talking about your mother or grandmother, whose stocks will drop like
rocks when drug money no longer supports the stock market. Let us do what
Deep Throat suggested and follow the money. The kind of money we are
talking about is not your billion here and hundred million there. I'm
talking big money. A trillion dollars a year, or more. This is not your
Cayman Island Bank-type money or even Swiss Bank-type money. This requires
some place to dump the money where it won't be noticed. The biggest
money-laundering island in the world-Manhattan.

Why are stocks still selling at outrageous multiples despite a recession?
Boom or bust, the hot money has to go somewhere. The U.S. of A. has two
things the hot money people desire: a stable currency and the ability to
enforce its laws around the world. Think of what the hot money means to the
American economy. A lot of ill-thought-out projects that turn out to be
resource wasters get funded. But to the hot money people, a decline of 50
percent means they still have laundered half their money. What a disaster
for an honest business. What a great deal for hot money.

But America is addicted to this hot money. The ability to tolerate so much
failure means America has to advance economically faster than anywhere else
because we get efficient faster. This is one great American advantage over
the rest of the world. We can let go of our failures. This is what
bankruptcies and hot money do for the economy.

So we have this great engine for economic progress, but it is fueled at its
core by narco dollars. Do we root out the drug business by legalizing all
drugs (with certain ones still under a doctor's supervision), or do we keep
prohibition-with all its attendant miseries and racism-going so our stock
market and economic system doesn't collapse? Does the money mean more to us
than doing the right thing? Is our world power so important that we need to
keep this vicious game going?

I first got turned on to these questions by reading a series of articles
written by Catherine Austin Fitts, who is a former Assistant Secretary of
the Federal Housing Commissioner under Bush 1, a former managing director
and member of the board of directors of Dillon Read & Co, Inc. She is
currently the president of an investment advisory firm Solari, Inc,. The
articles can be read here:

http://www.narconews.com/narcodollars1.html,
http://www.narconews.com/narcodollars2.html,
http://www.narconews.com/narcodollars3.html

This week's saying: If the 1920s plus the 1990s teaches one thing, it is
this: "It's not the drugs, stupid, it's the prohibition." If the 2000s
teach us nothing else, it will teach us: "It's not the drugs, stupid, it's
the money."

Ask a politician: Do you support drug prohibition because it finances
criminals at home, or because it finances terrorists abroad?

This week's politician:

Senator Arlen Specter (R) PA

Tel: 202-224-4254

fax: 202-228-1229

He also has an obnoxious web form instead of an e-mail at:
http://www.senate.gov/~specter/webform.htm