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March
8, 2002
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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March 8, 2002
The Failed War
on Drugs
Legalize It, Don't Demonize It
By Andre Achong
This last February, SuperBowl fans were exposed
to $3.5 million dollars' worth of public advocacy commercials
courtesy of the Office for National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).
The message was simple: if you buy drugs, you fund terrorists.
It is amazing that the ONDCP would find it useful to promote
that idea when the link between drug money and terrorism has
been obvious for the last twenty years. This one-dimensional
logic represents the latest salvo in the War on Drugs, and one
more piece of evidence that suggests the United States government
has no clue as to how to solve the drug problem.
At worst, the commercials are a cynical
attempt on the part of the Administration to repackage the War
on Drugs as the War on Terrorism, hoping that by winning one
it can declare victory on the other.
President Bush's goal is to reduce drug
use in America by 25 percent over the next five years. As laudable
an objective as that is, the President should understand that
he has no realistic chance of meeting it unless he changes his
focus.
The government plans to allocate $2.3
billion this year alone towards interdiction efforts, but earmark
only $1.6 billion for treatment over the next five years. That
funding disparity is sure to produce unsatisfactory results.
Unless the government addresses the reasons that cause drug
use, and comes up with measures to counteract those reasons,
we will gain no ground in the Drug War.
Locking up half-ounce marijuana users
and half-baked incentive programs designed to persuade farmers
to grow flowers and vegetables instead of coca have not been
effective. Even interdiction efforts are mocked now and again
by the sheer creativity of drug smugglers.
Case in point: Federal agents in Tierra
del Sol, California (which sits on the <U.S.-Mexico> border)
discovered the entrance to an underground tunnel that stretched
1,200 feet into Mexico. DEA agents maintain that the Arellano
Felix drug cartel of Mexico smuggled "billions of dollars
worth of cocaine, marijuana and other drugs into the United
States" through the tunnel, according to the Washington
Post.
While the discovery of the tunnel is
a coup for the DEA, it also serves to underscore the difficulty
of impeding the flow of drugs into the United States. This reinforces
the idea that the audacity of drug traffickers has only increased
in the wake of increased security since September 11. Only one
tunnel has been found, but how many more are there, and what
is to stop the Arellano Felixes or any other cartel from building
another?
The irony is large-scale drug smugglers
like the Arellano Felixes have a scant representation in the
American prison system. Instead, more than two million people
- most of them guilty of minor drug offences - languish in jails
across America.
The only place in the world that seems
to have the right idea about how to handle the drug problem
is the Netherlands. There is no "War on Drugs" there,
because the Dutch do not see the need to wage war against a
sector of their own population. Rather, drugs are a social problem,
and the focus there is on humanizing drug addicts, not demonizing
them as we do in America.
The Dutch way seems to be working. The
famous coffeeshops that pepper many Dutch towns hold the secret.
In the coffeeshops you can buy literally dozens of kinds of
marijuana. The police do not see these shops or their customers
as a threat, and they let the cannabis trade take its course.
The police can shut down a coffeeshop cannabis operation at
any time if the coffeeshop sells more than a few grams per customer,
and if cannabis is sold to underage clients.
Harder drugs like cocaine and heroin
are not huge problems because the Dutch have been effective
in educating their citizens on the perils of hard drug addiction.
The price of Dutch heroin is half of what it costs in England,
yet, according to the Observer, the Netherlands does not have
as many heroin addicts per head of the population compared to
England. And in spite of its liberal bent concerning cannabis,
the Netherlands has fewer smokers per head of the population
than England or the United States.
In Utrecht, there is an addict center
that is neat and clean. There, the Observer reports, addicts
can inject drugs with clean state-provided needles in efforts
to wean them off their dangerous addiction. Providing clean
needles to addicts was an idea ex-President Bill Clinton and
his drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey refused to entertain, despite
the obvious benefits.
Both Clinton and McCaffrey stated that
they did not want to support state-provided needles because
that would "send the wrong message." That implied
that the right message was to let addicts continue to use dirty
needles amongst themselves and perhaps help spread HIV.
The Dutch addict centers not only provide
needles, but they provide rehabilitation programs and employment
training. The theory is treat addicts like human beings and
they will react that way. Treat addicts like criminals and they
will act like criminals.
But do not think for a minute that places
like Utrecht and Amsterdam are bright and shiny utopias where
drug addicts roam the streets with joyful abandon. The liberal
marijuana culture in these cities means an influx of millions
of tourists from all over the world clamoring to take advantage
of the coffeeshop cannabis trade and the prostitutes.
There is still drug-related crime, but
the Dutch mostly deal with bicycle theft and shoplifting. Here
in America we are subjected to carjackings and drive-by shootings.
Why do the Dutch have a handle on the
drug problem while, according to the National Post, the United
States, who spent 35 billion dollars on the War on Drugs in
2000, is losing ground daily?
The answer is simple: prohibition is
not working.
The United States government tried prohibition
with alcohol in the 1920s, and the result was gangsters, murder,
mayhem, and corruption. In the 1920s, alcoholism was not treated
like a disease, but as a vice that demanded a criminal solution.
In the year 2002, the government uses
the same rationale with drugs, and expects it to work. There
is no evidence, however, to think that drug prohibition will
work when alcohol prohibition failed so spectacularly.
There is even more bad news ahead. Much
of the resources that have been earmarked for fighting the War
on Drugs will certainly be diverted to the War on Terrorism.
There is already evidence of that happening. According to a
New York Times article in late October of last year, "The
recent terrorist attacks are placing an intense burden on police
departments around the country as officers juggle urgent new
demands: responding to hundreds of reports of spilled powder,
bolstering security in public places and even leaving their
departments to serve in the military reserves. Senior police
officials worry that as a result, departments will become slower
in responding to crimes and may not be able to close as many
cases."
And according to an Associated Press
report in that same month, "Illegal drug trafficking in
the Caribbean is up 25 percent, probably because traffickers
see an opportunity with U.S. law enforcement focused on terrorism
. . . Drug Enforcement Administrator Asa Hutchinson said that
like other enforcement agencies, DEA has been stretched thin
since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."
Ironically, the DEA is still finding
time to pursue AIDS and cancer patients in California who use
marijuana to ease their pain.
All of this adds up to the Drug War being
an enormous waste of time and resources. On one side Americans
are being squeezed by the War on Terror. On the other side we
are being squeezed by a large section of the population who
is determined to get high, and who thinks the government does
not care about their addictions but just wants to lock them
up.
The bottom line is if America ever wants
to get a handle on its drug problem, it needs to do more than
waste millions of dollars on commercials that state the obvious,
and it needs to look to the Dutch for more than just Gouda and
Heineken.
Andre Achong
is a columnist for YellowTimes. He encourages your comments:
aachong@YellowTimes.org
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