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December 12, 2001
Shahid
Alam
Race
and Visibility
December 11, 2001
Joshua Orton
University
of Wisconsin
Won't Aid FBI Interviews
Philip
Farruggio
Cleansing
the Nation's Soul
Robert Fisk
Why I Was
Beaten
December 10, 2001
Robert
Dunham
Race
and the Death Penalty:
Partners in Injustice
Andy Kershaw
Chamber of
Horrors
Near the Garden of Eden
John Touchie
Isaac's
on Chomsky
December 9, 2001
Jo Dillon
Journalist:
The CIA Wanted
Me Killed
John Chuckman
High-Tech
Puritanism
December 8, 2001
Laurence Tribe
Military Tribunals
Undermine the Constitution
Patrick
Cockburn
The
End of a Strange War
December 7, 2001
John Troyer
Blacklist Me!
Sen. Edwards
v. Ashcroft
Military
Tribunals
George Naggiar
Occupation
as Terrorism
Hugo von
Sponek
and Denis Halliday
Iraq
the Hostage Nation
David Vest
The Coen
Brothers'
Minstrel Show
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon
or Arafat:
Who's the Terrorist?
December 6, 2001
CounterPunch Wire
Hampshire
College the First
to Condemn the War
Robert
Jensen
University
Teaching After
September 11
Jack McCarthy
Does
Tom Friedman Read
the New York Times?
Sam and
Leila Bahour
The
Psychology of a Suicide Attacker
December 5, 2001
Edward Hammond
The Only
Real Way to
Prevent Biowarfare
Harvey
Wasserman
Atomic
Treason in the House
Carl Estabrook
America's
Israel
Don Williams
Questions
Barbara Walters Didn't Ask George Bush
Cockburn/St. Clair
Liberals
Hail War as
Return of Big Government
Robert
Fisk
The
Last Colonial War?
Bahour/Dahan
It's About
the Occupation
December 4, 2001
Dave Marsh
A
Plea for Byron Parker
Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your
Eye on the Target
Susan
Herman
Ashcroft
and the Patriot Act
Tariq Ali
The Afghan
King and the Nazis
November 30, 2001
Jordan
Green
Disappeared
in the Southland
Willliam Blum
Rebuilding
Afghanistan?
November 29, 2001
Phillip
Cryan
Defining
Terrorism
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Seattle and Beyond
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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
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CounterPunch
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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 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
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December 13,
2001
Prohibit Prohibition
By Michael Williams
Throughout the 20th century, the United States
government has waged a war against a freedom of choice, disguised
as protection of the collective good. Through this seemingly
altruistic goal, the US government successfully created powers
beyond that which the United States Constitution was originally
founded upon. Society is harmed when a government prohibits a
personal choice, as freedom is stripped away. The "War on
Drugs" is centered around the ideology that illicit drugs
present an inherent risk so great to the public, that prohibition,
the banning of all of these plants and chemicals, is the only
valid way to prevent massive negative societal and individual
effects. Unfortunately, this does not protect the public from
these unfavorable results, and in many cases, actually increases
the dangers. Despite the fear that removal of prohibition will
result in an increased danger to the public, foreign programs
have shown this assumption to be false; the only valid solution
to the "problem" is legalization of all drugs.
Prohibition is unconstitutional; alcohol
prohibition required a constitutional amendment to be created,
and no such act was written to allow the illegality of drugs.
Instead, a loophole was utilized, and "with passage of the
Marijuana Stamp Act in 1937 marijuana was prohibited." (ACLU).
By refusing to allow anyone to purchase these stamps, the government
effectively eliminated the legal sale and use of marijuana. This
program followed the original Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914,
declaring opiates and cocaine illegal (ACLU) through the same
tax laws, and has now evolved and been extended almost as a blanket
rule to any new chemical that is created which alters one's perception
of self or reality, regardless of safety or medical merit. According
to the constitution, the government does not have the power to
regulate personal choice, but it created this alternative route
to prohibition despite the massive legal hurdles.
Many believe that health issues are the
primary reason for drugs being illegal, yet the general public
does not realize that legal drugs are more toxic than those which
are illegal. In the United States, tobacco alone kills over 430,000,
alcohol 110,000 (Drug War Facts), and prescription drugs kill
approximately 32,000 people (Corey) yearly, while all illegal
drugs combined, including cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, marijuana,
LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), psilocybin "magic"
mushrooms, ecstasy, GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate), mescaline and
PCP (phencyclidine), killed approximately 11,000 people in 1999
(DAWN). Interestingly, of those 11,000 people, only 55% can be
attributed to accidental overdose, while approximately 16% were
intentional overdoses in order to commit suicide (DAWN). Additionally,
there has not been one reported death due to a marijuana overdose
(Facts). NSAIDS, medicines such as aspirin and Tylenol were linked
to 7,600 deaths in 1996 (Facts), making these nearly as lethal
as their illegal counterparts, yet nobody questions their safety,
or calls for their prohibition. Compared to illegal drugs, there
are many more lethal activities, including driving a car, participated
in daily by the general public, yet these activities, unlike
illicit drugs, are considered integral parts of daily life, and
the dangers presented are considered accepted risks.
Beyond the direct health impact, prohibition
has not been shown to have a strong impact on the demand for
drugs in general. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, have
legalized "soft drugs" including marijuana and "magic"
mushrooms, while others, such as Italy, Portugal, and Spain,
have decriminalized the use of all drugs, including heroin and
cocaine. They also have government subsidized programs to assist
those addicted to "hard drugs," such as heroin, by
providing them with doctor supervised locations to ingest their
drugs. The result of these programs has been lower addiction,
use, and death rates in users. According to a study published
in the British Journal of Psychiatry and reported by the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), "removal
of criminal prohibitions on cannabis possession (decriminalization)
will not increase the prevalence of marijuana or any other illicit
drug . . . a far greater percentage of Americans age 12 and older
(33 percent) report having tried marijuana as do their Dutch
counterparts (16 percent), despite the fact that open sale and
possession of pot is permitted in the Netherlands." If prohibition
is claimed to lower the use and availability of illicit drugs
in the populace, why do facts speak otherwise?
By preventing valid manufacturers from
making these products, prohibition increases the dangers associated
with drug use by preventing regulation, and forcing drug users
to buy products which have no guarantee of purity or dosage.
Most deaths associated with heroin are not due to the toxicity
of the drug, but are in fact caused by the lack of ability for
the user to accurately gauge how much of the actual drug they
are ingesting. Ecstasy, or MDMA, related deaths have risen due
to misinformation and lack of quality control, not because of
the acute toxicity of MDMA itself. "The DanceSafe organization
now cites at least 100 ecstasy-related deaths. The vast majority
of these, however, were not overdoses but the result of becoming
overheated on the dance floor or ingesting pills sold as ecstasy
that were actually dangerous substances like DXM, a cough suppressant
that can cause overheating if taken in large quantities, and
the stimulant PMA." (Salon). Injuries and deaths associated
with this side-effect of prohibition would be eliminated if drugs
were simply made legal, and real education regarding the actual
dangers made available.
Apart from the increased health risks
of drugs, prohibition increases street violence by forcing the
sale of drugs to the black market. This encourages the formation
of organized crime in order to manufacture and distribute these
substances under the control of a group of individuals. Additionally,
the structure of laws are such that adults are punished more
heavily than minors, and due to this, minors are enlisted by
these organized crime units, provided with guns or other weapons,
and used to transport or sell these drugs, with the knowledge
that if they are caught, they will not be as heavily punished.
With this increase of violence and the
focus on criminalizing drug use,the criminal justice system is
being overloaded. According to the United States Department of
Justice, "In 1999 the Federal Bureau of Investigation's
Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were 1,532,200
State and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United
States." Prisons are being filled with non-violent drug
offenders, who "make up 58 percent of the federal prison
population." (ACLU). Because this obsession with locking
up drug sellers and users, violent criminals walk free every
day for lack of space.
In addition, mandatory minimum sentencing
laws are unfairly distributed, jailing some for life, simply
for selling a chemical which the buyer chooses to ingest, making
it a harsher crime to participate in a consensual act than to
murder someone in the second degree. Arrest rates also do not
follow the demographics of the U.S. population, as "According
to the 1991 Uniform Crime Reports, 58% of the drug arrests were
of whites versus 41% for blacks . . . This sounds evenly distributed
until you consider that, in 1991, blacks composed only 12% of
the U.S. population." (McWilliams). Crack cocaine, the "freebased"
form of cocaine, is simply powdered cocaine combined with baking
soda to allow the user to smoke it, and carries a significantly
stiffer penalty for sale and possession than does the powdered
form. This is unjust as they are chemically identical, and interact
with the brain identically. Unfortunately, crack users tend to
be poor and from the inner city, while powdered cocaine users
are generally more wealthy, due to the incredible difference
in cost between the two forms. This causes a severe racial disparity
in the execution of drug laws, and subsequently a large minority
population in prisons.
By increasing the rate of consumption,
increasing the inherent dangers present with drug use, and filling
our jails, the "War on Drugs" presents an immense monetary
drain on the United States Economy. "In 2000 the Clinton
administration spent more than $17.9 billion." (Facts) on
the drug war. For comparison, "The President is requesting
$44.5 billion in discretionary appropriations for the Department
of Education in fiscal year 2002." (Dept. of Ed.) That means
that the US is spending 40% as much on fighting the drug war
as it is on educating the next generation. Imagine the benefits
to society if that eighteen billion dollars was instead spent
on education; the impact of a 40% budget increase would be enormous.
Is the threat of illegal drugs so great, that fighting the personal
choice to ingest a substance which alters one's consciousness
is more important than fully educating the next generation of
adults?
Additionally, by prohibiting the legal
sale of drugs, the government misses an opportunity to raise
an incredible amount of tax revenue. "The international
illicit drug business generates as much as $400 billion in trade
annually according to the United Nations International Drug Control
Program. That amounts to 8% of all international trade and is
comparable to the annual turnover in textiles, according to the
study." (UN). By taxing this immense industry, this money
could then be used to pay for schools, drug treatment programs,
and health care. Legalization would not only eliminate the $18
billion per year spent to fight the drug war, but it would in
turn raise at least $40 billion per year in tax revenue, if one
assumes a mild 10% tax on the drug trade, a number nearly equivalent
to the entire US education budget.
Despite what is officially claimed, the
"War on Drugs" is not being won, is not protecting
the children, and is increasing the destructive characteristics
of the drugs themselves. It is imperative for this country, not
only to improve health, education, and fiscal well being, but
also to restore the vital freedom of choice over one's consciousness,
that these chemicals and plants be legalized. Regulating drugs
is regulating thought; it is regulating the freedom to do what
we wish with our own bodies; and it is regulating the freedom
of choice. It is illegal, immoral, and unforgivable. As Abraham
Lincoln said, "A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very
principles upon which our government was founded."
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