>Sender: >To: >X-Original-Message-ID: <028801bf1e73$29c1eaf0$9acf69cf@pacbell.net> >From: "Peter McWilliams" >Subject: A great piece >Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 15:57:35 -0700 >X-Mozilla-Status: 9001 >X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 > > >Pubdate: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 >Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV) >Copyright: Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1999 >Contact: letters@lvrj.com >Address: P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125 >Fax: (702)383-4676 >Website: http://www.lvrj.com/ >Forum: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/feedback/ >Author: Rafael Tammariello > >WE'VE WAGED AN 85-YEAR WAR AGAINST ECCENTRICITY > >More even than European conquest, Hitler was fixated on "solving" the >"Jewish Problem." > >Jews, as Hitler saw things, were parasites, spiritually and morally >corrupt, powerful and conspiratorial, purveyors of decadence, a >corrosive influence on Germanic culture and a clear and present danger >to the German state. That's what Hitler preached, and what Nazified >Germans believed, even though it was false, all of it. > >What if by some miracle, a suddenly enlightened Hitler had stood >before the masses and spoken the truth: That, as a tiny minority, the >Jews had no power to threaten the German state, presented no danger; >that they were people, good, bad and indifferent like any others; that >they had enriched, not corrupted culture; that the "Jewish Problem" >did not exist? > >Had that truth been revealed, the "Jewish Problem" would have vanished >like the phantasm it was. > >America's "Drug Problem" is likewise a chimera, even if its reality is >an article of faith which holds that drug users are parasites, >purveyors of decadence, a corrupting influence on society; that drugs >are a force so powerful they constitute a clear and present danger to >the nation. Drug users are the Jews of 20th century America -- >hounded, persecuted, shipped off to prisons and labor camps by the >hundreds of thousands. > >But our "Drug Problem" is not real, and if only the national >leadership would let go its fixation on this dangerous mirage, 10 >years from now we would look back on the Drug War in horror, as >Germans do the Holocaust. > >(For the analogy, credit to Daniel K. Benjamin and Roger Leroy >Miller's insightful 1991 book, "Undoing Drugs: Beyond Legalization.") > >Be advised that the United States -- where all drugs, including >cocaine, heroin, morphine and opium, were legal -- didn't have a "Drug >Problem" until prohibitionists created it out of thin air for >propaganda purposes in the push for enactment of the Harrison Narcotic >Act of 1914. > >In the 19th century, drug use was widely viewed as mere eccentricity. >Opium dens were centrally located. Pharmacies sold morphine -- or >anything else -- over the counter. Heroin could be ordered through the >mail. > >In the late 1800s, your typical morphine addict was a doctor, a >patient suffering pain or a middle-aged woman who lived in the South. Opium >was the soporific of choice among Chinese laborers, itinerant gamblers and >prostitutes. Cocaine attracted the "melancholy" and society's workaholics. >(Thanks to David T. Courtwright's 1982 study, "Dark Paradise: Opiate >Addiction in America Before 1940.") > >Among the prominent cocaine users of the era were Thomas Edison, >President William McKinley and Sigmund Freud. Opium aficionados >included Edgar Allen Poe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and many other poets >and authors; lots of physicians, noted actors, musicians, professors, >scientists and politicians. Most were just plain working people. > >By the turn of the century, Courtwright calculates (through study of >import, pharmacy and tax records and contemporary surveys) addicts >constituted less than 1 percent of the population, and addiction was >in steady decline. The "Drug Problem" did not exist until evangelical >prohibitionists like Harry Anslinger and his federal allies alerted >everybody to the heretofore unnoticed peril. > >The prohibition of recreational drugs after 1914 quickly turned >hundreds of thousands of solid citizens into criminals. Hundreds of >physicians became jailbirds. Black-market merchants demanded piles of >cash for what used to be a few pennies worth of powder from the >friendly local apothecary. > >"The scope of this change," writes Courtwright, "can be described by >the etymology of a single word, 'junkie.' During the early 1920s, a >number of New York City addicts supported themselves by picking >through industrial dumps for scraps of copper, lead, zinc and iron, >which they collected in a wagon and then sold to a dealer. Junkie, in >its original sense, literally meant junkman. The term was symbolically >appropriate as well, since the locus of addiction had, within a single >generation, shifted from the office and parlor to the desolate piles >of urban debris." > >It is against these people, rendered desperate and powerless by the >drug laws, that we wage war. Like Hitler's anti-Jewish laws, our Drug >War compels people into depravity and criminality -- and then we >persecute them on the grounds of their depraved criminality. > >Eighty-five years of the Drug War have wrought a stupendously complex >Rube Goldberg apparatus -- a dozen layers of law enforcement, a vast >web of repressive laws, an exploding prison system, an archipelago of >treatment and re-education programs, hideous turf wars in the inner >city and, most recently, young Americans dying in the fetid Colombian >jungles in service of the impossible task of eradicating a trade that >cannot be eradicated even inside the walls of maximum security prisons. > >All this -- and for what, exactly? To solve the "Drug Problem"; to >stop maybe 1 percent of our citizens from indulging an eccentricity a >saner century correctly viewed as causing a "problem" no more serious >than skipping church. > >Note: Rafael Tammariello is a Review-Journal editorial writer. His column >appears on Sunday. > > >================================================================ > >This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to > the mailing list . >To unsubscribe, E-mail to: