Against The "War On Drugs"
Let us be clear: There is not now, nor has there ever been, a "War on Drugs."
What there is is a cynical program of political duplicity who's intention is not to prevent drug abuse (which, in fact, it encourages), but to create a climate of alienation, divisiveness, distrust, fear, hostility and violence within our society. The so called "War on Drugs" is in reality a policy of domestic violence waged primarily against the young, the poor, the non-white and the socially disaffected to the advantage of the Elected, the Corporate, the Privileged and the Few.
President Nixon launched this war against American citizens in 1968, at a time of extreme political and social unrest. For Nixon, it was a method of "getting even" with "uppity" blacks, "radical" leftists and "dirty" hippies whom he and the nefarious interests he represented, especially those who benefited economically from the war in Vietnam, regarded as "traitors" to the American way of life.
On the contrary: What we were doing then, and what we are doing now, is trying to liberate America from a reign of political and economic tyranny that is sustained by rhetorical propaganda and misinformation. We love America and the Constitution and wish nothing more than to see Her succeed in Her Constitutional Promise of providing Freedom and Justice for All. Those who oppose this High Aim, whether out of greed or bigotry, are the true enemies of our Constitution.
Dividing Americans against themselves, making them mistrust, fear and wage war against their fellow citizens: This is what the so called "War on Drugs" was meant to do--and that is precisely what it is doing--far more successfully than even Richard Nixon could have hoped. What better way to destroy the gains working class blacks were making through the Civil Rights movement than to flood the ghettos with drugs which addict thousands of users, offering the allure for "quick" money and escape from poverty, while simultaneously creating divisions and violent "turf wars" between ghetto gangs? All this while creating the political justifications and judicial sactions for increasingly militeristic police "crack downs," arresting, incarcerating (killing when necessary) and ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of black men, their families and their communities.
After Nixon, both Ronald Regan and George Bush found their own uses for the "War on Drugs." Besides the political advantages of "getting tough" on the very crime and violence that prohibition inevitably engenders, drug smuggling by covert factions within the federal system itself created vast sums of unregulated money to fund illegal military operations outside our nations boarders. What began as a cynical attitude of social malice quickly turned into a bad habit of deception and corruption. Nothing, my friends, is more addictive than power.
At this point in our history--the election year of 1996--this insidious and increasingly malignant and militaristic policy is still with us. And to judge by President Clinton's appointment of General Barry McCaffrey as "Drug Czar," we may safely assume it is about to get much worse. This so called "policy" has become such a part of our media conditioned perception of reality that it is difficult to imagine an America without it. Anyone who publicly opposes the inflamed rhetoric or tries to bring rational, informed opinion to the issue, is branded a "traitor," characterized as a "drug pusher" or worse--in precisely the same way leftists were branded as "communists" in the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Witness the forced resignation of Surgeon General Jocylin Elders after she took an informed and reasoned position of leadership on this issue. She understood, as more and more Americans are coming to understand, that making criminals of drug users not only does not solve the problems associated with drug abuse, it exacerbates them far beyond the potential harms of the drugs themselves. Indeed, it has put the civil liberties of all of us in jeopardy.
It is time for us to ARM OURSELVES against this misguided tyrany with knowledge, with convicton and with every legal safe guard our Constitution allows.
Thank You,
Michael Wells
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