Ä [54] IN*TOUCH DRUGS (1:375/48) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ TALK.POLITICS.DRUGS Ä Msg : #2044 [100] From : Tom Rohan 1:2613/335 Wed 12 Jan 94 00:18 To : (crosspost 1) All Subj : Letter to KOMO Town Meeting (Drug Legalization) ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ From: trohan@eskimo.com (Tom Rohan) Organization: /usr/lib/news/organi[sz]ation The following is the text of a letter I sent to Ken Schram at KOMO Town Meeting about their program on whether re-legalizing drugs would end the violence. (As always: tom rohan lives in Seattle, Washington, USA, spaceship Earth) Text of letter follows: --------------------------------------------------------- Ken Schram Town Meeting 100 Fourth Avenue North Seattle, WA 98109-4997 Dear Ken Schram, I want to thank you for having the Town Meeting about whether the legalization of currently-illegal-drugs would stop the escalating violence and murder we are seeing in this country. The answer is obvious if you just take a look at history. The only other time in our country's history that we have had gang violence, drive-by shootings, pushers in the schools, clogged courts, and overcrowded prisons like we have today was during alcohol prohibition. During Prohibition bootlegging was so bad in some schools that they had no choice but to actually close the schools down. During Prohibition the courts were so clogged that they had to resort to what they called "Bargain Days" where they would haul all of the current Prohibition offenders into the court room and offer them a deal that if they all pled guilty they would all be released, en masse, with only a small fine each. This was such an embarrassment for the prohibitionists that President Hoover formed the Wickersham Commission to find a solution for the clogged court problem. After a year of studying the issue the Wickersham Commission concluded that the only way to unclog the courts would be to have trials without juries for Prohibition offenses. Fortunately enough Americans of that time cared about the Constitution to soundly reject this prospect. That is more than can be said about Americans today. Today Congress routinely passes more and more unconstitutional laws in the name of fighting the "Drug War" and we Americans meekly allow it to happen. Drugs are obviously not the cause of the violence we see today. During the 1920's gangs were shooting each other over beer. You should read about the Chicago Beer Wars. It sounds funny, but its not. Gangs were killing themselves (and innocent citizen bystanders) over beer. Picture the police busting down somebody's door, throwing fathers, mothers, and children to the floor at gun point and arresting them for possession of Miller Light. That is how absurd the swat team led Neo-Prohibitionists ("Drug Warriors") are now, but few people object. Why? To understand this you have to look at where these anti-drug laws came from. We have grown up with them and the feeling is that, "They have always been here." But they haven't. To understand what things would be like if drugs were re- legalized we just need to look at what the country was like before these laws were passed. Unlike alcohol prohibition the anti-drug laws did not come from a public outcry against drugs. The original anti-drug laws were pushed through congress with little fanfare by a small group of people and for unsavory reasons. ALL OF THEM were passed out of racism. The laws against opium were passed to get the Chinese. The laws against cocaine were passed to get the blacks (It was widely known that the black jazz musicians used cocaine. The first Drug Czar, Harry Anslinger, hated jazz music and feared its influence on America much like parents of the 60's generation children hated Rock-And-Roll music.). The campaign against "marijuana" was the most obviously racist campaign. Cannabis was commonly known since the days of the Founding Fathers in this country as "hemp". George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and most of the founding grew marijuana, thousands of acres of the stuff. The psychoactive properties of hemp were widely known from Washington and Jefferson's time and was certainly known by Anslinger. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report, a British investigation into whether or not "hemp" posed any significant social problems was published in 1894 and the Panama Canal Zone Military Investigations were conducted by the American military from 1916 through 1929. Both concluded that hemp smoking posed no significant social problems. So before Anslinger launched his campaign against "marijuana" in the early 1930's he knew "marijuana" was hemp. Why did he call it "marijuana"? The answer is obvious. The Mexican immigrants in the southwestern states called hemp "marijuana" and Anslinger wanted to use the racist, anti-Mexican sentiments of the time to try to create a picture of a foreign menace, "marijuana", that was invading our society. Anslinger had a lot to lose if he did not create a new demon to take the place of "Demon Rum". Alcohol prohibition ended in 1933. If Anslinger could not successfully invent another demon to take the place of alcohol he would have been out of a job But Anslinger kept his job thanks to his skill at fanning the flames of hatred. He was a mastermind at playing on the fears of people. At first the repercussions of these laws were not felt by white Americans so there was no legislative opposition to the laws. It wasn't until the 1960's when young white kids, the daughters and sons of white doctors, lawyers and congressmen, started getting caught in the Neo- Prohibition machine that white America started to take notice of these laws. Before the 1960's they didn't even notice them. That is how the current anti-drug laws snuck up on us. They began as racist laws and even today continue to be so. Although black Americans are only 12 to 15 percent of the users of illegal drugs, 48 percent of those arrested on drug charges are black. From 75 to 80 percent of drug users are white, but in a comparison of arrestees in New York it was shown that less than 10 percent of the white arrestees were sentenced to prison. I would like to propose another Town Meeting asking the question, "Are The Anti- Drug Laws Based On Racism?" This would address the current racially imbalanced enforcement policies and it would also educate the public as to where the laws came from. The only way we are going to be able to make a wise decision on what to do is if we know all the facts about these laws. Before these laws were put into effect we had a peaceful society. What these prohibition laws have done is destroy our trust in our law enforcement community, make billionaires out of thugs, and engulf our country in a civil war fought on the same terms as the Vietnam war. But this time the innocent victims caught in the crossfire are not Vietnamese peasants. They are our families, friends and children. Sincerely, Thomas A. Rohan -- ** The Drug War is the Vietnam of the 90's. ** ===================== *** It is a guerrilla war waged by our *** | END THE DRUG WAR! ** government against its own people. ** ===================== --- * Origin: COBRUS - Usenet-to-Fidonet Distribution System (1:2613/335.0)