 [54]  IN*TOUCH DRUGS (1:375/48)  TALK.POLITICS.DRUGS 
 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)                         

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.        **    =====================

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