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LISTEN TO THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER 
I Believe the War is Over By Dana Beal In
1969 President Nixon appointed the Schaeffer Commission to study the marijuana
question, expecting that it would present findings that would buttress his opposition
to legalization. He
needn't have bothered. The Schaeffer Commission, like the LaGuardia panel before
it, concluded the best solution was a legal, regulated market. After thinking
it over, Nixon declared that he would never so reward the protest generation who
had betrayed their country by opposing the War. This
is how we find ourselves thirty years later still re-fighting Vietnam--in the
war on folks who smoke pot. Except that, as Robert McNamara confirmed, those of
us who protested against the war were right, because Vietnam was never remotely
winnable. And in the counter-insurgency against the counter-culture, all the casualties
are American. It's
not really war on heroin or cocaine, because 85% of drug war "criminals" just
smoke pot. The urine test has become the new litmus test whereby the Giulianis
and Bob Barrs join with unreconstructed Cold War democrats like Joe Califano in
the ferreting out and punishing the attitudes they hold responsible for the "stab
in the back" the Glorious Crusade against Communism suffered in the '60's. It
makes no sense to blame 20 million pot heads for hard drugs and crime any more
than it makes sense to demonize them for Vietnam. That fact is, we were right
about pot--especially the nexus of pothibition and racism--just like we were right
about Vietnam. But because of subtle but invidious discrimination against all
things counter cultural, in politics as well as the media, one whole segment of
opinion is systematically excluded from the current national debate about what
to do about "drugs." Why
should you listen? Because those closest to the problem have developed a "harm
reduction" approach to living with "drugs" that could save America from a War
that is potentially limitless in its demands on our lives and our treasure. To
begin with, we would have a lot less addiction, less AIDS and less violent crime
today if America had listened to the Schaeffer commission and separated marijuana
from hard drugs 30 years ago. Holland tried it, and today only 1.8% of their users
go from cannabis to coke and heroin. In the U.S., it's 16%--9 times the Dutch
rate! Just from the standpoint of AIDS prevention, you can't argue with numbers
like that.This step--which drug warriors dismiss with disingenuous references
to "drug use among 10th-graders"--is the single overwhelmingly popular drug reform
demand advanced everywhere by those who practice what they preach, as opposed
to the academics who advocate across-the-board legalization of all illicit drugs. Pot
use is up, but not coke use--because of harm reduction education. Yet Barry MacCaffrey
and A.M. Rosenthal debate the Cato Institute, not the counter-culture. The Drug
Warriors intend to keep the focus on the horrors of "drugs" while the Partnership
for a Drug Free America trots out its big new government-sponsored ad campaign
against pot. Anyway, they know perfectly well we already have legal opiates--methadone,
and now buprenorphine, which is more euphoric and easier to quit. Also,
for the past 10 years, the National Institute on Drug Abuse has been sitting on
at least one broad-spectrum cure for poly-drug dependency--the African Rain forest
drug Ibogaine, which interrupts coke, junk, booze and cigarettes for months, even
years, with just one treatment. The
New York Times has run two major articles on Ibogaine. A small but definite minority
is completely cured with just one dose--and up to 70% could keep their addiction
in remission if Ibogaine chemotherapy were available every 4 to 6 mos. Two days
in the hospital instead of methadone every morning for the rest of your life.
And it's the only know cure for crack! The
reason that Ibogaine is not being made available with the dispatch of, say, protease
inhibitors for AIDS, is that the political priority here is not coke and heroin--never
was!--but stopping the legalization of marijuana and protecting the market share
of legal drugs like Prozac, Budweiser and Tylenol that would be directly threatened
by something that doesn't give you a hangover. There are even those who maintain
that Ibogaine is blocked because of "counter cultural connections":--i.e., it
came up from the drug users, and "making it official" would undermine the Drug
War line demonizing all users. The
second great drug reform must be to end this lock the big ad agencies and the
drug, alcohol and tobacco companies have on the U.S. drug policy. A few years
ago, ABC News finally blew the whistle on Tylenol. Take 3 Tylenol's and a couple
of Budweisers and you can die of liver failure! Both products are big sponsors
of the Partnership for a Drug Free America, whose President at the time, Jim Burke,
had been awarded his job for his sucessful p.r. campaign in the wake of the Tylenol
tampering scare of '83. At that time Burke, who had ordered a comprehensive internal
review, learned of this shocking danger to consumers, but withheld this information
within the top echelon of Johnson & Johnson, whose Robert Woods Johnson Foundation
is still the premiere conduit for corporatat Drug War funding. The FDA was pressured
not to require a warning label for more than a decade, while hundreds of deaths
occurred, and Jim Burke was paid to lie about marijuana, which has never poisoned
anyone! Last
Noverberm, in 5 states and the District of Columbia medical marijuana ballot initiatives
passed resoundingly, only to be frustrated by the same vengeful, vindictive minority
that has shown that it will stop at nothing to keep cannabis from people with
AIDS, MS and other chronic or life-threatening conditions. We really have no other
choice. We need a Million Marijuana March! Ask
yourself which is more likely to impact on the current heroin epidemic (which
is real)--releasing Ibogaine directly to addicts, or withholding pot from sick
people under the theory (which has never worked in 50 years!) that if we just
stop all manifestations of marijuana, hard drugs will gradually wither away? Your
probable answer is one reason why Drug Warriors blame dissent for "creating a
casual attitude toward drugs in high schools," and why last June's U.N. Drugs
Conference organizers endorsed an international crackdown on all protests or public
questioning of the Drug War. Listen
to the majority of drug users. No one is arguing to legalize angel dust or crack
cocaine! Legalize pot. Legalize Ibogaine. Legalize clean needles and decrim personal
use of hard drugs so that we can deal with the more harmful substances through
the public health system, not the prisons. Try harm reduction and you will be
amazed. The
long national nightmare will be over. |
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