Thursday, October 10, 1996
DRUGS:
Politicians hide real issues behind screen of increasing drug
use By Joseph Miranda
Regarding Ms. Nelson’s Oct. 3 column, "Injecting morality into
our youth.": The massive increase in drug use by American teenagers
ought to be seen as a positive sign. It demonstrates that young
people refuse to believe the lies of the drug prohibitionists. And
it shows that young people are willing to defy repressive
government policies. Mass defiance of repressive statist policies
is a good sign for a healthy republic.
In a free society, it is up to the individual to make their own
moral choices. This concept is called "liberty," something that
America is supposed to be about.
People have as much right to choose to use drugs as they have a
right to own a firearm, have sex with another consenting adult, or
dispose of their income as they please (choices which are,
incidentally, under attack by both major political parties).
The claim that the Republicans represent moral leadership is
surely a hallucination. From which politicians does this leadership
come?
The myriad of Republicans indicted and convicted in Watergate
and Iran-Contra? From former President Nixon (resigned from
office)? From George Bush (who came very close to being indicted
for lying over Iran-Contra)?
The only "leadership" either major political party could give us
is in how to conduct burglaries, plant illegal wiretaps, shred
documents and lie under oath.
While the Republicans claim to call for less government, they
insist on intruding into every aspect of Americans’ private lives.
Such hypocrisy is the high point of immorality, and those who look
to the government for moral leadership are exposing their own
bankruptcy.
Not that the Democrats are any better. President Clinton has
been just as bankrupt as any other president. Today, there are six
times as many people in prison for drug offenses as there were in
1983 (354,000 versus 58,000). Clinton has advocated increasingly
repressive legislation, such as the Communications Decency (read
"censorship") Act, the Counter Terrorism Bill and the clipper
chip.
Now, at this point someone is going to claim that young people
are being endangered by illegal drugs. So, I checked with the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. The number of Americans
aged 6-17 who die of illegal drug use is reported to be about 100 a
year. That’s right, a mere 100. This is a fraction of a percent of
all accidental deaths for Americans in this age range. So there is
no drug "epidemic" among our young people (If you want to
corroborate this, check out the Annual Medical Examiner Data and
the Drug Abuse Warning Network, available from the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services).
Ah, somebody says, what about all the crime caused by drugs?
Didn’t the moral Nixon White House declare that the majority of
crime in America was by drug users?
True enough, the Nixon White House claimed this  but, as
an FBI investigation of the matter revealed, the Nixon White House
was lying (surprise!).
As Department of Justice statistics demonstrate, only 13 percent
of property and violent crime is related to drugs. Nixon’s
motivation for lying about the causal relationship between drugs
and crime was probably political: the opening round of the "war on
drugs" was used as an excuse to attack the then-widespread radical
and antiwar movements. Nixon believed, with some justification,
that many leftists used illegal drugs. Similarly, today’s "war on
drugs" has been used as an excuse for a government assault against
the inner cities, as well as a cover for United States military
intervention worldwide.
The majority of crime in this country is not committed by
addicts stealing to support their habit.
It is in the form of white-collar fraud, cost overruns, and
other forms of corporate crime. Corporate violations of
environmental, health and safety laws have caused more damage to
society than all the drug related crime combined. A
disproportionate amount of law enforcement resources are tied up on
the essentially victimless crime of drug use while neglecting the
real criminals.
Of course, neither Dole nor Clinton openly condemn corporate
crime. They dare not, because any such attack on the corporations
would be followed by withdrawal of corporate support for their
campaigns.
The failure of drug prohibition must be seen in light of the
greater picture: millions of Americans are openly defying
government firearms control policies, and millions of others are
using encryption programs to smash government censorship of the
Internet. Coupled with a thriving underground economy, this
demonstrates widespread resistance to the state. Abroad, the U.S.
war on drugs has been defeated militarily in the Andes by
indigenous peasant guerrillas.
The war on drugs has been lost and no amount of hypocritical
posturing by politicians is going to change this fact.
The Republican and Democratic "concern" for our youth is a
fraud. The drug issue is a shabby propaganda tool used to disguise
the failure of other government policies. Politicians refuse to
address real issues such as education, health care, jobs, the
environment, energy or corporate downsizing. Instead, both
mainstream political parties are competing with each other to put
more young people in jail via increasingly restrictive laws.
The real threat this nation faces is from the government. It is
the censors, the gun grabbers, the sexual puritans, and, yes, the
prohibitionists who ought to be morally condemned, not Americans
invoking their natural right to pursue happiness. If we are really
concerned about the next generation, then what we ought to do is
have a war on repression, not drugs.
Joseph Miranda is a 1976 alumnus and the editor of Strategy and
Tactics.