All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Consequences In Life, Often Unanticipated

 

18. DRUGS, ETC.

"Adam was but human, - and this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake; he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent." - Mark Twain - 1894

Let no one misunderstand, I have never tried them, don't want to, don't condone them, and honestly believe they alter the mind permanently. For many years I parroted the usual conservative preachings that drugs should be outlawed, fought, and no expense spared to conquer this modern day evil incarnate. I had an employee who at one time had taken a large amount of "LSD," which practice she had quit long before she came to work for me. Beverly said she could be walking down the street, and suddenly, without warning, she would "go on a trip," as she called it, a hangover from drugs. I believe the influence of drugs is warping to the mind, and the effects last one's entire life. The drug users and ex-drug users always seem to be easily identified by their dress, music tastes, and general appearance. The "hippie" generation, which was heavily into drugs, seems to have permanent hangovers from their use. However, loathing drugs doesn’t mean the "drug war" makes any sense.

"Forbidden water is the sweetest." - Old saying

Making something illegal creates demand. Before we had the current drug laws, we had little drug use. There are those who insist that drug laws came as a result of increased drug consumption, but even if that were true, and it isn't, it certainly hasn’t helped. Marijuana was made illegal in 1937, and since then over 20 million have been arrested because of it. Napoleon's army and even Queen Victoria smoked marijuana, all without the hangover of alcohol. Ancient Chinese healers used marijuana extensively, and it is actually one of the oldest medicines on earth. Drugs are not new. Al Capone was addicted to cocaine. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had his Sherlock Holmes addicted to cocaine a hundred years ago, and Sigmund Freud was cocaine addicted, with no apparent ill effects. Dr. William Stewart Halsted, who was one of the greatest and most famous American surgeons, and a founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital, was a lifelong morphine addict, married into a distinguished Southern family, and lived a long and brilliant professional and family life.

When I was in high school, foolish teenagers smoked, got drunk, drove like maniacs, and girls occasionally turned up pregnant, but there was no drug problem. Kids didn't know about drugs, and there was no underworld providing them...until they became illegal. I know this sounds preposterous, but it is true. Speakeasies and the thrill of violating the law, didn't occur till prohibition, and drinking became illegal. The drunks and alcoholics created during the prohibition era are still with us. Prohibition made marijuana popular because it wasn't made illegal till prohibition was over. It was a lot more fun to do something forbidden, such as drinking illegal booze.

"For 13 long years I fought the good fight along with 160,000,000 other American patriots allied against the infamies of prohibition." - Lucius Bebee

Prohibition turned millions of thirsty Americans into criminals. Huge amounts of propaganda were unleashed upon the public, convincing alarmed citizens that "demon rum" was killing America. Carrie Nation was axing bars, breaking mirrors, destroying saloon tables and chairs, giving inflammatory speeches, and in general whipping everyone into a first rate lather. A few Americans became convinced that alcohol was absolutely the most destructive element in society. While this was going on, anyone could walk into a drug store and buy all the now illegal drugs they wanted. (Note that word "drug" in drug store.) We then made it illegal for; "...the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors..." as stated in the 18^th Amendment to our Constitution...later repealed by the 21^st. Never before had passions for righteousness, real or imagined, been so fervent. Note that consumption wasn't illegal, only making, selling and transporting it. The 21^st Amendment not only repealed the 18^th, but granted the various states the right to remain "dry" if they so chose.

"It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil." - Frederich Hayek

The worst consequence of prohibition was that it killed the temperance movement. Prohibition created a new multi-million dollar industry, "bootlegging." Under prohibition, the government continually stiffened the penalties for making, selling, and transporting what had become illegal alcoholic substances, and then as now, it merely increased the demand for the forbidden fruit. In 1924, there were 24,000 cases in federal court which dealt with "intoxicating liquors," crowding out legitimate criminal cases. During prohibition, jails were teeming with bootleggers and moonshiners, and today they are full of drug dealers and users. In both instances, the law-abiding citizenry lived, and currently do live in terror, due to the resulting violence. The old saying holds true that, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Millions had a great time during prohibition. These years became known as the "Roaring Twenties," and youth indeed did have its fling. Flappers, pocket flasks, speakeasies, 4 button suits, Stutz Bearcats, and the Charleston, became the trademarks of a 'hell for leather' youth, who took delight in drinking all they could...just to defy the law. America had an enormous hangover when prohibition was defeated. There were a reported 4,000 "speaks" in Manhattan alone. Nothing was accomplished, any more than defying the law with drugs is currently accomplishing anything, other than the thrill of taking a chance and doing what you want...when it is prohibited by absurd laws.

Prohibition made American distillers go broke, and Canadian ones thrive. Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, and a hundred other 'Old Reprehensibles' laid off their workers, and most never re-opened after repeal. We never had the dozens of Canadian brands till the Volstead Act (prohibition) was approved. Prohibition made Canadian distillers super rich. Some became billionaires, such as the Bronfman family, which now own much of America’s alcohol trade. The "Seagram's 7," "Canadian Club," and other brands still send billions back to Canada each year. Prohibition resulted in the formation of the FBI, an unconstitutional national police force. The despised BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms) and FBI committed the murders and destruction at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and a thousand other outrages of unannounced break-ins, bankrupting and humiliating innocents, wantonly seizing property illegally and never returning it, plus countless other categories of lawlessness perpetrated by the federal law enforcement agencies. No militia ever did these things.

Need a couple of examples? In September 1991, 85 soldiers and DEA agents stormed the 32 acres owned by Leland and Mary Shultz, looking for what they envisioned was a massive marijuana operation. Result? Lots of sunflowers, but not a single marijuana plant. The Schultzes were surrounded by drug agents, handcuffed, thrown to the ground and their property ransacked, while a helicopter hovered overhead. The agents kept screaming, "Tell us where the drugs are!" The Schultzes sued, but were told that government has immunity, and did nothing wrong.

Harry and Theresa Lamplugh live in Wellsboro, New Jersey. Harry promotes about 40 gun shows a year, benefiting such subversive groups as the American Cancer Society, Lions Clubs, American Legion, and the Marine Corps League. The BATF had 15 to 20 armed, masked agents invade the couple's home, hold them at the point of a machine gun, kick their cat to death, and steal at least $18,000 worth of property, which was listed as being "forfeited." Harry is a cancer patient. The BATF threw his prescription drugs on the floor, and after opening his personal mail and taking his medical records, held a gun to his head and shouted, "shut up," when he asked if they had a search warrant.

In Bucyrus Ohio, the BATF raided the home of Louis Katona in 1990, seizing his gun collection. Kimberly, Louis' pregnant wife, was brutally shoved against a wall, and later suffered a miscarriage. The stories can go on and on. 21 year old Monique Montgomery awoke at 4 AM to find four masked men breaking into her bedroom. She reached for her gun, and was shot dead by BATF agents, who found nothing illegal in her apartment.

In 1992, the AP reported that in Texas, the government spent $500 million in an attempt to stop airborne drug smuggling. The result? Complete and utter failure. Not a single arrest or drug seizure.

Undoubtedly a grossly low figure, the Gannett News Service reported on March 13, 1997, that "Taxpayers have shelled out $103 billion in the past 10 years for a federal drug war that has done little to stop international narcotics traffickers, says a new study by government auditors. Heroin is cheaper, stronger, and more widely available than a decade ago, said the General Accounting Office. Only about 32 metric tons of the total world heroin supply of 300 tons were seized by police. The GAO figure of $103 billion actually is quite low because it doesn’t include all the drug-fighting money tucked away in all U.S. budgets."

"Tobacco is one of the most physiologically damaging substances used by man. When smoked in cigarettes it is the chief cause of lung cancer. Tobacco is also a factor in other cancers, in coronary artery disease, in emphysema of the lungs, and in other diseases. Since nicotine is one of the most perniciously addicting drugs in common use, most tobacco users are "hooked" and, in effect, locked to the damaging effects of tobacco." Page 206, "Licit & Illicit Drugs," by Edward M. Brecher and the editors of Consumer Reports.

Today, we have cut cigarette smoking by over 50% with a modern day temperance movement...educating the populace about the health effects of smoking. Couldn't drug use be cut the same if it weren't driven underground? If cigarette smoking were made illegal, and a "war on cigarettes" begun, smoking would be instantly glamorous, the cost of cigarettes would go through the roof, and it would be smart, cute, and "in" to smoke, rather than the reverse, which is true now. If some have their way, cigarettes will become another illegal item that people want, but can't buy at the corner store, and we will have street corner cigarette dealers proffering poorly made, possibly even poisonous cigarettes for the addicted. Amateur, unclean, slipshod manufacturing is responsible for some illegal drug deaths each year, which would also happen if cigarettes were put on the illegal list.

In his 1963 book, "How Dry We Were: Prohibition Revisited," Dr. Henry Lee noted that the new (1918) Constitutional Amendment was supposed to cure the alcohol problem. Billy Sunday, the great evangelist said, "The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever rent." Dream on Billy! Lee proves that prohibition drove up not only consumption, but also production. Speakeasies, crime, murder, assaults, stills, drunkenness, arrests, wild chases and seizures were all going full tilt, and America was having a jolly time doing what was illegal. When prohibition was removed, the murder rate in America immediately went down by 60%!

Samuel Eliot Morison wrote in his "Oxford History of the American People," "No sooner had national prohibition become law than the country seemed to regret it, and a new occupation, bootlegging, sprang up to quench the public thirst. The federal government in 10 years made over half million arrests for breaking the Volstead Act, and secured over 300,000 convictions, but smuggling increased." The consequences of the Volstead Act's passage was increased consumption, proven in another book, "The Economic Results of Prohibition," by Clark Warburton, a most respected analyst, who showed that alcoholic beverage consumption went from .3 to 1.86 gallons of wine, from .44 to .87 gallons of whiskey, and from 1.26 to 6.9 gallons of beer per year, per person, during prohibition. Think about what would happen if sugar or soda pop were outlawed, neither particularly good for you. Make something illegal, and it obtains a certain glamour to the would be partakers. Consumption of any substance that is made illegal, plus a radical increase in price, and the thrill of doing it, are undeniable results. Even the ancient Jews got a kick from worshipping the golden calf, which was forbidden. Re-read the opening quote at the beginning of this chapter.

Stopping the drug war sounds absolutely lunatic to most, mainly because we are so used to government telling us how evil drugs are, and how much of our money they are righteously spending to fight this iniquity. A person addicted to heroin, cocaine, opium, or other substances, can live with their addictions or shake them, in the same way as a person addicted to nicotine, alcohol or overeating. Drug overdoses may possibly kill, although some experts say they won't, unless mixed with other substances...especially alcohol. There is no question about the lethal effects of cirrhosis of the liver and lung cancer. The Chinese, thanks to the British, for over a hundred years lived while addicted to opium, and in places where drug laws have been removed, those civilizations didn't collapse. The American and Mexican Indian, for centuries have ingested peyote, which religious practice prohibited the use of alcohol.

I constantly hear of the millions of illegal drug users in America, which is the excuse given for the war on drugs. To hear the calamity howlers spout their alarms, Americans take so many drugs, that it threatens us all. Be reasonable and logical when I ask, where are all these horrid drug addicts? I see drunks careening down the highways or staggering on sidewalks. It is actually hilarious to listen to Los Angeles radio stations do their traffic reports on a Sunday morning after the bars closed on Saturday night. Cars overturned, going the wrong way on one way streets, in ditches, head on collisions, etc., and all because of alcohol. Over 400,000 die each year from the effects of smoking. Where are all the druggie deaths? I never see a drugged addict staggering in a public place, driving up the wrong way on an Interstate and colliding with a bus, killing 16, as happened in Colorado in 1996. That driver was drunk, as are thousands of idiots who maim and kill each day using their legal drug, alcohol. On NPR’s "All Things Considered" on October 16 1997, it was stated that alcohol related incidents kill one American every 31 seconds. The papers are not reporting auto accidents caused by drugged drivers. Where are all these addicted people we are so alarmed about? If we are so infested and poisoned by these hideous drugs, where is the evidence of it? If cocaine is so bad, and marijuana so evil, why aren't these drugged up criminals seen passed out and dying of liver disease like the addicts of alcohol, or dying of cancer or some other drug related illness like the nicotine addicts are in such pitiful numbers? The daily accounts of drug busts, break-ins, property forfeiture, court trials, jail sentences, smuggling, new laws, and all that government can possibly get into the media, never tell of victims lain waste, ruined, incapacitated, or dead. All the hoop-la is about the drug busts, not the ruined imbibers. If drugs are so bad, where are the victims? We occasionally hear of those who may be addicted, but that has nothing to do with being unable to live successfully, any more than does a person grossly overweight or hooked on cigarettes.

Addiction to legal prescription drugs is common. Various mental stimulants, depressants, laxatives, sleep inducers, and painkillers are taken by hundreds of thousands every day, and they are addicted...but not debilitated. The difference is that some are “"legal" and others are "illegal." Legal drugs show profits for pharmacies and doctors, while the illegal ones show profit for the underworld. In the April 1998 New England Journal of Medicine, it was reported that properly prescribed legal drugs kill 106,000 Americans each year. According to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, a mere 5,200 Americans die each year from Illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine, most probably ingested with alcohol, which often makes them deadly.

Over 400,000 die prematurely from effects of cigarette smoking, millions suffer from emphysema, shortness of breath, lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, yellow hands and teeth, bad breath, etc. 40 Children under the age of five drown in water buckets each year, and 80 in bathtubs. Fire officials say 90% of non-arson fires are started due to careless smoking. 40,000 die on the highways each year, a good percentage caused by drunk drivers. Do any die from "drug driving?" Driving while yaking into a cell phone causes lots of accidents, but I just can't remember ever hearing of a "drug" car accident. Experts all agree that marijuana consumption slows drivers down to a crawl, and makes them not even want to drive, whereas alcohol intoxication makes them speed and become reckless and fearless. If an adult is so half-witted as to be a drunk, smoke, or take drugs, and something terrible happens to their health or personality, so what? That is known as individual responsibility, also known as population control, allowing the weak, sick, and foolish to fare for themselves with no government support. Individual responsibility has to include those with AIDS. America will be better off without the irresponsible ones if they are so ignorant as to drink themselves to death, engage in unsafe sex, inject drugs, or die of lung cancer. Their death leaves more room for us smart people, and gets rid of the expense the fools impose on us innocents...which makes a lot of sense, even though emotionally it sounds pretty bad at first reading.

Consider the cost of the drug war. William F. Buckley, in a 1995 column analyzed it on an annual basis as follows: "Incarceration - $21 billion, new prison construction - $2.2 billion, justice system - $6 billion, law enforcement - $7.7 billion, Customs and Coast Guard - $2 billion, wasted money by marijuana users if they could buy it legally - $12.9 billion, same with cocaine - $48.9 billion, damage and injury cost of crimes committed to buy drugs - $9.4 billion, merchandise stolen in crimes - $47 billion, health costs - $3 billion, lost revenue from untaxed drugs - $5 billion, making a total of $205 billion per year. Still want to continue with the "drug war?" Of course the $205 billion doesn’t include destroyed neighborhoods, bodies, and minds that might still be whole without the entire matter being stupidly illegal, causing the curious to seek thrills through doing something forbidden.

There are supposedly 37,000 people in jail at any one time for marijuana use. In 1996, 641,642 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges, 85.2% for mere possession. At $40,000 a year for the keep of the 37,000, that alone costs America $1,480,000,000 each year for use of a substance that California and Arizona voted in 1996 to make legal when a doctor suggests its use. Several more states were added to that list in the 2000 elections. Think about the cost of arresting, booking, trial, jail time, or bail to get released, etc., for the 641,642. Absolutely mind boggling.

Alcohol and cigarettes are legal, and they kill thousands of times more than do drugs. There are those who swear that various items of food will kill you. Fat, sugar, red meat, any meat, any dairy, foods grown with chemical fertilizers, and hundreds of other prohibitions cause health purists of all sorts to be inflamed with the desire to educate and help those so foolish as to consume items on their list of potable killers. Health food stores make huge profits from sales of "natural" cures and vitamins, all thought...by some...to be the ultimate in health providing ingestibles. When drugs are lined up along side of the other eccentricities of the rest of the population, past and present, they seem to me to be right at home. How about the exercise fanatics who insist on running, running, running, and possibly wearing out the heart? They are on a par with the rest of us who all have our own little peccadilloes.

Isn’t it entirely possible that that the supposed hideousness of illegal drugs is completely overblown? Is it possible the cigarette and alcohol manufacturers are pushing the drug war so their sales won't be harmed? Maybe smokers would prefer marijuana to tobacco, or drinkers prefer a 'joint' to hooch. Who knows what might happen to tobacco and alcohol sales if the drug war were called off? It is almost certain that cigarette and alcohol manufacturers would be harmed tremendously. Ever think of that?

When we were kids, everyone knew that masturbation would make us go blind or insane, and in the sixties, when the drug war began, it was said that one single marijuana cigarette would hook one for life. In 1944, the New York Academy of Medicine declared that the use of marijuana was, "completely harmless." Back in the 17^th century, during the famous Salem Witch Trial era, it was also an undisputed fact that witches were all powerful agents of the devil, and had to be hung by the neck till dead, or burned at the stake. 'Common knowledge,' in any time period, is often wrong. In Biblical times, the majority thought Jesus was evil, Noah was crazy, as were most of the Biblical characters. It is current 'common knowledge,' that illegal drugs kill, which is untrue, but what is true is that the legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, actually do kill hundreds of thousands each year.

Remember Times Beach, Missouri? Found in some of the black top paving, was a wee bit of the chemical dioxin, which set off the emergency alarms of D.C. Quickly the town was ordered abandoned, and for over two decades, "restoration," costing hundreds of millions has proceeded. Dioxin is not a poison, other than possibly a carcinogen to guinea pigs. Many residents refused to leave Times Beach, and are as healthy as anyone. In Italy, an entire town was exposed to a thousand times as much dioxin as were the residents of Times Beach, and they suffered no ill effects. It has been reluctantly admitted that the Times Beach dioxin matter was a huge error.

The cost of the asbestos scare is incalculable, but it has to be in the tens and even hundreds of billions, all out of taxpayer, manufacturer, and building owners' pockets. It turns out that asbestos may be trouble for smokers handling huge amounts of it continuously, but the problem has been, and still is, that entire buildings have been condemned, schools closed, and asbestos removal crews hired, complete with space suits and auxiliary breathing apparatus, all mandated by government, to remove even the smallest smidgen of asbestos. This is not to mention the fact that entire corporations have taken bankruptcy over frivolous lawsuits. Smoking was the problem with asbestos workers, not the substance itself. The asbestos scare began with the publication of an inflammatory document released by the government, which was titled simply the "Draft Summary." The problem with the "Draft Summary," is there are no authors listed, and no one has yet admitted to writing it. The "Draft Summary" has not been subjected to scientific proofs, and has been scoffed at and ridiculed by responsible, accredited scientists at home and abroad. This fraudulent "Draft Summary," author unknown, is responsible for the entire asbestos scare, which continues with us today.

The type of asbestos used in 95% of American installations is the "crysolite" variety, and isn’t harmful at all. The other type, the "amphibole" variety is harmful, but comes from Africa, and has rarely been used in America since WW II, except as filters in Kent cigarettes until 1956. During WW II, the emergency dictated that all types had to be used, and some of those workers have indeed contracted lung problems from those times, but to cause a national scare costing a large fortune has been absurd. Non-smoking coal miners never seem to get "black lung disease." Non smoking uranium miners never seem to get cancer.

Then there was the Alar-on-apples piece, as irresponsibly broadcast by "60 Minutes" a few years ago, and backed up by the government. That little piece of business destroyed a lot of apple growers, and was totally untrue.

PCB’s take many forms, are non-flammable, and stable over a wide range of temperatures. Invented in 1929, they made wonderful insulation in electrical transformers and installations, replacing mineral oil, which is highly flammable. According to government "experts," PCBs are extremely poisonous, which is untrue. They are banned anyway, and no suitable substitute has been found. I well remember the feds storming into the Paoli, Pennsylvania railroad yards a few years ago with their space suits, ordering everyone off the premises. PCB oil had been used for decades to cool the transformers in the Pennsylvania Railroad's electric locomotives. Over the years, thousands of gallons of it had dripped in the yards. Railroaders used to taste it to see if it was lubricating or insulating oil, (PCB’s) and no one ever got sick. That little "clean up" cost the railroad millions and millions, all needlessly. The PCB scare continues, even though for decades waste PCBs had been released into rivers, and no fish or humans ever suffered harm.

For years, government has been yapping about salt, and how too much of it can harm the heart and kill you. Millions have been made, and billions spent, for "salt free" substances, because of this fraudulent scare, which has absolutely no basis in medical study, practice, knowledge, or pronouncement. As a matter of fact, late medical studies show that a lack of salt is unhealthy for the body.

The acid rain, earth warming, thinning ozone layer, and other such alarmist exclamations would require much more time than this space allows, but they can be proven to be equally microscopic problems.

The entire refrigeration industry had to re-tool, (over 200 million cars and refrigerators) and it has cost us a bundle...all for nothing. More supposedly ozone-destroying agents are emitted by jet planes, volcano eruptions, and space shuttles than could be ejected by a trillion refrigerators with their harmless Freon. Besides that, no one knows how long the so called "ozone hole" has been present. It could have been there for a million years. Can you imagine how many jobs result from, and depend on, keeping us scared out of our wits all the time? Like drugs, Freon is now illegal...but not in Mexico. Freon smuggling has become a big business...just like drugs, with the usual arrests, prison sentences and statements from government about "protecting Americans." Don’t be afraid, Freon has been in use for almost a hundred years, and is harmless. It’s just the newest snafu, which if you aren’t old enough to remember WW II, stood for "Situation normal, all f----- up."

The late Rachel Carson was a writer, not a scientist. Her best seller, "Silent Spring," literally destroyed DDT, the best, cheapest killer of mosquitoes, fleas, body lice, moths, boll weevils, and a host of other pests. Its forced demise is a tragedy of unknown proportions, because nothing comparable to DDT has yet to be developed. Carson's book was full of lies and half-truths about lots of things, but making DDT illegal was the worst. DDT cut malaria deaths by 90% throughout the world, and caused equally startling reductions in typhus, yellow fever, sleeping sickness, plague, and encephalitis; all carried by insects.

During 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency held official hearings on the scientific evidence concerning DDT. After seven months and 9,000 pages of testimony, EPA hearing examiner Edmon Sweeny decided, on the basis of evidence, that DDT should not be banned. He said, "DDT is not a carcinogenic...mutagenic, or tetratogenic hazard to man. The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife." This was in agreement with the assessment of the world’s major scientific organizations, which had testified on behalf of DDT during the hearings. DDT’s ban was done by EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus on June 14, 1972, completely ignoring tons of scientific evidence. He never read any of the 9,000-page report, never attended any of the hearings, and his unconstitutional "decision" has had deleterious effects on American agriculture and health.

Carson's half-truths and innuendoes have been repeated so often, and for so long, that they are considered to be factual, and they aren't. Her dire warnings about the extinction of certain bird species is malarkey, as has been proven over and over again by bird counts, and surveys. She said that DDT harms humans, and it stays in the environment, neither of which is true. She said DDT caused cancer in mice, but the National Cancer Institute says that is false. She said that DDT caused bird eggs to be thin, which has been proven false. Bird eggs thinned because of mercury, a pesticide called Deldrin, and a host of other natural causes. She said DDT caused the decline of the Bald Eagle and Peregrine Falcon plus other bird species, also an utter falsehood. Falcons and eagles declined long before DDT was even invented due to hunting, falconry, and even the State of Alaska giving millions in bounties for the shooting of the species! Other bird species, according to accurate statistics, thrived and increased in numbers during the DDT period. The cost to Americans because of the influence of a shoddy best seller written by a non-scientist is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. If Congress wants to do anything for the good of everyone, it will restore the manufacture and use of DDT! They won’t, of course, because they are all devout chickens, afraid to rock any voter or contributor’s boat or opinion, and merely want to stay in those posh offices term after term. Needless to say, I am not afraid of truth, regardless of who may be trampled.

Back to the current scare campaign...drugs. The so called 'underground economy' is among the largest money generating machines in America, and pays no taxes. The literally hundreds of billions of dollars in profits from heroin, hash, and 'Mary Jane' goes untaxed. Everyone hates taxes and the IRS, but if we must remain as stupid as we are, the huge tax burden transferred to honest taxpayers because the underground economy doesn't pay any...costs us a fortune.

Bobby Moak, a lame brained Republican in Mississippi, proposed a law titled, "Smoke a joint, lose a limb." His proposed law would have punished marijuana smokers by amputating an arm or a leg. In Kansas, a coalition of 38 Republicans wanted to impose life terms without parole for people convicted of growing marijuana plants. It is said that 300,000 die each year from obesity. Wonder why Bobby didn't propose sewing shut the lips of fatties? An AP story on Feb. 6, 1994 reported that 250,000 drug addicts and alcoholics support their habits by collecting $1.4 billion in disability benefits from Social Security. Isn't government grand?

SOLUTIONS

Stop the foolish war, and legalize their manufacture and sale to adults who are so ignorant as to take a chance of mental ruination or permanent alteration. The same laws regarding a minor's consumption of alcohol and tobacco would work well with so called illegal or illicit drugs. Selling drugs legally seems to be a shocking statement, except the two really harmful drugs are already sold legally, and huge taxes are collected on their sale: those being tobacco and alcohol. It just requires looking at what is happening now, to realize this is a rational step, just like eliminating prohibition was logical. Imagine the taxes that could be collected, and the lack of income for the underworld, who are getting rich undeservedly, by selling drugs.

A Rand Corporation study finds that treatment is ten times more effective than punishment. As a result of the drug war, America has ten times as many prisoners per capita than any other nation on earth. Why is America imprisoning hundreds of thousands for non-violent offenses?

Self-control, and attempted control by force, are the only two possible ways of controlling human actions. Self-control can be aided by such groups as churches and self help groups that use the appellation "anonymous," plus lots of others that are in existence. Self-control can be helped by advertising campaigns, education, and of course families and parents. The obvious decline in legal tobacco consumption, is the result of the first method. The other means of control: force of law, doesn’t work when outlawed actions can be done in private, and leave no visible traces, such as illegal drug ingestion, prostitution, abortion, adultery, or gambling. Faced with the absolute impossibility of governmental force working, do-gooder politicians, mostly Republicans, continue to spend billions of dollars doing their 'God given work,' which is an obvious failure.

Remember that all the current illegals used to be sold...in DRUG stores! Notice the name? Drug laws and the drug war is a total waste of time and money, and has resulted in heinous crime, unsafe streets, and full jails.

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