Coverage by BBSNews

BBSNews - 2003-08-06 -- By Malcolm W. Kyle. It has been said that moralizing divides Americans into a righteous US: Shaping America's beliefs, laws and attitudes - and a malevolent THEM: Equal-rights campaigners, Gays, Medical Marijuana-Advocates, and anybody else who dare to think for themselves. Colonial Puritans flogged, pilloried and hanged nonconformists such as Quakers. They were also seized by witch mania. In the late 1800s, when Anthony Comstock enforced laws against "vice" and jailed hundreds of Americans for petty sins, Margaret Sanger found herself imprisoned eight times just for advocating birth control.

Detroit police inspecting equipment found in a clandestine underground brewery. Photo National Archives. Today, growing marijuana is considered "manufacturing" a dangerous intoxicant. Same premise for illegality and same outcome. Huge profits for the cartels created solely from Prohibition II, the sequel. And heartache for millions of individuals created by making human foibles illegal by legislating the morality de jur.

Later, the Temperance-movement, epitomized by saloon-smashing Carry Nation, pulled America into Prohibition (1919-1933) which became a tumultuous period of booze-smuggling that created organized crime on such a scale that some would resonably argue Prohibition possibly caused The wall Street Crash of 1929. Yes folks, the CRASH happened during PROHIBITION. Matters just got worse from there on in. Then in March 1933 came Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose presidential campaign received huge corporate backing, mainly from people who didn't need much convincing as to where the problem lay and on the understanding that he would end Prohibition immediately on taking office. This the good man did, throwing in the New-Deal (farming and mortgage subsidies, minimum wage etc) in at the same time for good measure. Alas, these days, only the latter is remembered and subsequently receives all the credit whereas without the Repeal of Prohibition I, it`s difficut to imagine how any improvement of the situation could have at all been possible.

Many people, even those in law-enforcement (visit www.leap.cc), now recognise that Drug Prohibition, just like it`s counterpart of the twenties, causes large scale crime, violence, widespread corruption of public officials and is furthermore having a severe negative effect on race-relations. But what about the effect on the economy? Let's take a little look. The War on Some-Drugs, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), is costing the American taxpayer a grand total of $160 billion. On top of that, the world wide drug-driven black-market economy (mostly in the hands of criminals and ruthless terrorists) is estimated by the United Nations to be somewhere in the region of $400 billion.

One cannot begin to imagine what kind of nefarious effect all of this must be having on the economy both in America and world-wide or what terrible fate may await us, as the situation and conditions caused by drug prohibition gradually and surely worsen. We may not even have much time left to avert a disaster of such proportion as to make the Great-Depression which followed the crash of 1929 seem fairly benign in comparison. Mustn't we therefor do what we`ve falsely been made to believe we shouldn't? Return to all citizens their God-given right to alter their state of conciousness, by whatsoever means they themselves see fit, be it by animal, vegetable, chemical or otherwise. If, through our own fault, we fail to achieve this noble and neccessary aim, what scant right, will we have to complain about the terrible conditions in which we ourselves will eventually have to subsist?

Of these misguided vengeful neo-puritans who are in any position of authority or power, we must strive by peaceful and democratic means to remove or demand of them, that they realize the gravity of the present situation, put aside their perverse and unattainable dream of a drug free planet and, before we all go down the pan with them, END THE WAR ON DRUGS!