Dec. 18, 2006 - 21:53 MST

Lost War ?

There seems to be a run on losing. There is an article on the commentary section of The Rocky Mountain News this morning by Gene Lyons of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a bit of score-keeping. Quoted here in full:

DRUG WAR A 35-YEAR OLD FAILURE

"As the nation ponders its lost cause in Iraq, it's past time to reconsider yet another misbegotten crusade: America's "War On Drugs." Conceived by President Richard Nixon in 19971 partly as an attack on the anti-Vietnam war "counterculture," like most governmental efforts to abolish sin and folly, it's a complete failure."

"I yield to none in my contempt for the romance of narcotics. Like alcoholism, illegal drugs have brought misery, sorrow and death to millions. Prohibition and criminalization, however have proven a miserable failure, making traffic in illicit substances infinitely more profitable, enriching organized crime, corrupting governments and police and turning drug addiction into a contemporary plague. The United States now has a higher percentage of jailed citizens than all but a few police states. Yet heroin, cocaine and crystal meth are cheaper and more ubiquitous than ever."

"Thirty years ago, I flew into the Sierra Madre on a heroin poppy eradication mission with the Mexican army. Mexico had 14 helicopters provided by our Drug Enforcement Agency to patrol an area as large as California. The general in charge spoke of eliminating narcotrafficantes within months."

"Meanwhile, the lovely city of Culliacan, Sinaloa, about the size of Little Rock, had experienced 300 homicides in a four month period. Rival drug gangs fought pitched battles in the streets. Not long after I left, Roberto Montenegro, a courageous Mexican reporter, was machine-gunned to death on Culiacan's main square leaving church one Sunday. I thought of Montenegro after reading The Observer's astonishing account of U.S. government collusion in mob killings in the Mexican state of Chihuahua."

"According to the British newspaper, agents from the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of Homeland Security, hired a corrupt Mexican cop named Guillermo Ramnirez Peyro, aka "Lalo," to infiltrate a drug cartel in Juarez, directly across from El Paso, Texas. Things went wrong from the start. Early on, Mexican gangsters asked Lalo to prove his loyalty by helping torture, execute and bury a Mexican lawyer named Fernando Reyes."

"Possibly fearful of refusing, Lalo did so. "They tried to choke (Reyes) with an extension cord," he said in a subsequent sworn statement, "but this broke and I gave them a plastic bag and they put on his head and suffocated him." Unsure Reyes was dead, Lalo watched an accomplice "hit him many times on the head" with a shovel."

"Mindful that its informant had committed murder, ICE asked Justice department lawyers what to do. Astonishingly, they were advised to proceed full speed ahead."

"Over six months, claiming he often warned ICE handlers in advance, Lalo participated in many more killings. Mexican authorities eventually exhumed a dozen bodies from a garden in a wealthy Juarez neighborhood."

"But it wasn't until Lalo's accomplices bungled the kidnapping of an undercover DEA agent in Juarez that the whole thing blew up in his handlers' faces. Sandy Gonzalez, the head of the DEA's El Paso office, expressed outrage. "I have no choice but to hold you responsible," he wrote to his counterpart at Homeland Security, for protecting a "homicidal maniac." You know what happened next, Gonzalez, the furious DEA agent, was forced out of his job."

"The final score ? Thirteen dead vs. one plea-bargained drug-trafficking conviction."

"Could things get any more upside down ?"

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Guess someone is making a huge profit, building and staffing all these new prisons which take care of the ever growing amount of people sent to jail.

And perhaps it is because our feds haven't figured out a way to legalize narcotics and get a tax income from doing it.

So, I myself am an addict, albiet one in recovery. I can blame no one, for years I drank responsibly. But somewhere along the line, I became addicted to it. So, I know for a fact that alcohol is highly addictive. Nicotine ? Heh, for me it took a broken neck, a painful stay in the hospital before, unknowingly, I underwent chemical withdrawal, and by the time I came out of there, it was possible for me to quit entirely and not start again. I will say this, to me cigarettes were more addictive than alcohol in many ways.

The point is that both alcoholic beverages and tobacco, proven to be addictive are not classified as drugs - - - - - -

Seems that we as a country have both feet in our mouths and are trying to wage a war on drugs, using all kinds of czars and different departments to do just what ? Fill the jails with people, but not hinder addiction or criminal purchase of habit forming material ?

I do know that Prohibition didn't work, it was in effect when I was a kid. Everyplace we visited, the home brew was broke out, or the wine, dandelion or otherwise brought up from the cellar.

If the federal government is intent on filling newly built jails and building more, to the point that the only people not in jail are the feds, why don't they sacrifice the taxes and graft that alcohol and tobacco pays under the table and make them illegal too ? Then perhaps the "War On Drugs" will reach it's ridiculous conclusion, peace will reign (everybody getting wet) and everybody get drunk, stoned or both.

I think a peaceful solution is needed. The harder the feds fight, the more the addicts will pay to get the forbidden substances. Maybe after all, this could be a LOST WAR ? . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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