{news} It's wrong to make drug war a religion

[clifford thornton]

      Columnists  
     
<http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/opinion/columnists/scn-william-collins,0,7861434.columnist?coll=stam-opinion-columnists> William A. Collins<http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/opinion/columnists/scn-william-collins,0,7861434.columnist?coll=stam-opinion-columnists> 
It's wrong to make drug war a religion
        


     
        
     
William A. Collins

Published December 10 2006


Cliff Thornton, the recent Green Party candidate for governor, is a man of commendable substance and character. One of his seminal comments during the campaign was, "We've got to understand that the drug war is meant to be waged, not won."

Others have said much the same about the war on terror, and all are right, but the election showed that the public might at least have caught the drift about terrorism. Not so about drugs. Voters still seem ready to punish politicians who seem to be "soft." This faulty faith in an incarceration ideology, promoted especially by the prison-industrial complex, is painfully damaging to society.

Take Hartford. New research has found that one child in six there has a parent in jail. Very few of these got sentenced for stock fraud or embezzlement. White-collar criminals are from the suburbs, and mostly they just get fines and probation. The heavy sentences are reserved for drugs and related crimes. Indeed, there exists a kind of puritanical belief that those of us who maintain freedom from such substances will vouchsafe a place for ourselves in heaven, as long as we persecute those who have fallen.

Fortunately, our own purity is not considered smirched by occasional recourse to alcohol. This distinction between the two substances was clarified during the great temperance reformation in the 1930s. That's when Prohibition was finally repealed.

But while the glass of wine and the martini have long been welcomed back into the Kingdom of Heaven, not so the joint. Not even if you're deathly ill and cannabis is the only pharmaceutical that can bring relief. It carries the stigma of Subsequent Sin. Even baptism by incarceration cannot fully erase its stain.

The cost to society of this anti-drug religion has been enormous. And not just to hopeless junkies either. It's racial too. Drug laws purposely are drawn to punish blacks and Latinos with especial harshness. Not coincidentally, we also tie in restrictions on their right to vote. In some states, there is a lifetime prohibition.

But for the rich, the rules are somewhat milder. The New York Times reports that in Manhattan that polite and well-groomed dealers will now deliver pleasantly packaged, high-quality marijuana to your door. No more murky street corners with lurking cops and bullets.

In Europe, this Reformation is much further along. Very few people over there go to jail for drugs these days. Users of pot are ignored, and addicts of the harder stuff are offered treatment. In some places, hopeless heroin victims even are given controlled amounts of it, often stabilizing them and sometimes straightening them out.

In this country, we're much more ideological. We deny pot to the desperately ill for fear it will "send the wrong message." We send mercenaries onto Afghan farms to tear out poppies, thereby fomenting a resurgence of the Taliban. We jail harmless drug users, isolating them from education, employment, family and treatment, thus driving more and more citizens onto welfare and into crime.

Yes, there have been improvements. While our state still over-punishes for cocaine possession, at least it's now equal for blacks and whites. Penalties used to differ greatly for possession of crack cocaine (cheaper to buy) and the powder (expensive). Eleven states - not us - also allow medical marijuana use, though the feds are thrilled to jump in and arrest sufferers anyway. And California widely offers treatment instead of jail. Still, the drug war nationally continues to fuel crime syndicates, destroy families, and breed corruption here and in Mexico. That's a heavy price to pay for a false religion.

Syndicated columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk. The piece was distributed by www.minutemanmedia.org. 
Copyright © 2006, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc. 

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