The Drug War Wall Begins to Fall

[Joanne98]

From Washington, Vienna, Rio de Janeiro, Seattle and South Carolina, a Convergence into a Mighty River of Reform


By Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
February 11, 2009

Twenty years ago, President George H.W. Bush named a blustering self-proclaimed moralist named Bill Bennett as drug czar. During the press conference to nominate him, an intrepid reporter asked the new czar how he could possibly lead the country away from dependence on addictive substances when he, as a cigarette smoker, was also an addict. The president and his czar huddled away from the microphone, whispering to each other, then stepped back up to the podium to announce that for the duration of his tenure Czar Bennett would refrain from smoking tobacco.


Nine months later, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, through his Doonesbury panels, “outed” Bennett as continuing his addiction through use of a relatively new product: Nicotine chewing gum, at the time available only through a doctor’s prescription. It took the so-called traditional media various weeks before the Washington Post confirmed the cartoonist’s scoop. And even then the story came and went in the flash of a single day’s news cycle.

I wrote about it then in a January 1990 cover story for the Washington Journalism Review (now, American Journalism Review): The War on Drugs: Who Drafted the Press? The media, then as now, day in, day out, reinforced the false narratives of the drug war as it blamed the problems prohibition creates – crime, corruption, illness and violent chaos everywhere – on the drugs and their users. And for most of these years, you could count the number of political leaders willing to question it on one, maybe two, hands: US Rep. Barney Frank, then-mayor of Baltimore Kurt Schmoke, then-attorney general of Colombia Gustavo de Greiff… profiles in courage, all.

Over the past week a number of news stories have surfaced in different corners of the globe that are flowing like tributaries into a mighty river of reform:

In Washington, the White House announced that DEA raids in medical marijuana states will end.

In Vienna, as Narco News copublisher Nora Callahan reports today, the US delegation to United Nations drug policy talks broke with Bush administration blocks placed on key reforms to the international drug war: the lifting of the 1988 ban on needle exchange programs in the United States requires a change in UN policy under treaties already signed. “The US will support and endorse needle exchange programs” for addicts to reduce the spread of AIDS and other communicable diseases, reports BBC radio.

In Rio de Janeiro, former presidents César Gaviria of Colombia, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Fernando Enrique Cardoso of Brazil – all heads of state that had presided over prohibitionist policies in their lands – issued a joint report together with various Latin American intellectuals: Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift.

Calling current drug policies “a failed war,” the former presidents concluded:

http://www.narconews.com/Issue55/article3393.html

[47of74]

1. Ha ha Gambiling Bill Bennett

[Uncle Joe]

2. I heard a rumor that Bennett gave up his gambling addiction for masturbation,

and now he's blind as a bat.

[47of74]

4. Thanks so much for that nice mental image!

[abq e streeter]

3. Sadly , "drug war" madness is bi-partisan

We in New Mexico had a right wing libertarian governor recently who did one great thing; he attempted to mount a crusade virtually alone, for an end to the madness, and legalization of pot. The local Democratic establishment fell all over themselves in denouncing and deriding his efforts. And Mr . Giordano is of course right about the mainstream media parroting whatever it's told to by the government ( ain't that a shocker) regarding the issue of drugs. I'm too much of a low tech doofus to know how to post a you tube link, but if you go there, and type in Bill Hicks LSD story, , there's a great one minute long bit by this legendary comedian .

[Seldona]

5. K&R

Glad to be the 5th rec. Thanks for posting.

[Fly by night]

6. I agree. We've never stopped fighting, so we will not lose.

Plus it helps to have a 14 gold medals Olympian, a Super Bowl MVP and a President who inhaled and said "that was the point" to out the lies that cannabis users destroy their health and lack motivation.

Who knows? Maybe science will finally win out over social control after all.

[bluesmail]

7. From the WAR on DRUGS to the GWOT, both wars

are unwinnable. Both are undefinable. Both are ridiculous. Both are for the exploitation of terror/drugs for profit(s).