By Al Giordano
As support continues to grow for California’s November referendum to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana, the six US drug czars from four different administrations have now flailed together to try and stop the biggest electorate in the nation from bringing America back to its senses. In an August 25 column in the Los Angeles Times, Why California should just say no to Prop 19, the six epic losers posse up and ride out West in an attempt to rescue their failed cause.
Because memories are short, let’s review all the big successes of these brave and valiant drug czars, who assuredly saved the nation from drugs and drug abuse and all the violence and corruption caused by policies of prohibition all these years, so we can remind ourselves of why these six American Zeroes are the last people we should listen to when it comes to figuring out how to solve problems associated with illegal drugs.
William Bennett (1989-91)
At the January 1989 press conference when then-president George Bush, Sr. established a new cabinet-level post and named William Bennett as “drug czar,” an enterprising reporter asked how could Bennett – a heavy cigarette smoker – lead the nation away from addictive drugs when he himself was an addict? The press conference briefly halted as Bush and Bennett huddled in the rear of the stage whispering back and forth. Bennett returned to the microphone and announced that for the duration of his term in the National Office of Drug Policy Control he would quit smoking cigarettes.
Nine months later, as Bennett oversaw a major escalation in federal spending and repression against users and suppliers of some drugs, the Doonesbury comic strip revealed a scoop that would later be confirmed by official media: Bennett had been chewing Nicorette, the nicotine chewing gum then only available with a doctor’s prescription, to mask his nicotine addiction.
Bennett’s hardline approach to combating drugs was, as everybody knows, an abject failure and he left the post in just two years, parlaying it into a gig as a national conservative political pundit and author of the so-called “The Book of Virtues.” In 2003, reports revealed that this braggart moralist had lost millions of dollars gambling in Las Vegas. Virtue might not have a book, but it sure does have a bookie.
Bob Martinez (1991-1993)
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/4082/six-american-zeroes-reason-enough-support-california-prop-19