Top Ten Drug War Stories of 2003

[Wonk]

Kevin Nelson, AlterNet
January 7, 2004

With the American public's attention firmly directed toward the daily events of the Bush Administration's "War on Terror," the US-led and exported "War on Drugs" continues to exact crippling costs to taxpayers, minority groups, the environment, civil liberties and struggling democracies around the world.

While terror alerts rise and fall and states struggle to fund their law enforcement budgets, the total number of marijuana arrests far exceed the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

As the Drug War enters its 90th year, it continues to be characterized by contradictory laws, arbitrary enforcement, massive wealth and racial disparities, questionable covert operations and general media timidity.

Here are 10 of the top stories from Drug War 2003:

1) Afghanistan is now the world's leading supplier of opium for the heroin trade. Under the Taliban regime, which banned opium, annual production bottomed out at 77 tons in 2001, produced only in areas controlled by the Northern Alliance. American military, as part of its "War on Terror," allied with Northern Alliance warlords to overthrow the Taliban regime and keep Al Qaeda at bay. Afghan opium production has since skyrocketed to about 3,600 tons of opium this year, or 75 percent of global production. With the American public's attention firmly directed toward the daily events of the Bush Administration's "War on Terror," the US-led and exported "War on Drugs" continues to exact crippling costs to taxpayers, minority groups, the environment, civil liberties and struggling democracies around the world.

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http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=17515

[Paranoid_Portlander]

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