83 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
83 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
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by Abbie Hoffman
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Reefer Madness
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If there was anything unusual in Judge Douglas Ginsburg's rapid descent, it
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was probably the sight of White House conservatives scrambling to create a
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loophole in the national drug hysteria that would mitigate occasional
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marijuana use by a Supreme Court nominee. Never mind that President Reagan
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said last year that drug users are "as dangerous to our national security as
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any terrorist'; he tried dismissing Ginsburg's indiscretion as nothing more
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than "youthful fancy.'
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There was nothing surprising about Reagan's expedient reversal. For six
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years, the only consistent thing about our national drug policy has been its
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inconsistency. Harsher penalties, urine testing, hysteria, budget cuts and
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the simplistic "Just Say No!' campaign (the equivalent of telling manic
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depressives to "just cheer up') have returned drug education and treatment
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to the Reefer Madness era.
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Since 1980 the President and Nancy Reagan, Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d
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and White House drug policy advisers such as Dr. Carlton Turner, have made
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numerous rash and absurd statements about drugs. Dr. Turner claimed that
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smoking marijuana leads to AIDS (the sequence: Pot leads to harder drugs,
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which lead to sharing needles, which leads to AIDS). Peter Bensinger,
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former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, claimed that marijuana
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was harmful because it "contained dioxin.' The dioxin, of course, came from
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government spraying. Such statements are reminiscent of the 1920s, when the
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public was told that cocaine made blacks impervious to bullets.
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Truth has been the first casualty in this so-called war on drugs. When
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Reagan labeled drug abuse "an evil scourge' that has become the nation's
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number-one social problem, during the 1986 campaign, the nation had been
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whipped up into such a frenzy that polls showed the citizenry believed him.
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On October 27, 1986, Reagan got what he championed: the fifty-fifth Federal
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antidrug bill in eighty years. Congress authorized $3.96 billion to attack
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what Newsweek, with typical hyperbole, compared to "the plagues of medieval
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times.' (That plague wiped out two-thirds of the people in Europe. According
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to government statistics, in 1979 3,500 deaths were attributed to illicit
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drugs. No deaths, incidentally, were caused by marijuana.) Then, after the
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elections, Reagan cut $1 billion from his own war on drugs program and, in
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the harshest blow, recommended that no money be spent on drug rehabilitation
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and treatment in fiscal 1988.
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Like the Red Menace of the early 1950s, the current drug hysteria has led to
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a loyalty oath--this time, the urine test. Extrapolating from
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margin-of-error figures supplied by manufacturers of standard drug tests (5
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percent) and instances of laboratory mishandling documented by the Centers
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for Disease Control (15 to 20 percent), one can easily agree with a
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Northwestern University report claiming a national error rate of up to 25
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percent. That means roughly one of every four persons tested for controlled
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substances could wrongly be fired, not hired or denied promotion.
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But Reagan's not one to quibble about margins of error or unreasonable
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biochemical searches. Last year, when he announced the notorious drug-free
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workplace edict, he targeted Federal workers as an example for all labor.
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New applicants and tenured employees were forced to submit to urine tests.
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Of course, he wants to test all workers in America, which is rapidly
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occurring: In the private sector an estimated 35 million people were
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screened this year and the White House hopes to see 90 million being tested
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by 1990.
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It is time to rethink a complex problem like drug abuse and disregard the
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simplistic nonsense of the Reagan antidrug campaign, which has ignored
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scientific evidence and overridden fundamental values of privacy and due
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process.
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X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
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Another file downloaded from: The NIRVANAnet(tm) Seven
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& the Temple of the Screaming Electron Taipan Enigma 510/935-5845
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Burn This Flag Zardoz 408/363-9766
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realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 510/527-1662
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Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 801/278-2699
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The New Dork Sublime Biffnix 415/864-DORK
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The Shrine Rif Raf 206/794-6674
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Planet Mirth Simon Jester 510/786-6560
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"Raw Data for Raw Nerves"
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X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X
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