Monday, July 03, 2006
The Drug War is Our War:
by Phillip T. Alden
(for "The Guide")
July 1, 2006
Introduction:
Drug Prohibition throughout the 20th century is defined by a litany of legislation designed to discriminate against people of color and protect specific industries. Therefore, the fight against abusive drugs laws is also a civil rights struggle, historically and currently.
The so-called “war on drugs” has in reality been a war of violence visited upon people of color and the poor by the White power structure – fearful of equal rights granted to Black, Asian and Hispanic Americans.
This “drug war” has also been waged against users of medical marijuana, many of whom are people living with HIV/AIDS. The GLBT Community has been at the forefront of the medical marijuana movement and our work has spurred the science that has demonstrated the validity of marijuana as medicine.
And this war is an economic discriminator as well as a racial one. From sentencing laws that impose harsher penalties on crack than on powdered cocaine, to the divide between street drugs and pharmaceutical drugs, there is one thing that stands out – the wealthy get off and the poor go to prison. The hypocrisy is staggering.
And we are also being targeted through our main social outlet – dance clubs. Recent legislation, poorly thought out and badly written, has been designed to shut down the places where we congregate and socialize.
Our community is plagued by a new wave of destruction known as Crystal, and while we want our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to see the harm Crystal is doing we have no desire to see them thrown into the brutal and violent prison-industrial complex.
And when it comes down to it, we have no desire to see anyone thrown into prison for doing what they want with their own bodies if they’re not harming anyone else. Our history has always been about personal freedom, whether it be sexual or drug-related. When did it become okay in America to tell people what they can and cannot do with their person? When did we abandon our basic rights and freedoms?
The History of Prohibition, Race and Violence:
The first drug law in our modern age was a prohibition against the smoking of opium in opium dens in 1875 – a method favored by Chinese railroad workers. The movement for the law was a panic based on the fear that White women would be seduced into having sex with Chinese men under the influence of the drug. Laudanum, the liquid form of opium favored by Whites, was left untouched. The law was based on the method ingestion, not the drug itself.
Then cocaine was targeted as part of a fear campaign against black men, with headlines like “Cocainized Niggers” and “Negro Cocaine Fiends” intent on whipping up hysteria with fears of White women (once again) being raped by drug-addled black men. Police used this hysteria as an excuse to switch from .32 caliber pistols to .38 caliber guns, using reasoning that stated a .32 caliber bullet was inadequate for killing a black man high on cocaine.
Not “stopping” a black man, “killing” him.
This same line of reasoning has been updated, with police departments claiming a need for automatic weapons and armor piercing rounds, escalating an arms war on American streets. Some law enforcement officials claimed that drug distributors were out-gunning them, but it has been shown it was the police who escalated first – with the opposition playing catch-up.
The drug war has been built upon lies told by politicians and law enforcement officials to muddy the waters and justify their war against people of color. Today we see a continuation of these lies, with the federal government stating in 2006 there was no medical basis for the use of marijuana, when a government-commissioned study by the Institute Of Medicine (IOM) has shown clear relief from nerve pain using medical cannabis.
The disastrous effects of the American prohibition against alcohol, causing the rise of organized crime in the United States in the 1930s, has been well-documented. The alcohol prohibition did not last but we still have organized crime to this day. The hard truth is the so-called “war on drugs” has caused more violence and death than it has prevented.
Medical Marijuana, AIDS and the Federal Government:
In 1937 the federal government passed the Marijuana Tax Act, the first in a series of anti-marijuana laws based on “Reefer Madness” hysteria. The Commissioner for the Bureau of Narcotics, (which is now the Drug Enforcement Agency,) was a man named Henry J. Anslinger, and he testified that cannabis had “a violent effect on the degenerate races.” This racial attack was aimed at Mexican immigrants who entered the country seeking work during the Great Depression. The American Medical Association (AMA) protested the law so Anslinger and his cronies lied to the public by stating they had supported it.
But there was more going on behind the scenes than just racially-based White hysteria when it came to cannabis. Before 1937 hemp was so common that marijuana still grows wild along American rail tracks, because so much of the crop was transported across the country. The U.S. Navy even used hemp rope on their ships. It took less water and less poisonous chemistry to grow hemp than it took to grow cotton or paper fiber, making hemp more environmentally-friendly.
But the lobby for cotton was wealthier and more powerful than those who organized at the grass-roots level for hemp production and use. In addition, DuPont Chemicals had invented a product based upon petroleum called Nylon, and hemp competed directly with their product. Our current troubles in Iraq are a prime example of how anything involving the oil industry can drive politics and destroy young lives.
The Civil Rights era of the 1960s and the expansion of individual freedom terrified the old White guard, who saw the “hippies” and the “niggers” poised to take over the country, which they could not countenance. In response, Richard Nixon launched what we currently call the “war on drugs.” In reality this was just an extension of the racist policies began in 1875, and one of its strongest supporters was Strom Thurmond, the infamous racist Senator who ruled Washington politics for decades.
Today the federal government is waging a separate war against medical marijuana despite the growing body of evidence that shows multiple benefits from cannabis. An extensive May 2003 article in The Lancet; Neurology – a prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal in England – identified the presence of cannabinoid receptors around nerve ends, and that there are more of these receptors than there are opiate receptors in the same areas. This discovery answered the question that had been plaguing medical scientists: Why does medical cannabis treat nerve pain more effectively (and with fewer side-effects) than opiate-based drugs?
This same article stated that medical marijuana has a protective effect regarding nerve endings, and therefore may help protect the body from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and even stroke. More recent studies this year have shown that smoking marijuana does not damage the respiratory system, as cigarettes do, and that medical cannabis may even have a protective effect on the bronchia and lungs.
It has been shown in numerous medical studies that cannabis calms the stomach and increases appetite – two essential factors in helping a Person With HIV/AIDS (PWA) tolerate antiviral therapy and maintain a healthy weight. Much of the medical basis for the use of marijuana comes from the fight against AIDS, and the gay community has been at the forefront of the medical marijuana movement.
But we know from twenty-six years of Republican-driven politics the federal government has little compassion for gays and lesbians, and even less for people with HIV and AIDS. Jerry Falwell is still spouting the same virulent homophobic rhetoric he put forth at the beginning of the epidemic, and in the world of Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly he has found a new group of ignorant, hate-filled people willing to listen to his bigoted ranting. Every person with HIV is just another “diseased fag” to such people, who seem to have the ear of our current political leaders and the endorsement of Radical Right media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, the racist and violently homophobic owner of Fox Media.
There is an ongoing boycott of Fox News.
We have fought for everything a PWA in America has access to today, and we need to fight for the right of all Americans to access and use medical marijuana. This includes people with Cancer undergoing chemotherapy and people like Julie Falco, a member of Illinois Drug Education and Legislative (IDEAL) Reform who has been living with multiple sclerosis for 20 years. Ms. Falco drives to Springfield in spite of the terrific pain she lives with to fight for the rights of all medical marijuana patients in her home state.
Rich Drug Users and Poor Drug Users:
Pity poor Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-show host who argued in 1995 that all drug abusers should be prosecuted and imprisoned. “We have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.”
But Rush softened his stance after he was accused of purchasing thousands of pain-killers from his maid in 2003. In July of this year Rush was stopped at customs for trying to reenter the country with a bottle of Viagra that had no label or prescription.
And what penalty did Rush suffer for trying to buy 1,733 Hydrocodone pills, 90 OxyContin pills, 50 Xanax tabs and 40 time-release morphine pills?
18 months of drug treatment. Upon completion of this program there will be no criminal mark on his record. He will not have his right to vote taken from him. He will never serve a day in jail. “It should be recognized that people like Rush should be helped, not prosecuted,” his attorney, Roy Black stated. That’s swell for Rush.
It’s also public knowledge that George W. Bush abused cocaine and alcohol, and he has no criminal record, has served no time in jail or prison for his drug abuse. Instead he was given the presidency by the Supreme Court.
But what about the nearly two million ordinary Americans caught using street drugs? They get a free pass and drug treatment, too. Right?
Wrong. In Colorado, for example, there are 4,000 inmates in prison for non-violent drug offenses. The U.S. has locked up more than two million Americans, most for non-violent drug offenses. The so-called “war on drugs” has created a prison-industrial juggernaut and has been used to deny the vote to hundreds of thousands of people.
But while we have been throwing poor people into our prison system for using crack cocaine and other street drugs, we have been ignoring the new drug epidemic involving prescription medications. Rush Limbaugh is on the cutting edge as it turns out. According to a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs sent more people to the emergency room in 2005 than cocaine. But because these drugs also have legitimate legal uses there is not the same rallying cry to throw abusers into a prison cell.
“We Can’t Dance:”
But there is another way the “war on drugs” is targeting the gay community. “The Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act,” also known as “The RAVE Act,” introduced by Sen. Joseph Biden, (D-Delaware,) goes after club promoters and owners for drug use that may take place at their businesses. This law does not go after drug users themselves or even drug dealers. If there’s any drug use at these clubs owners can be fined up to $25,000 per customer. Even though the final wording watered-down this badly written overly broad piece of legislation, it’s enough to put a club owner out of business for things totally beyond their control. The broad use of the word “Rave” could be used to describe gay clubs and circuit parties – anyplace we go to have a little fun and dance with each other. This anti-youth, anti-gay and anti-club piece of legislation even refers to bottled water and glow sticks as “drug paraphernalia.”
It makes me wonder if Sen. Biden is going go after Walt Disney World as both bottled water and glow sticks are sold in their parks every day.
But the RAVE Act is not the only anti-club legislation being pushed through Washington. The CLEAN-UP Act, (Clean, Learn, Educate, Abolish, Neutralize and Undermine Production of Methamphetamines,) further criminalizes club owners and concert promoters for the actions of people who attend their events. These two acts are so vague they can apply to almost any club or concert, anyplace we may gather to dance and meet.
The history of America is fraught with examples of homophobic law enforcement agencies perverting laws to go after places where gays and lesbians gather, and this expansion of the drug war allows greater discrimination and targeting of our social clubs, and by extension, us as a group. One or two high patrons would be enough to levy fines that could put a club or bar owner out of business.
The Future of Drug Policy and the GLBT Community:
It’s no secret that Crystal is a huge problem in our community, and the world at large. When my partner and I were in New Zealand in April of this year we found the country refreshing and wonderfully different, until the subject of Crystal came up. There is no place in the world not being impacted by Crystal, and we know that its use is another epidemic sweeping through our community. The brain damage done by Crystal is also pushing suicide rates among gay men.
But that does not mean we want our brothers and sisters treated like violent criminals and thrown into our massive prison-industrial complex. We also don’t want a few Crystal users to be the catalyst for shutting down our bars and clubs. We know how to help the members of our community with this problem and we don’t need law enforcement throwing us into prison and destroying our meeting places.
This so-called “drug war” is our war, or more importantly, it’s yet another war on us. We know from experience our enemies will use any and every law and excuse to shut us down and destroy our community. The legislative juggernaut that started in 1875 has become a hydra with too many heads to count, much less decapitate. It will take a major policy shift to stop this monster they call the “war on drugs.”
The GLBT Community has been the driving force behind policy changes in the United States. Prohibition does not work and we know this from our country’s history. It’s past time for our community to step up and initiate yet another policy change for the better. When our leaders speak, their words have the power to change hearts and minds, such is our effectiveness as political and social activists. We need to unify with other groups trying to stop the damage done by this collective insanity in our political landscape and bring about positive change.
by Phillip T. Alden
(for "The Guide")
July 1, 2006
Introduction:
Drug Prohibition throughout the 20th century is defined by a litany of legislation designed to discriminate against people of color and protect specific industries. Therefore, the fight against abusive drugs laws is also a civil rights struggle, historically and currently.
The so-called “war on drugs” has in reality been a war of violence visited upon people of color and the poor by the White power structure – fearful of equal rights granted to Black, Asian and Hispanic Americans.
This “drug war” has also been waged against users of medical marijuana, many of whom are people living with HIV/AIDS. The GLBT Community has been at the forefront of the medical marijuana movement and our work has spurred the science that has demonstrated the validity of marijuana as medicine.
And this war is an economic discriminator as well as a racial one. From sentencing laws that impose harsher penalties on crack than on powdered cocaine, to the divide between street drugs and pharmaceutical drugs, there is one thing that stands out – the wealthy get off and the poor go to prison. The hypocrisy is staggering.
And we are also being targeted through our main social outlet – dance clubs. Recent legislation, poorly thought out and badly written, has been designed to shut down the places where we congregate and socialize.
Our community is plagued by a new wave of destruction known as Crystal, and while we want our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to see the harm Crystal is doing we have no desire to see them thrown into the brutal and violent prison-industrial complex.
And when it comes down to it, we have no desire to see anyone thrown into prison for doing what they want with their own bodies if they’re not harming anyone else. Our history has always been about personal freedom, whether it be sexual or drug-related. When did it become okay in America to tell people what they can and cannot do with their person? When did we abandon our basic rights and freedoms?
The History of Prohibition, Race and Violence:
The first drug law in our modern age was a prohibition against the smoking of opium in opium dens in 1875 – a method favored by Chinese railroad workers. The movement for the law was a panic based on the fear that White women would be seduced into having sex with Chinese men under the influence of the drug. Laudanum, the liquid form of opium favored by Whites, was left untouched. The law was based on the method ingestion, not the drug itself.
Then cocaine was targeted as part of a fear campaign against black men, with headlines like “Cocainized Niggers” and “Negro Cocaine Fiends” intent on whipping up hysteria with fears of White women (once again) being raped by drug-addled black men. Police used this hysteria as an excuse to switch from .32 caliber pistols to .38 caliber guns, using reasoning that stated a .32 caliber bullet was inadequate for killing a black man high on cocaine.
Not “stopping” a black man, “killing” him.
This same line of reasoning has been updated, with police departments claiming a need for automatic weapons and armor piercing rounds, escalating an arms war on American streets. Some law enforcement officials claimed that drug distributors were out-gunning them, but it has been shown it was the police who escalated first – with the opposition playing catch-up.
The drug war has been built upon lies told by politicians and law enforcement officials to muddy the waters and justify their war against people of color. Today we see a continuation of these lies, with the federal government stating in 2006 there was no medical basis for the use of marijuana, when a government-commissioned study by the Institute Of Medicine (IOM) has shown clear relief from nerve pain using medical cannabis.
The disastrous effects of the American prohibition against alcohol, causing the rise of organized crime in the United States in the 1930s, has been well-documented. The alcohol prohibition did not last but we still have organized crime to this day. The hard truth is the so-called “war on drugs” has caused more violence and death than it has prevented.
Medical Marijuana, AIDS and the Federal Government:
In 1937 the federal government passed the Marijuana Tax Act, the first in a series of anti-marijuana laws based on “Reefer Madness” hysteria. The Commissioner for the Bureau of Narcotics, (which is now the Drug Enforcement Agency,) was a man named Henry J. Anslinger, and he testified that cannabis had “a violent effect on the degenerate races.” This racial attack was aimed at Mexican immigrants who entered the country seeking work during the Great Depression. The American Medical Association (AMA) protested the law so Anslinger and his cronies lied to the public by stating they had supported it.
But there was more going on behind the scenes than just racially-based White hysteria when it came to cannabis. Before 1937 hemp was so common that marijuana still grows wild along American rail tracks, because so much of the crop was transported across the country. The U.S. Navy even used hemp rope on their ships. It took less water and less poisonous chemistry to grow hemp than it took to grow cotton or paper fiber, making hemp more environmentally-friendly.
But the lobby for cotton was wealthier and more powerful than those who organized at the grass-roots level for hemp production and use. In addition, DuPont Chemicals had invented a product based upon petroleum called Nylon, and hemp competed directly with their product. Our current troubles in Iraq are a prime example of how anything involving the oil industry can drive politics and destroy young lives.
The Civil Rights era of the 1960s and the expansion of individual freedom terrified the old White guard, who saw the “hippies” and the “niggers” poised to take over the country, which they could not countenance. In response, Richard Nixon launched what we currently call the “war on drugs.” In reality this was just an extension of the racist policies began in 1875, and one of its strongest supporters was Strom Thurmond, the infamous racist Senator who ruled Washington politics for decades.
Today the federal government is waging a separate war against medical marijuana despite the growing body of evidence that shows multiple benefits from cannabis. An extensive May 2003 article in The Lancet; Neurology – a prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal in England – identified the presence of cannabinoid receptors around nerve ends, and that there are more of these receptors than there are opiate receptors in the same areas. This discovery answered the question that had been plaguing medical scientists: Why does medical cannabis treat nerve pain more effectively (and with fewer side-effects) than opiate-based drugs?
This same article stated that medical marijuana has a protective effect regarding nerve endings, and therefore may help protect the body from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and even stroke. More recent studies this year have shown that smoking marijuana does not damage the respiratory system, as cigarettes do, and that medical cannabis may even have a protective effect on the bronchia and lungs.
It has been shown in numerous medical studies that cannabis calms the stomach and increases appetite – two essential factors in helping a Person With HIV/AIDS (PWA) tolerate antiviral therapy and maintain a healthy weight. Much of the medical basis for the use of marijuana comes from the fight against AIDS, and the gay community has been at the forefront of the medical marijuana movement.
But we know from twenty-six years of Republican-driven politics the federal government has little compassion for gays and lesbians, and even less for people with HIV and AIDS. Jerry Falwell is still spouting the same virulent homophobic rhetoric he put forth at the beginning of the epidemic, and in the world of Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly he has found a new group of ignorant, hate-filled people willing to listen to his bigoted ranting. Every person with HIV is just another “diseased fag” to such people, who seem to have the ear of our current political leaders and the endorsement of Radical Right media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, the racist and violently homophobic owner of Fox Media.
There is an ongoing boycott of Fox News.
We have fought for everything a PWA in America has access to today, and we need to fight for the right of all Americans to access and use medical marijuana. This includes people with Cancer undergoing chemotherapy and people like Julie Falco, a member of Illinois Drug Education and Legislative (IDEAL) Reform who has been living with multiple sclerosis for 20 years. Ms. Falco drives to Springfield in spite of the terrific pain she lives with to fight for the rights of all medical marijuana patients in her home state.
Rich Drug Users and Poor Drug Users:
Pity poor Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-show host who argued in 1995 that all drug abusers should be prosecuted and imprisoned. “We have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.”
But Rush softened his stance after he was accused of purchasing thousands of pain-killers from his maid in 2003. In July of this year Rush was stopped at customs for trying to reenter the country with a bottle of Viagra that had no label or prescription.
And what penalty did Rush suffer for trying to buy 1,733 Hydrocodone pills, 90 OxyContin pills, 50 Xanax tabs and 40 time-release morphine pills?
18 months of drug treatment. Upon completion of this program there will be no criminal mark on his record. He will not have his right to vote taken from him. He will never serve a day in jail. “It should be recognized that people like Rush should be helped, not prosecuted,” his attorney, Roy Black stated. That’s swell for Rush.
It’s also public knowledge that George W. Bush abused cocaine and alcohol, and he has no criminal record, has served no time in jail or prison for his drug abuse. Instead he was given the presidency by the Supreme Court.
But what about the nearly two million ordinary Americans caught using street drugs? They get a free pass and drug treatment, too. Right?
Wrong. In Colorado, for example, there are 4,000 inmates in prison for non-violent drug offenses. The U.S. has locked up more than two million Americans, most for non-violent drug offenses. The so-called “war on drugs” has created a prison-industrial juggernaut and has been used to deny the vote to hundreds of thousands of people.
But while we have been throwing poor people into our prison system for using crack cocaine and other street drugs, we have been ignoring the new drug epidemic involving prescription medications. Rush Limbaugh is on the cutting edge as it turns out. According to a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs sent more people to the emergency room in 2005 than cocaine. But because these drugs also have legitimate legal uses there is not the same rallying cry to throw abusers into a prison cell.
“We Can’t Dance:”
But there is another way the “war on drugs” is targeting the gay community. “The Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act,” also known as “The RAVE Act,” introduced by Sen. Joseph Biden, (D-Delaware,) goes after club promoters and owners for drug use that may take place at their businesses. This law does not go after drug users themselves or even drug dealers. If there’s any drug use at these clubs owners can be fined up to $25,000 per customer. Even though the final wording watered-down this badly written overly broad piece of legislation, it’s enough to put a club owner out of business for things totally beyond their control. The broad use of the word “Rave” could be used to describe gay clubs and circuit parties – anyplace we go to have a little fun and dance with each other. This anti-youth, anti-gay and anti-club piece of legislation even refers to bottled water and glow sticks as “drug paraphernalia.”
It makes me wonder if Sen. Biden is going go after Walt Disney World as both bottled water and glow sticks are sold in their parks every day.
But the RAVE Act is not the only anti-club legislation being pushed through Washington. The CLEAN-UP Act, (Clean, Learn, Educate, Abolish, Neutralize and Undermine Production of Methamphetamines,) further criminalizes club owners and concert promoters for the actions of people who attend their events. These two acts are so vague they can apply to almost any club or concert, anyplace we may gather to dance and meet.
The history of America is fraught with examples of homophobic law enforcement agencies perverting laws to go after places where gays and lesbians gather, and this expansion of the drug war allows greater discrimination and targeting of our social clubs, and by extension, us as a group. One or two high patrons would be enough to levy fines that could put a club or bar owner out of business.
The Future of Drug Policy and the GLBT Community:
It’s no secret that Crystal is a huge problem in our community, and the world at large. When my partner and I were in New Zealand in April of this year we found the country refreshing and wonderfully different, until the subject of Crystal came up. There is no place in the world not being impacted by Crystal, and we know that its use is another epidemic sweeping through our community. The brain damage done by Crystal is also pushing suicide rates among gay men.
But that does not mean we want our brothers and sisters treated like violent criminals and thrown into our massive prison-industrial complex. We also don’t want a few Crystal users to be the catalyst for shutting down our bars and clubs. We know how to help the members of our community with this problem and we don’t need law enforcement throwing us into prison and destroying our meeting places.
This so-called “drug war” is our war, or more importantly, it’s yet another war on us. We know from experience our enemies will use any and every law and excuse to shut us down and destroy our community. The legislative juggernaut that started in 1875 has become a hydra with too many heads to count, much less decapitate. It will take a major policy shift to stop this monster they call the “war on drugs.”
The GLBT Community has been the driving force behind policy changes in the United States. Prohibition does not work and we know this from our country’s history. It’s past time for our community to step up and initiate yet another policy change for the better. When our leaders speak, their words have the power to change hearts and minds, such is our effectiveness as political and social activists. We need to unify with other groups trying to stop the damage done by this collective insanity in our political landscape and bring about positive change.
# posted by Phillip T. Alden @ 11:12 AM 
