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People who smoke marijuana are helping the terrorists?
Posted April 2, 2002 at the thepeoplesvoice.org

By the EDITOR

Bush says that people who smoke marijuana are helping the terrorists. Most Americans buy marijuana grown in the United States or imported from Mexico. No foreign nationals have ever been arrested for cultivating marijuana in the United States. There is not even a remote possibility that terrorists in the Middle East are supplying homegrown American marijuana. A connection between Mexican marijuana and terrorism is equally difficult to prove. Mexico's rebels are far to the south and receiving their fragmented aid from the the revolutionary groups of South America.

If Bush wants to start an American version of the 'great purge', he should persecute everybody equally. The U.S. continues to buy most of it's oil from Saudi Arabia and some oil from Iraq, both alleged supporters of terrorism according to the Bush administration. This would mean that Americans are contributing directly to terrorism whenever they buy gasoline, and according to Bush, should be arrested.

Somehow Bush has warped our American reality, focusing the blame for terrorism on pot smokers. Bush is spending 19 billion tax dollars each year on his so called drug war against the American people. Much of the money goes to arresting and incarcerating Americans for smoking pot. The tobacco, liquor, and drug companies spend millions in Washington each year lobbying to keep the draconian prohibition era drug laws in place.

As civilized countries move out of the darkness into the light, giving their people more freedom of choice, America moves backward toward repression and punishment. Marijuana has been decriminalized in most of the democratic countries of Europe, the Netherlands, and in Canada. Only the more extreme right wing governments continue their attacks on the personal liberties of their people.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, Marijuana Arrests and Incarceration in the United States have now reached more than 700,000 people each year, with an average of 42,500 people incarcerated on a continuous basis. The official estimate of this self-inflicted carnage is $1.2 billion dollars each year.

Abraham Lincoln had a strong opinion concerning the governments attempts to legislate our freedom; "Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

C.S Lewis also spoke out against attacks on our personal freedoms; "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

© 2001 thepeoplesvoice.org, subject to FAIR USE

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The American drug war may yet grind on, but one by one, the troops are hiking out. Right-wingers like Jesse Ventura, Gary Johnson, Dan Quayle, William F. Buckley, and George Schultz have all voiced support for either ending the costly campaign of interdiction and imprisonment, or at least decriminalizing pot.

Through the years, in statements little-noted or splashed onto front pages, they've aligned themselves with leaders around the world, all standing in unlikely opposition to the frat-boy chief commander in the White House. President Bush shows no sign of yielding, instead choosing to harden his stance. In May, announcing the appointment of a drug czar who makes John Ashcroft look like a hippie, Bush thundered, "John Walters and I believe the only humane and compassionate response to drug use is a moral refusal to accept it. We emphatically disagree with those who favor drug legalization."

According to the Federation of American Scientists, Marijuana arrests and Incarceration in the United States have now reached more than 700,000 people each year, more than the number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, with an average of 42,500 people incarcerated on a continuous basis. The official estimate of this self-inflicted carnage is $1.2 billion dollars each year.

Humane and compassionate?

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