When you ride ALONE you ride with bin Laden | 1, 2, 3

Dope

COULD NEVER BE A POLITICIAN for many reasons; one of them is, I like to change my mind. Maybe it's just my feminine side crying to get out, but I do. And in politics you can't, which is so stupid, because it means voters encourage a candidate not to grow and think. If you're running for office and your position on any issue has changed the slightest bit since you were in grade school, then you're waffling, and you're forever after labeled a waffler. Even if it means ignoring new information coming to light, be consistent. God forbid you read an article when you got into junior high that gave you information that changed your mind. Changed your mind? In attack ads, you'd find out that's why you "'can't be trusted!"

The sad thing is, that shit works. The real axis of evil in America is the genius of our marketing and the gullibility of our people. It's a deadly hook-up when you can sell 'em anything, and the American people have been sold drug paranoia so long it's a tradition. Policies based on pure ignorance and fear, with detriment not just to those who get arrested, but to innocent people who never get back their seized property, to kids whose parents go away for smoking pot, to high-crime neighborhoods that go under-policed because the cops are both corrupted by the drug trade and busy chasing the dealers.

We laugh at Reefer Madness, like, "wow, how ridiculous people were about pot back then," but we don't deserve to laugh, because nothing has changed.

And why? Because it's an easy political sale. Accusing your opponent of being "soft on drugs" is money in the bank as far as attack ads go -- so why not go for it? You're running for office! You have no spine, you just want to be famous and are too ugly for show business! So even though you don't really believe we should be draconian on pot smoking, you'll say that just to stake out that issue in the attack ads. Except then, when you get elected on your stupid ideas, you have to try to turn them into laws. Otherwise, in the next election, the asshole you beat with your cynical attack ads will accuse you in his cynical attack ads of not following through on your campaign promise of the death penalty for anyone with a Bob Marley record.

Early in the twentieth century, starting with a false marketing campaign, Americans abandoned their previous policy of government non-interference in whatever people wanted to do to take the edge off, put the edge on, or get it up -- and we've been the worse for it ever since. There are real victims in this Drug War. Where's the Dateline frosty lens report on the "pot-smoking Daddy who never came home?!" There's some swing sets going un-pushed in the Drug War, too, if the 700,000 annual pot arrests mean anything.

But for a couple of weeks there, I had hope. After all, a new day had dawned, and everyone was in agreement that we' d just gotten our priorities slapped into shape like two weeks at Juvenile Boot Camp. Attorney General John Ashcroft said, "We cannot do everything we once did because lives now depend on us doing a few things very well."

Right on. Cool. Well said. The guy really gets it.

Except, of course, he doesn't, and didn't really mean it. Cut to February 12, 2002, the target date for the most specific FBI -issued terrorist warning since the 9/11 attacks. This was before the color-coded alert system, so it was somewhere between "Heads up" and "Danger, Will Robinson! " And where were our federal authorities? Well, at least some of them were kicking in the doors of California medical marijuana dispensaries for AIDS arid cancer patients. They didn't catch any actual hijackers, but they did nab a guy named Jack who was high.

On that same day, President Bush announced, "If you're buying illegal drugs in America, it is likely that the money is going to end up in the hands of terrorist organizations," echoing the television ad campaign that premiered two weeks earlier on the Super Bowl -- because those Super Bowl ads are real cheap, so what a good use of terrorist-fighting money!

It was all part of the administration's plan to piggyback their Drug War agenda onto the blank check of support they were receiving for the "other" war -- you know, the one everyone was really behind. In making political headway, "for the war" had become the new "for the children."

But in the same way our airport security suffers when we spend finite time and manpower pretending everyone is equally likely to blow up the plane, so does our defense suffer when we pretend the drug trade is the real piggy bank for crazy Arabs. It's one tiling for our American government to have abdicated the role of helping citizens make connections in time of war as we see they have. But it's even worse when the government purposefully misleads the public to the wrong connection. You actually do more to support Al Qaeda by driving when you go out to pickup your drugs! Hell, all of us can help by driving less but, unfortunately, not everyone has a smack habit to give up. (And among those who do, is "George Bush really wants you to!" going to be the thing that makes a junkie quit?)

No, the target of drugs as faux terrorist-connection #1 was chosen because it's politically perfect -- truly, a dream come true for any administration's top spinmeister, because it:

a) targets something -- drugs -- that has been successfully demonized, certified evil from decades of marketing.

b) asks absolutely nothing of 99.9% of the people because heroin is the only drug that really benefits terrorists, so when even a cracked hears "drugs fund terrorism," he can say "well he's not talking about me!" and:

c) it takes the heat off the oil companies, who make a hell of a lot more campaign contributions than drug dealers.

Which is not to say that contributions from more than a few drug dealers haven't slipped through over the years. They have, but then the candidate has to send the check back and pretend he really cares where the money comes from.

I promise you, he doesn't. Oil companies, car companies -- that's a big chunk of the economy, and a lot of contributions. Not to mention that we Americans love our Lincoln Navigators, so that leaves the druggies to take the heat on sacrificing for the war... at least until we can find a way to blame it on the smokers.

Oh, by the way, if you're looking for an actual connection between drugs and terrorism, there is one, but it's a little Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. You see, the religiously conservative Taliban forbade involvement in the heroin or opium trade. It's the Northern Alliance -- you know, our allies -- who cultivate and deal in the substances that find their way to America under such colorful names as China White and Tango & Cash. But hey, ally, enemy -- minor point when you've got the evil of drugs working for you in the ad campaign.

Just as long as we all know: the President should conceivably be calling on Americans to support our allies by increasing their heroin use. Where's the ad that says, "Hey America, why not switch from that skunky-tasting import beer... to smack?"

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