COLUMN: The Drug War in a Different Light

have to monitor those in power and use their own judgement to make personal decisions about things like drug use. Kids, your aunt Holly has heard some good war stories over the years -- some first-hand and some passed along in magazines and newspapers. I can't guarantee they're all 100% factual, but I can guarantee that they're 100% possible: what matters is they could happen. Mike and Sally were good parents. They both worked long hours, and they had to put their daughter Emily in day care more than they wished to, but they were saving for college. One day D.A.R.E came to Emily's school. They frightened the kids with imaginative tales of drug-use horror, and they told them to report users immediately, for their own good. Emily came forward. She was an observant kid, and she had seen the plants in the basement. She was worried about her parents. She told. Now Mike and Sally are in jail, and Emily is in a foster home. It's too bad all their assets were confiscated; I hope the foster parents have started a college fund. Bobby was a good student. He lived in a fraternity house, and he liked his brothers and lived by their rules. One day, the FBI and the DEA came to town. Agents posed as students and dealers, and it ended with a very big bust the epicenter of which was Bobby's fraternity. Bobby was an occasional pot smoker, but he had cut back in the past semester to concentrate on schoolwork. He was netted with the rest, and, rather than name a friend and brother, he went to the federal pen for two years. His life isn't quite ruined. He can't vote in national elections anymore, and grad schools aren't exactly fighting over him. Last time I spoke to him, he said, "Silly me, I thought Joe McCarthy was dead." Jane was a good reporter, and she was onto Something Big. But Something Big was onto Jane. She was coming back from overseas when she was stopped in customs. She told them she was framed; where would she get an ounce of uncut cocaine? Mr. Big chuckled as he dropped her dossier into the wastepaper basket. "Thank God for drug laws," he said to his associate. Sam had always wanted to try cocaine. He knew it was dangerous, but he figured, hell, so's driving in rush hour. He asked around, and finally managed to meet a dealer. He didn't like the guy's looks, but what do you expect? He knew something went wrong when he woke up in the hospital. The doctor told him the cocaine had been cut with rat poison, and he was lucky to be alive. "The drugs aren't so damn bad," said the doctor under his breath, "It's the crap they cut it with to make a bigger buck." Sam agreed. If only there were some way to regulate it. Joe is a prison warden. His job has gotten bigger in the past ten years; the number of prisoners has doubled. He shrugs when he tells his wife how kids who come in on mandatory sentences for pot come out hard-core smack fiends. His wife does the taxes and wonders where all the money goes. Kids, you'll hear a lot of stories about how bad drugs are. And maybe they are. But I say nothing is worse than a government gone sour. You can tell a sour one from a mile away. It's full of unconstructive laws, silly laws that turn children into spies and good citizens into criminals. It's full of policemen banging on doors, and the people inside can't send them away. Don't get me wrong: the police have their place in a good society. They protect us from each other. That's their job -- to keep me from hurting you, and keep you from hurting me. But every so often they get it into their heads (and believe you me it doesn't get there by accident) that their job is to protect us from ourselves, to enforce the government's wish to make decisions for us. And that can be nice in a way. It makes us feel safe because we don't have to be responsible. But it means we lose the right to think for ourselves, to look with an objective eye at the world around us, and say, "Yes, that's for me", or "No, I want no part of it." That's what freedom is, that's what liberty is, and that's what this country is about. A wise man once said that the price of liberty is constant vigilance. Luckily for us, he happened to be the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. And he wasn't talking about "enemies foreign and domestic", big scary folks with guns and funny accents. He wasn't talking about the Russkies or the Japs or the Mexicans, or those White Power boneheads or Malcolm X. He was talking about the government, about keeping both eyes peeled on whoever is in power, because that's where the real threat comes from. So watch out for drug dealers. And realize that there are more drugs out there than pot and crack. There's hate and fear, propaganda, paranoia, greed, ambition, and power. Take a good look at what they're selling greed, ambition, and power. Take a good look at what they're selling you, and do the research on your own. Have the faith in your own judgment that the government isn't willing to grant you, and if you see that what they're selling is a load of crap, you know what to do. Just say no.