International
Blackmail:
The
word
from
down
under
is...
BUSTED
--
US
State
Department
is
exposed
blackmailing
Australia
to
resist
reform
7/24/97
On Saturday, July 19, the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) published "The Real Drug War: Why the US Won't Let Australia Reform Its Drug Laws" by David Marr and Bernard Lagan. The title should have read: "HOW the US Won't Let Australia reform Its Drug Laws." The story's focus is a secret meeting between David Pennington, who has the job of investigating drug law reform for Victoria's Premier, and Robert Gelbard, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics Matters. Gelbard, who has been described by the Dallas Morning News as a "diplomatic Doberman" was "scathing" about the Swiss heroin trials, according to Pennington, and wanted to make sure that the Australian government would not go ahead with their own trials, as has been discussed. The "stick" that Gelbard attempted to use to force compliance with US wishes was the legal opium industry of Tasmania, which brings over $80 million per year into that state, and whose very existence rests on the whim of the International Narcotics Control Board (read: the US.) Not surprisingly, the Tasmanian government and their opium industry have been the most vehement Australian opponents of the proposed trials. It is worth noting that the aforementioned meeting took place in the office of Ron Cornish, Tasmania's Minister of Justice. The Herald reports that during the meeting, Gelbard "belittled the Swiss trials, and all such trials, saying they were doomed to failure." DRCNet would note that the Swiss trials have been reported as an unqualified success, and further we would ask why, if the experiments are "doomed to failure" -- and thus would affirm the US position -- would the Clinton administration be taking such dramatic diplomatic steps to stop them? It is difficult, if not impossible to believe that the US government is being truthful in its assessment of the potential effectiveness of heroin maintenance, or other rational strategies. This dishonesty infects its dealings both with the foreign governments it is attempting to coerce, and with the American citizens, to whom it owes an honest, good faith assessment of our policies and a strategy reflective of that process. The article can be found on the Sydney Morning Herald's web site at http://www.smh.com.au. Letters to the editor can be submitted via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters to your local paper regarding US attempts to bully foreign governments to ignore mounting evidence in favor of reform, should include the URL for this article, as the story apparently did not get picked up by American wire services.
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