Editorial:
The
voices
of
reform
are
growing
louder...
whether
or
not
the
Drug
Warriors
want
to
hear
them
10/11/97
With each passing week, the voices of reform grow louder. This week, it is the voice of the American Medical Association, the voices of the president's own council on AIDS, the voice of an independent analyst in Australia, the voice of the Canadian Ambassador to Mexico, and perhaps most symbolic of all, the voice of 1997's Miss America, Kate Shindle. And yet, the powers that be seem determined to cover their ears in the hopes that the din will die down. They treat the voices like demons, urging them toward an incomprehensible doom. They have reason to fear the voices, for they portend the beginning of the end of a system which has both empowered and enriched its prosecutors for far too long. The voices also pose a more immediate problem for the Drug Warriors. It has become clear, over the past few years, that the warriors could no longer defend their policies on the merits. Instead, it was "the legalizers" who became the target of their wrath and fear-mongering. Ad homonym attacks took the place of substantive discussion of the issues. It was one of the surest signs that the end of their War was at hand. Last November, the people of Arizona and California voted to institute modest changes in their states' drug policies. Upon the success of these initiatives, the Warriors let loose with a torrent of invective, accusing all who had engineered these reforms of harboring dark, ulterior motives, and all who supported them as fools. Today a campaign rages in Washington State, to see if the voters there will accept essentially the same reforms as they did in Arizona. This time it is the funders who have come under attack. George Soros, who has resisted and survived the intolerance of both the Nazis and the Communists, has been called names and worse in both the op-ed pages of the New York Times and on the floor of congress. Other funders as well have had their names impugned. But these are nearly anonymous people, and the American public might well be convinced that they have neither the nation's nor the children's best interests at heart. But what to do now? How will the Warriors be able to convince Americans that the AMA, or the New England Journal of Medicine, or the AIDS advisory council, or the people of Switzerland, or Miss America, for goodness sake, are really interested in addicting children? How will they mock the integrity of the very pillars of the society that their War is supposed to be saving? The truth is, they can't. So for now, the Drug Warriors will do their best to ignore them. And from time to time they will pick out one name among the masses gathering at the gates and seek to demonize an entire movement by portraying that individual as somehow unworthy of being heard. But to do so requires a lot of cotton in the ears. Because the voices that are shouting now are coming from anywhere but the fringe. More and more they are the very voices of the mainstream. And they're getting awfully loud. Adam J. Smith
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