Bush
Uses
Terror
War
to
Push
Drug
War
12/21/01
In remarks in Washington last Friday, President Bush explicitly linked foreign terrorism and domestic drug users as he vowed to return the war on drugs to "the center of our national agenda." At a ceremony celebrating the signing of the reauthorization bill for the Drug Free Communities Act, Bush told his audience drug users aid terrorists, who benefit from black market profits from the drug trade, he claimed. "If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America," Bush said. "Drug use threatens everything, everything that is best about our country," Bush told an audience that included newly-confirmed drug czar John Walters and 1200 members of the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), one of the primary beneficiaries of funds from the legislation. "It breaks the bond between parent and child. It turns productive citizens into addicts. It transforms schools into places of violence and chaos. It makes playgrounds into crime scenes. It supports gangs at home. And abroad, it's important for Americans to know that the trafficking of drugs finances the world of terror, sustaining terrorists," Bush said. Under the newly reauthorized Drug Free Communities Act, CADCA and other anti-drug activist organizations will see their annual appropriations increase from $50 million this year to $100 million by 2007. Such groups work on drug treatment and prevention, but have also been sometime soldiers in the drug war's rear-guard action against drug reformers. While saying he supported efforts for drug education and treatment, Bush also vowed a renewed commitment to the drug war. "We must aggressively enforce the laws against drugs in our communities and on our borders," he said. Sounding more like a preacher than a president, Bush also resorted to moral arguments to support his position. "Above all, we must reduce drug use for one great moral reason," he said. "Over time, drugs rob men, women, and children of their dignity, and of their character. When we fight drugs, we fight for the souls of our fellow Americans." In the immediate wake of the September 11 attacks, drug reformers expressed great concern about using the attacks to support their calls for an end to drug prohibition. But reformers have revisited that conclusion after watching drug warriors attempt to exploit the vague and tenuous links between Osama bin Laden and the drug trade. Common Sense for Drug Policy (http://www.csdp.org), a Washington, DC-based reform group has been most prominent in the counterattack. Since September 11, the organization has published full-page ads in political magazines such as the Nation, National Review, New Republic, the Progressive, Reason and the Weekly Standard, arguing that it is not the drug traffic but the huge profits engendered by prohibition that fuel political violence and terrorism. "Is the funding of terrorism another unintended consequence of drug prohibition?" asked one ad. "Could a regulated and controlled model for soft drugs similar to our approach with alcohol and for hard drugs similar to prescription drugs stop the flow of illegal drug profits? In so many ways, does the War on Drugs cause far more harm than good, both here and abroad?" A second ad, published this month, shows a photo of bin Laden on one side and an American flag on the other. Beneath the former, the caption reads "Enemy." Beneath the latter, the caption reads "Not the Enemy." The large-face text reads, "Now we're in a real war. Isn't it time to abandon the war on ourselves?" After listing various consequences of drug prohibition, the text concludes, "Experience teaches: Prohibition fails but liquor stores and pharmacies succeed in controlling soft and hard drugs." CSDP president Kevin Zeese had little patience for Bush's claim that drug users abet terrorism. "You mean where he called drug users traitors," Zeese snorted. "C'mon, it's not drug use that creates these huge black market profits, it's prohibition. The one sure way to end these huge profits is to end prohibition. Manufacturers of regulated drugs don't cause this problem. The problem is not drug use or the drug trade, it's prohibition," he said. As drug reformers fight for the hearts and minds of Americans and President Bush aims at their souls, the battle over defining the nature of the beast is underway.
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