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The killing of an elderly Atlanta woman after she shot and wounded three undercover policemen during a nighttime drug raid just might end up shedding some much needed light on the sordid business that is drug law enforcement in these United States. What we're seeing so far is not exactly a shining endorsement of the Atlanta Police Department's REDDOG (Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia) drug squad or what looks to be the mindless search warrant machinery of the Fulton County courts. Just today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which deserves kudos for being all over this travesty, reported that the snitch on whose word the warrant was based now says he never bought drugs at Johnston's address, and the narcs involved in the raid asked him to lie about it after the fact.

Delaware Senator Joseph Biden Jr. wants to be President too. You may remember Joe Biden from the horrible RAVE Act he sponsored, which subjects business owners to federal prosecution if they fail to prevent drug use on the premises. Worse yet, Biden actually wrote the law that gives us a Drug Czar. Seriously. Al Gore invented the internet or whatever. Joe Biden invented ONDCP.

I wonder what he was thinking. Was Biden concerned that the drug war was all injury and no insults? If so, he certainly succeeded in making prohibition more annoying, what with the terrorism ads, the interference in local politics, the podcasts, the blog, Andrea Barthwell…the list goes on.

Either way, Biden can now take some credit for ONDCP’s numerous contributions to the drug war status quo, and should either be very proud or ashamed depending who you ask. It would be unfair not to mention that Joe Biden doesn’t like John Walters, who he says runs ONDCP "like an ivory tower." One might credit Biden with taking a stand for accountability, but you’d have to ignore the irony of his complaints that the "Drug Czar" position he created seems to lend itself to tyranny.

That drug war cheerleaders so often prove to have high political ambitions is probably no coincidence. From Harry Anslinger’s race-baiting demagoguery to Karen Tandy’s campaign against Tommy Chong (which swept her into the top office at DEA), drug war grandstanding is one way to get your name in the paper. Running for President is another.

Electioneering laws prevent us from opining on the merits (or lack thereof) of various presidential candidates. So I’ll just say this: if the 2008 presidential election comes down to a contest between Rudy Giuliani and Joe Biden, the prison industrial complex can’t lose.

(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)

 

Well...for those of us who came of age in the 60's (sorry, Dave, you're not included), the idea that, 40 years on, such a benign herb as marijuana would not only still be illegal, but causing more and more human pain and suffering through its prohibition, was unthinkable.