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Show "One Way to Skin a CAT" (Cocaine and Terrorism) by Skip Gregory Forum staff writer nothing stopped the marijuanna or the alcohol before that. Because prohibition creates The United States loses more than employment and business where lawful 1,600 lives annually through entrepreneurs are not permitted to operate, Columbia it essentially creates crime! deaths. Over the past few years, Consider the bootleggers of the 1920s. has had 50 judges murdered because they resisted drug lords. Is this the legacy we Before Congress turned the 1919 Clarence Darrow said that the constitution into a giant Bounty towel to want? worst thing about history is that it repeats dry up the nations alcohol, there was an After itself. If we do not learn from our history, outlandish number of drunks. we are doomed to repeat it. In the 20s and prohibition there were still as many drunks, 30s prohibition was not the answer to but they were less noticeable behind the alcohol abuse. Haifa century later, Bushs screaming headlines of gangland murders and political graft. War on Drugs is just as fruitless. Price is typically the barometer of store owner had been replaced by the supply vs demand. When supply is great ruthless bootlegger because of the massive price goes down. Since the street price of fortunes available to anyone who could of cocaine was about quench the countrys illegal thirst. We are $60,000 in 1980 and today it is about quick to recall the names of gangsters but $12,000, it is safe to assume that even with quicker to forget how the Kennedys gained the War on Drugs", imports of cocaine their fortune. It was the loss of e have soared. Nothing forceful is going to profits, not in the that the flow as of cocaine into the US, slaughter prohibition quashed stop just drug-relate- d Thelaw-abidingliquo- ur tax-fre- Drugs and Eggs and Grease remember when pot was a big deal. That was about the time that herpes was a big Do you remember a drug commercial deal. Well, crack and AIDS took care of all on television a couple of years ago? Wait a that.) Perhaps pot is similar to putting the minute, how could you possibly answer me? egg into the refrigerator so it can be used I keep forgetting that this is a newspaper later. Thats the effect on the brain. Now, and not a telephone (they look so much the drug is the grease. Pot is like that cold, alike). Anyway, this commercial started hard glob in the coffee can. out with someones hand holding an egg. Just to get away from this commercial This isyour brain (Presumptuous of for a while, I should probably comment on him, I thought.) Then, you see a frying pan. Bushs Drug War. A war on drugs, eh? Its a nice frying pan. I think it was one of Doesnt the President need to goto Congress k those types but I cant be sure. In to declare war on something? Or is that just the frying pan is sizzling grease. Im glad on countries? And why declare war on they showed sizzling grease because Ive drugs? Seems a bit severe to me. If Bush seen what cold bacon grease looks like. My were to eradicate drugs (unlikely, no, mother used to save it in an old coffee can impossible) then what would happen to all for some reason. I hope she didnt use it to of those people when they sobered up? Ill make gravy or anything like that. Maybe tell you what they would do. They would g that would explain that ask themselves how so many morons got meatloaf she makes. into office and how so many stupid drug So, heres this guy holding an egg thats policies came into being. The result? Mr. supposed to be my brain above this sizzling Bush would be out of a job! Dont be a fool, frying pan thats supposed to be... George. Keep the country blasted and keep Something. What was the frying pan your job. Wasnt the early eighties a period of increased drug use by those people over supposed to be? Whats the commercial about again? What does the first sentence eighteen? Well, how do you think Reagan of my column say? Lets see. Do you got elected twice? remember a drug... Thats it! Drugs, yes. I just dont understand. If I were the Now then, the guy says that the frying President (what a scary thought) I would pan (along with that disgusting grease) is encourage drug use from the age of eighteen drugs. Alright, then what? I think he on. That way I would win every election breaks open the egg (which is suppposed to because all those of voting age would be be my head) and the yolk and albumen (my addicted and wouldnt dare vote for someone brain and the slime its packed in) fall into who might take away their stash. Aradical the pan (which holds the grease which is so policy - yes. I even have an original ad gross) and starts to sizzle (the effects of the campaign to go along with the policy: Stop drugs, I guess). Now, how does this whole the reality, just say yes! commercial go? So, speaking of ad campaigns, what This is your brain." (Hand holding happened to our egg and grease commercial? So some dork takes my head and breaks it egg) This is drugs (Pan with hot grease) open. He then allows my brain to slither (Hand cracks egg and contents drop out and fall into a scalding pan of grease. into pan and begin to cook) Im supposed to trust this guy? He just Now, I dont know about you but if I sauteed my mind. It may have been a were aheavy, experienced drug user I would twisted mind but now its a steaming glob (I definitely be lookingfor ahigh as intense as would like to think of it as a delicacy). I having your brain in a firying pan. Maybe dont know about this whole deal. Im not thats why LSD is sometimes called fry. sure how I really feel about drugs. Im not Maybe having your brain in a pan of sizzling sure what to think. My mind is garbled and grease is a worthwhile experience. And haphazard. what about a more recent name for a drug: This is your brain." crack." Did that name come from this This is drugs." commercial? Could having your skull Crack, Plop. Sizzle. This isyour brain cracked open and letting your brain ooze on drugs." out be as intense as sex? Maybe! Who am I to judge? Ive only smoked pot. (Yeah, I Fine. HI take mine scrambled. by Roj Mangelson non-stic- awful-tastin- Page 6 Forum the streets. When prohibition was repealed in 1933, the criminal"elementshifted their d attention to other goods and of The services. smuggling is a history cyclical one. Hemingways descriptions of smuggling in the Caribbean during the 30s is identical to the marijuanna smuggling of the the 60s and the cocaine plague of the high-deman- 80s. Drug dealers are fundamentally businessmen driven underground by laws. Laws that have little effect except to raise our taxes, stack up bodies in the morgue, clog up the judicial docket and deny the economy revenues from advertising and taxes. No one mistakes drug dealers for your typical ma and pa grocery or laundromat. Unlike Exxon, their price wars leave blood And even Sears seems on the streets. civilized when we compare them to the chainsaw collection tactics of dealers. The point is that illegal business has no rights under law, so there are no ethics in their business practices. They are motivated only by profit. This is why it is soimportant that we learn from the 20s and 30s and . gain control of things with our brainsinstead of our brawn. The name The Extraditables" and CNNs reports from Columbia regularly conjure up scenes from The Untouchables. But if you recall, for all the blood and heroics, it was not Elliot Ness that stopped A1 Capone. It was syphilis. Of more than 11,000 drug suspects rounded up in Columbia, only one minor bookkeeper was caught. Is this a good return on our monies? Just as with the bootlegged alcohol, we are losing lives through impurities in the contraband. Cheap crack and even cheaper bausco is often poisoned by the ethylene or petrol used to manufacture them. The FDA could control this as they do with alcohol and pharmacueticals. In southern Italy heroin is normally sold in 10 percent concentration. In northern Italy it is sold as 50 percent. Many addicts die each year because there are no standards. Replacing penalties with control will do more than reduce murders, overdoses, poisonings, increase revenues and lower taxes, it removes some of the forbidden fruit" temptation. Holland is a testimony to this. They were one ofthe first countries to legalize marijuanna. Use dramatically increased for a couple of months afterward then plunged below the levels of illegal use. Treating each drug differently and selectively applying social and medical remedies rather than through criminal d penalties, the Dutch have crime under control. Very few of their youth die from drug abuse or AIDS, due to infected needles. Plus the monies raised through sales can be invested into drug education, rehabilitation and research to cure the problem, much as we are learning to do with alcoholism. While it would not hurt to maintain strict laws until other procedures are established, the $8 billion allocated by Bush for shooting smugglers out of the sky, could be better used in legalizing and establishing agencies to control drug use. drug-relate- September 26, 1989 Issue 2 |