There is a lot to learn from today’s articles about the nature of the struggle in which we are engaged and the way we can -- and will -- prevail. I have deliberately grouped these items to demonstrate how we can use the Internet to combat prohibitionist propaganda.

Living in the belly of the beast, Americans tend to forget that prohibitionism is an international ideology. In fact, prohibitionism --like Leninism, which it resembles in many ways -- is necessarily global in its ambition.

Freedom must be eliminated everywhere, because its success anywhere proves that there is an alternative to the collectivist model in which "freedom" is redefined to mean adherence to the policies of the therapeutic police state.

Led by some brilliant academics and honest police, Australia and New Zealand are moving away from the prohibitionist trap, but there is a counterattack underway that is remarkably like that mounted in DEAland in the 1970s.

Of course, the counterattack's primary focus is marijuana, not hard drugs. It even features the same bizarre claims, presented – of course – as "the latest research." Its primary vector is the usual bad journalism. It also features the standard semantic shell game, the muddling of the meaning term "drugs" -- alternatively meaning marijuana, and then everything else except alcohol, and then alcohol and "drugs," so that it is as difficult to follow the subject as the pea under the shells.

I am confident that our anti-podian anti-prohibitionist friends are more than capable of taking care of themselves. They have done some excellent work. In fact, it took the Aussies to do the most damning exposure of Dr. Gabriel Nahas, which should have been done in North America or Europe long before.
See
The human toxicity of marijuana: a critique of a review by Nahas and Latour BY MCDONALD J. CHRISTIE & GREGORY B. CHESHER Department of Pharmacology, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia    Abstract

Nonetheless, I think that it is fortunate that they have the Internet as a tool, so they can quickly demonstrate the catch the prohibitionists in their lies and the absurdity of the really extreme reefer madness that drives this movement.

For example, while the Australian prohibitionist are citing Sweden as their model, the Internet makes available a study of Swedish policies by Dutch academics that says that, "Claims regarding the effectiveness of the Swedish drug policy cannot be proven."

But don’t take the word of the Dutch. Just last week, the Queen of Sweden, a prohibitionist, -- and if she weren’t she would have to keep very quiet about it – announced that "Since 1989, the number of students in the 9^th grade in Stockholm, who tried narcotic drugs, doubled." This statement came from a prohibitionist web site. The prohibitionists want to use the Internet, of course, but it actally makes it more difficult for them to keep their lies straight. 

However, if the gutless politicians and the sensationalist media combine in a hate campaign to frighten the people, it will make breaking free from prohibitionism much more difficult.

If we can be of help to our friends Down-under, it is because  of our experience in DEAland. The same thing that is happening to them now, happened to us twenty years ago, just as we thought that freedom was in our reach. Then as now, there is no lie that the prohibitionist will not tell, but this time we have the Internet. Never again.