Conservative Economist Assails
Prohibition’s Damage to the Rule of Law
(Marijuananews note: Paul Craig Roberts is a
widely respected libertarian/conservative whose columns have appeared in Newsweek and many
newspapers. Many other libertarians and conservatives have criticized the drug war on
general prinicples, but Roberts has shown an understanding of the unpleasant details. A
few years ago he even wrote an astonishing column talking about Clinton’s involvement
in the Mena, Arkansas cocaine-for-guns operation. That is a taboo topic in DC. In this
column, Roberts describes the abuses of forfeiture and notes the institutional corruption
that it has spawned.) December 2, 1999
From The Naples Daily News
letters@namplesnews.com
http://www.naplesnews.com/
By Paul Craig Roberts, Creators Syndicate
YOU CAN COUNT THE LAW AMONG DRUG WAR CASUALTIES
Sometimes force doesn't work. Two discouraging reports at the end of
November indicate that force is not working in the war against drugs.
U.S. law-enforcement agencies report dramatic increases in drug production in Colombia and
Mexico, rising marijuana use among U.S. teen-agers, and a large increase in the quantity
of drugs arriving in the United States.
See
DEAland Cocaine
Imports May Be 3 Times Previous Estimates:
All That Anyone Can Learn From DEAland "Drug Statistics"
Is That No One Knows Anything. -- 2 Articles
This is despite draconian penalties for drug possession in the United States and the use
of U.S. forces in destroying drug-production fields and facilities in Colombia.
Violence has proliferated. In Mexico, two mass graves have just been discovered near
Ciudad Juarez, headquarters of one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels. According to
the Mexican attorney general, the remains of 22 missing U.S. citizens are believed to be
among the100 or more bodies.
Like the war against alcohol during the Prohibition Era, the war against drugs has created
a powerful and rich criminal class, with the ability to intimidate and bribe
law-enforcement and government officials in Mexico, Columbia and the United States.
In Columbia, drug lords control vast areas of the country.
In Mexico, not only the police but also the army and agents of the attorney general are
accused of protecting drug traffickers and even helping their paymasters to eliminate
rivals.
In the United States, the corruption of law has taken a far worse
turn. Like Mexico, America suffers from the routine corruption of law-enforcement
officials by drug money, but the greatest toll has been taken on the law itself.
Humiliated and frustrated by drug war defeats, the U.S. government has adopted drastic
measures that have stripped away the protective functions of law.
Asset-forfeiture laws that were supposed to corral the profits of
drug traffickers are instead used widely against innocent citizens. Not even the chairman
of the House Judiciary Committee can get legislation passed to stop the routine abuses of
asset forfeiture.
See
The Rule of Lawlessness:
Police Brazenness In The Kubby Case.
The Fourth And Fifth Amendments, Or Forfeiture and Thievery. The Choice Is Ours.
and
Forfeiture as
Enterprise By Kay Lee
and
Forfeiture
Abuses At the State Level Will Continue.
The War On Marijuana Users Has A Strong Financial Incentive –
Clinton’s Home Town Newspaper On His State’s Laws:
"First came the question: Do you believe in the president’s war on
drugs?"
and links
In the name of fighting drugs, there are now massive invasions of privacy. Recently, we
barely escaped regulations that would have required financial institutions to report every
cash deposit and withdrawal by every customer.
See
Online ‘Lobbying’ Killed A
Banking Regulation; Is This The Political Future?
A Brilliant Column By Alan Bock
"After the Internet, democracy will never be the same."
Everyone who needed a few hundred dollars cash could have expected police to show up
and confiscate it on the "probable cause" that it was intended for drug
transactions.
Consider the case of Richard Lowe, MD., a doctor in the small Alabama town of Haleyville.
Scarred as a youngster by the impact of bank failure on his family, he hoarded cash over
the course of his life. In 1990, when he consolidated his assets in a charitable account
for a small private school in his hometown, his wife prevailed on him to include his cash
hoard in the school's account.
In the United States today, law-enforcement officials automatically infer criminal
behavior from the presence of cash. Even $100 in cash is sufficient for police to presume
an intent to buy or sell drugs. When Lowe's cash was counted, it totaled $316,911.
Lowe's entire account was seized. The bank president was indicted for accepting the
deposit and forced to make a guilty plea to a trumped-up charge in order to save his son,
a bank employee, from a similar indictment.
Lowe spent six years of his old age fighting the seizure of his assets before the 11th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared him and ordered the return of his money.
When the war on drugs destroys an honest old man's life simply because he wanted to give a
large sum to a private school, the war on drugs has gone too far.
The war on drugs is even a greater failure than Prohibition. Hardened criminals are
"crowded out" of prisons by early release orders in order to warehouse drug
users caught with small amounts in their possession and people framed by stings and false
testimony.
The large increase in the prison population is entirely drug related. But the war has
not snared the kingpins or major traffickers, just small-time pushers and hapless users.
The battle against drugs must be fought with persuasion, just like the battle against
tobacco. Drugs must be legalized, not so they can corrupt our
children, but in order to prevent the war against drugs from destroying out property
rights, our privacy and the protective function of law.
(Marijuananews note: For more on forfeiture see www.fear.org
Copyright: 1999 Naples Daily News.
Supported