Burma Out!! The Clintonistas on dr

[policy.office@xxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Burma Out!!  The Clintonistas on drugs

The USA : Very very Soft of hard drugs and private prisons?
Does Cinton have a neat pair of plastic nasal passages, 
or what?

Rr


http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/286/oped/From_New_Mexico_s_governor_rare_ca
ndor_on_drugsP.shtml

>From New Mexico's governor, rare candor on drugs 

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe Columnist, 10/13/99 

New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson drew back the drapes, opened the door, and
invited us to enter the safe suburban world of drugs. "I hate to say it,
but the majority of people who use drugs use them responsibly,'? Johnson
said last week at a drug policy conference in Washington. "They choose when
to do it. They do them at home. It's not a financial burden."

Johnson never referred to the suburbs, peopled mostly with middle-class and
wealthy white Americans. Nor did he invite an explosive comparison between
the ?burbs and inner cities of low-income African-Americans and Latinos.
All Johnson thought he was doing was calling for national drug legalization.

"For the amount of money we're putting into the war on drugs, I suggest
it's an absolute failure," Johnson said. "Make drugs a controlled substance
like alcohol. Legalize it, control it, regulate it, tax it. If you legalize
it, we might actually have a healthier society."

Johnson was reflexively attacked by the feckless leaders of the drug war.
Drug czar Barry McCaffrey said that Johnson "has done more damage in the
last few months than has been done in the last several years by drug
legalization forces."

Instead of scolding Johnson, we should appreciate his candor. Johnson told
the truth on America. In the inner city, we have declared drugs to be an
insidious tumor, so malignant that we have imprisoned tens of thousands of
nonviolent users. For the children of privilege, dope is a benign
indiscretion.

Drugs are a "curiosity," as multi-million dollar CBS News anchor Dan Rather
has explained about his use of "everything," including heroin. Drugs are,
as President Clinton and former US Representative Susan Molinari have said
about marijuana, an "experiment." If the Democrats keep the White House in
2000, we will have another president who has smoked dope. Both Bill Bradley
and Vice President Al Gore said they used marijuana as young adults. Gore
said, "it was looked at similar to the way moonshine was looked at during
Prohibition."

Reducing drug use to a high school chemistry experiment is fine for the
privileged and certainly no excuse, in their minds, to block them from the
highest offices in the land. Yet, the Gore-Clinton White House, Molinari's
vengeful Republicans, Bradley's cowering Democrats, and Rather's news
executives made drug use for low-income African-American and Latinos a
crime for the dungeons.

Though 76 percent of illegal drugs are consumed by white Americans, and 14
percent are consumed by African-Americans, nearly matching their share of
the US population, African-Americans make up 35 percent of the arrests, 55
percent of drug convictions, and 74 percent of all sentences for illegal
drugs.

Even though white Americans and African-Americans use illegal drugs
equally, African-American men went to jail for drugs at more than double
the rate of white American men from 1985-1995. The number of juveniles of
color jailed for drug offenses went up by 78 percent while the number of
white youth dropped 34 percent. African-American juvenile drug cases are
four times as likely to be transferred to adult court than white juvenile
drug cases.

Johnson, the 46-year-old triathlete said, "I was somebody who smoked
marijuana in college. I didn't experiment with marijuana, I smoked it. I
made a bad choice, but even then, it wasn't a choice that I felt should
have landed me in jail."

Yet no one seems to have the political will to reverse the politics that
land African-Americans and Latinos in jail for bad choices. The best
example is crack cocaine. In the late 1980s a hysterical Congress made made
crack possession such a deadly sin that a person with 5 grams of crack
received the same punishment as one who was nailed with 500 grams of powder
cocaine.

The Clinton-Gore administration, fearful of being seen as soft on crime,
has allowed the 100-to-1 crack-to-power ratio persist even though the
pharmacology of crack cocaine is little or no different from powder. Even
though the drug was stereotyped by politicians and the media as a black
inner-city drug, 65 percent of its users are actually white, according to
the US Sentencing Commission. But only 5 percent of those convicted for
crack offenses were white, while 93 percent of crack convictions were meted
out to African-Americans.

Johnson was right to keep legalization a topic for open debate. "We really
need to put all options on the table," he said. Of course, putting all
options on the table means an open discussion about the racism of the drug
war.

It may be debatable whether people can use pot, coke, and heroin
"responsibly." What is not debatable is who pays the consequences. The
suburbs smoke dope and snort coke behind fences, drapes, and doors at no
visible financial burden. Meanwhile, mothers in the inner city have to
scrimp for change to get on a bus to go see their sons and daughters who
were snatched off corners by the police and put in prison. For them, it is
no experiment. Curiosity killed the cat.

Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist.

This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 10/13/99.  © Copyright
1999 Globe Newspaper Company. 

Follow the plea by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and the appreciations 
of HH the Dalai Lama, the Shan Democratic Union,  film maker John 
Pilger, the Free Burma Coalition,  author Alan Clements, Dennis 
Skinner MP, Tony Benn MP, Ann Clwyd MP, Congress-woman  
Maxine Waters,  Socialist Workers' Party,  Dr and Welsh rugby  
star JPR Williams, Hendrix  bassist Noel Redding,  S African jazz 
pianist Abdullah Ibrahim,  All Burma Students Democratic Organisation, 
All Burma Students Democratic Front, Tasmanian Trades & Labour Council, Tim
Gopsill, editor. The.Journalist@xxxxxxxxxx, and numerous others.   

Supporting a Genuine war upon drugs and human rights abuse.
Sydney 2000 : Burma Out! 
http://www.mihra.org/2k/burma.htm

Music Industry Human Rights Association
http://www.mihra.org / policy.office@xxxxxxxxx 

Rachel and James http:www.mihra.org/2k/rachel.htm

Founded during UN50. Mihra's roots are in music and anti-racism and 
was first in line in calling for a sports boycott of Burma for the Sydney
2000 Olympic Games. Mihra also advances protection of creators rights 
in an anti-cultural market, currently 93.8% monopolised by the recording  
/ publishing Grand Cartel. 

Major solo work "Piece of Mind". With orchestra, Holland 69. same  
time as Beatles "Abbey Road".   http://onlinetv.com/rogerbunn.html
                          ========================