[534] in libertarians
Re: Editor of NYTimes-Call it War
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Derek Rose)
Sat Dec 24 12:37:11 1994
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 1994 12:33:42 -0500
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
From: rosed@world.std.com (Derek Rose)
X-Mailed-From: InterNews 1.0.1@brilliance.tiac.net
Executive Editor of NY Times calls for drug legalization!
In article <1994Dec23.124404.81246@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>
green@falcon.cc.ukans.edu (Red Green) writes:
> Max Frankel, Executive Editor of the NY Times
> New York Times Magazine
> December 18, 1994
>
> O.K., Call it War
>
> I used to hate hearing about the "war" against drugs, and as executive
> editor tried to discourage that metaphor in The Times. But the politicians
> won the battle of the cliche even as they were losing the war. The "war"
> term appeared in this newspaper only 16 times in all of 1981, but 66 times
> in 1987 and 511 times in 1989 after President Bush promised at his
> inaugural "Tale my word for it, this scourge will stop." Well, it didn't
> and we are down to about 100 mentions on each of the Clinton years, a mere
> twice a week. And now I'm sorry, for it's time the media began to cover
> the war on drugs as a war-the way they covered the last war that America
> Lost.
> The better newspapers are portraying the drug quagmire the way they once
> portrayed the quagmire in Viet Nam. Dispatches from the front find cops
> risking life and limb to drag users and dealers, but just as many stalk
> the streets the next night. The brass that's bragging about progress and
> calling for still more troops, weapons, prisons, and money must be
> smoking something.
> If the newspapers, magazines and TV networks would agree that the's a was
> on, maybe they would report a monthly "bag count"- the number of
> kilo-size packs of cocaine or heroin seized by t Federal, state, and
> local raiders in urban hideaways, remote marinas and canine stomachs.
> They could point out that the bag count, much like the Vietnam body
> count, is a meaningless index of progress in the was; no matter how
> impressive the seizure, the flow of the bags in the underground drug
> channels continues relentlessly.
> The press has been too generous with pictures of porcesutors and
> politicians posing with the mounds of heroin and cocaine they've
> stumbled across somewhere. If more of the media would open drug-war
> bureaus in the inner cities, their bravest reporters would find that
> there's no shortage anytime, no increase at all in the street price of
> drugs, just a constant pressure by a guerrilla army of street pushers
> supporting their own drug habit by enlarging the circle of customers.
> The reporters would document the cost and futility of the pursuit, the
> cynicism and corruption of the pursuers and the serene confidence of a
> wealthy enemy.
> Gradually maybe through C-Span "teach-ins" run by such radicals as
> former Secretary of State George Shultz, Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore
> and William F. Buckley Jr., the commercial networks might learn that the
> war on drugs-meaning the prohibition of drugs- is not only being lost
> but is also unwinnable. The radicals have adopted the antiwar slogan of
> :legalization," but the TV anchors don't have to embrace that
> still-undefined remedy. They need only climb to the rooftops of
> Washington Heights in New York and Cruise down along the Potomac Delta
> while reciting the terrifying findings if their research staffs; the
> direct, recognizable cost of this war is probably in excess of $100
> billion a year. There's not even a good estimate of the related crimes
> committed by drug peddles and users, and of the measures taken to prevent
> such crimes, compensate victims and to punish some of the
> perpetrators. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being stashed in
> offshore sanctuaries and hundreds of millions more are available to
> import the stuff and to pave the way with bribes and untaxed wages.
> Of the 20 million American drug users, maybe 5 million are "seriously"
> addicted. A year's supply of heroin for all of them can be made from
> opium poppies grown on only 20 square miles of land-not quite the area of
> Manhatten. A year's supply of coke can be stashed in 13 truck trailers.
> So "eradicating" the supply abroad is impossible; "interdicting" drugs at
> the border is a joke.
> About 40,000 Americans die each year of the direct and indirect effects
> of drugs; a large proportion of New York Cities 2,000 annual homicides
> are attributable to drug trafficking. And drug offenders, whether or not
> they are violent criminals. clog the courts and the prisons.
> When finally one of the TV anchors senses that the country is ready to
> hear unvarnished truth, like Walter Cronkite's passionate declaration in
> 1968 that it was time to get out of Vietnam, she won't have to bother
> with statistics. Against a backdrop of gripping graphics, she could
> simply list the war's consequences:
> *Urban blight, fear and destruction.
> *Neighborhood turf wars and shootouts.
> *Family ruin, school failure and wreakage.
> *Loss productivity in the economy.
> *Crack babies, kids dealing drugs, addicts felled by AIDS.
> *Cops corrupted. Courts and prisons overwhelmed.
> *Murder and mayhem clear to the top in Mexico, Columbia and other
> countries that cannot resist supplying the rich American market. And in
> American, contempt for government- and despair.
>
> If the prohibition of drugs is a lost cause then "legalization" - in some
> form- is inevitable. But the word "legalization" has been demonized,
> like "negotiation" before Kissinger sat down in Paris. A year ago
> Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was pilloried- and disowned by her
> President- for recommending "some studies" of how drugs might be
> legalized and regulated. Most Americans still think legalization would
> constitute "surrender" in immorality. Some call it "genocide" because
> they imagine ghetto children lining up at the corner drugstore for their
> daily fix.
> Not until we in the media do a better job of reporting the horrendous
> costs of this unwinnable war will the public consider alternative
> politics. By definition, legalizing drugs would put the big dealers and
> their gun-toting distributors out of business. It would also keep most
> users from having to steal to support the habit. That alone would
> liberate a great deal of money and energy for reclaiming wrecked lives
> and neighborhoods.
> Like the Surgeon General, I don't pretend to know how a legal drug trade
> might be managed. Maybe drugs should be sold inexpensively to adults
> through Government outlets, like ABC liquor stores that many states
> opened after prohibition. Maybe drugs should be given away at
> neighborhood dispensaries that also offer treatment to cure addiction.
> Maybe dozens of experiments are in order.
> By all means, let's call it a war. Then deal with defeat.
>
-------
Derek Rose
rosed@world.std.com
Too much is never enough.
