2002: A Year in the Life of the Drug War

By Kevin Nelson, AlterNet. Posted January 6, 2003.

"House Republicans Thursday unveiled a package of bills to combat drug abuse and vowed to make America virtually drug-free by 2002."- Reuters, May 1998

Welcome to America, 2002, Land of the Virtually Drug-Free where President George Bush insists that casual drug users are financing terrorism, while his niece is caught with crack cocaine in drug rehab. Where one person is arrested approximately every 44 seconds on a marijuana charge. Where 77% of Texas drug convictions are found to involve less than one gram of a drug.

U.S. fighter pilots in Afghanistan are given amphetamines to stay awake on bombing runs, leading some to question the drugs contribution to multiple "friendly fire" deaths.

Despite a campaign promise to allow states to "choose as they so choose" regarding medical marijuana, the Bush Administrations Justice Department and DEA stay busy throughout the year raiding compassion clubs in California, and one in Oregon.

Marijuana Prohibition, begun in the U.S. in 1937, reaches the retirement age of 65.

Internationally, Canadas Justice Minister promises marijuana will be decriminalized in the beginning of 2003, while the UNs International Narcotics Control Board condemns Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Switzerland, and Spain for joining the Netherlands in decriminalizing marijuana.

Despite U.S. government assistance in spraying vast amounts of Monsantos Round-Up pesticide over coca plantations in the Amazon rainforest, Colombian coca production increases by 25 per cent.

Meanwhile, senior U.S. officials ask Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to shield American military trainers in Colombia from prosecution by the International Criminal Court for any accusations of human rights abuses that may arise in connection with their work.

It has become evident that in order to manifest a "drug-free" utopian society, citizens must be willing to relinquish personal freedoms of privacy, association, unfettered travel, and medical autonomy.

In other words, a society cannot be both "free" and "drug-free." A choice must be made. The following stories, culled from the press in the past 12 months, present an overview of the choices made in 2002: A Year in the Life of the Drug War.

January 24- The Associated Press reports: U.S. officials continued working closely with Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos in the anti-drug fight despite an army officer's tip that he was involved with death squad killings, newly declassified documents show.

February 3- The U.S. government spends $3.5 million tax dollars on two 30-second public service ads during Super Bowl XXXVI. The ads, advancing the claim that Americans using illegal drugs are financing international terrorists, represent the largest one-time government advertising spend ever.

Drug Control office spokesman Tom Riley said the Super Bowl was the perfect event to launch the new campaign. "It's not like every dollar you spend on pot goes to Osama Bin Laden," Riley said, "but the Taliban raised $50 million a year on heroin sales."

February 12- The Associated Press reports: Federal agents raided a medical marijuana club and arrested four people Tuesday amid an ongoing tug-of-war between local and federal officials over the sale of pot for medicinal purposes.

The raid coincided with President Bush's announcement Tuesday of a stepped-up war on drugs, with a goal of cutting drug abuse by 25 percent in five years, in part through improved law enforcement.

February 27- Australias The Age reports: Some European Union countries are "undermining international law" by relaxing rules against cannabis, the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said today.

INCB officials rapped Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain for decriminalising the cultivation and possession of cannabis for personal use, in the board's annual report published in Vienna today.

And it slammed the Netherlands, where cannabis is on sale for recreational use in coffee-shops, as well as draft Swiss legislation, which it sees as a move towards legalising cannabis, for breaching UN conventions.

The trend towards a more liberal attitude to cannabis and its legislation "undermines international law", INCB President Hamid Ghodse told a press conference.

"All efforts to control the world drug problem will fail unless there is universal commitment and true implementation of the provisions of the treaties," the report said.

March 8- Associated Press reports: Despite intensified eradication, coca production in Colombia increased by about 25 percent last year, the Bush administration said, contradicting Colombian government claims of a significant decline.

In releasing the figures Thursday, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy admitted that the results of the escalating effort were less than it had hoped for.

March 20- Reuters in Britain reports: Motorists who smoke a cannabis joint retain more control behind the wheel than those who drink a glass of wine, British scientists have found.

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