Monday, April 21, 2003

War At Home QUOTE OF THE DAY "The fact that addiction is bound up with the hard core of the worst problems confronting us socially makes it discouraging at the outset to talk about 'solving' it. 'Solving' it really means solving poverty and broken homes, racial discrimination and inadequate education, slums and unemployment." - - Senator Robert F. Kennedy, 1965 APRIL 21 IN HISTORY: 1960 -- Dick Clark testifies before a congressional committee investigating payola. He admits having a financial interest in 27 % of the records he played on his show in a 28 month period. (Don't miss Dick Clark's poignant cameo in "Bowling For Columbine".) Rumors currently abound that there have actually been 3 Dick Clarks over the years, sorta like there were 3 Lassies. RHINO HERE: There's so much information coming across the internet regarding health conditions in Iraq, looting, war profiteering, possible war with Syria, & on & on. Meanwhile, as the attention of U.S. citizens is constantly drawn to the other side of the world, the U.S. Government continues its war on America's environment, it's personal freedoms, it's economy & on & on. While I created Rhino's Blog primarily to foster dialog about issues of peace & war, I know that freedom & justice at home is just as vital. What sense does it make to claim we're spending Billions of dollars to create free democracies abroad when our own freedoms are being threatened & diminished. Case in point: 2 million people are incarcerated in the United States. With 8 million prisoners in the entire world, the U.S. runs the largest penal system in the world. One quarter of all prisoners in the U.S., a half million, are non-violent drug offenders. That's more drug prisoners in the U.S. than the entire European Union has prisoners for all offenses. The U.S. has more drug prisoners than we had prisoners for all offenses in 1980. You may have seen the recent anti-marijuana TV ads which depict a teenage girl who's pregnant, looking into the camera saying something like, "Don't smoke pot, it will ruin your life." Another shows a teenage couple with a baby and the guy says, "Don't smoke pot or you could be the youngest grandparents on your block." These are the ads which replaced the ones that claimed doing drugs was aiding terrorists. These new ads are really just a new version of the "Reefer Madness" propaganda of the 30's & 40's which showed a normal looking couple smoking pot and suddenly dancing crazy & ripping their clothes off. The biggest problem with these ad campaigns is that they'll have the opposite effect that the creators want. When you tell teenagers that smoking marijuana will make them go out of control and want to have sex with any & everyone, and then they try it (and lets face it most if not all high school kids do try it) and find it's bullshit, how do they react upon realizing that the adults have lied to them about the effects of pot? They assume that everything the adults say about drugs is bullshit, including if the adults say that snorting or shooting drugs can kill you, which of course they can. So if marijuana is ever a gateway drug for kids, it's because of the lies told about it which make the kids ignore the warning about hard drugs. Anyone involved in the trenches of drug rehab knows that the real gateway drug is alcohol. And alcohol is also the drug that really will contribute to losing sexual inhibition & ending up pregnant. But you don't see Ashcroft et al speaking out against Seagrams or Budwiser. The alcohol industry is doing over 100 BILLION DOLLARS a year in business, aiming their advertising at the 21-26 year olds but attracting the 13 to 20 year olds just as effectively. How much of that 100 Billion do they contribute to rehab programs? Cannabis May Be 21st Century's Aspirin The New Zealand Herald, 4/19/03 LONDON - Cannabis, the third most popular recreational drug after alcohol and tobacco, could win new role as the aspirin of the 21st century, with growing evidence that its compounds may protect the brain against the damaging effects of aging. .. READ THE ARTICLE AT: 21st Century's Aspirin 7:46:59 AM    comment

THE BOTTOM LINE - The War at Home The War at Home Our jails overflow with nonviolent drug offenders. Have we reached the point where the drug war causes more harm than the drugs themselves? by Sanho Tree, Sojourners; Christians For Justice and Peace, May-June 2003 In 1965, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy tried to promote an enlightened drug policy before our country declared war on its own citizens. He told Congress, "Now, more than at any other time in our history, the addict is a product of a society which has moved faster and further than it has allowed him to go, a society which in its complexity and its increasing material comfort has left him behind. In taking up the use of drugs the addict is merely exhibiting the outermost aspects of a deep-seated alienation from this society, of a combination of personal problems having both psychological and sociological aspects." Kennedy continued, "The fact that addiction is bound up with the hard core of the worst problems confronting us socially makes it discouraging at the outset to talk about 'solving' it. 'Solving' it really means solving poverty and broken homes, racial discrimination and inadequate education, slums and unemployment...." Thirty-eight years later, the preconditions contributing to drug addiction have changed little, but our response to the problem has become overwhelmingly punitive. When confronted with illegal behavior, legislators have traditionally responded by escalating law enforcement. Yet countries such as Iran and China that routinely use the death penalty for drug offenses still have serious drug problems. Clearly there are limits to what can be achieved through coercion. By treating this as a criminal justice problem, our range of solutions has been sharply limited: How much coercion do we need to make this problem go away? No country has yet found that level of repression, and it is unlikely many Americans would want to live in a society that did. THERE'S MORE AT: War at Home "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. 7:02:46 AM    comment

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