HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ 1/HaCKeRz Kr0nlcKLeZ.iso/drugs/pihkal.42

Internet Message Format | 1996-05-06 | 47.6 KB

From: Christopher B Reeve <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: What makes drug laws (il)legitimate? (1/2)
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 1994 16:04:22 -0400
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

William D. Starr, I believe, has given _the_ authoritative answer to
this question.  I've never heard an answer that is more comprehensive,
and yet concise, on the subject.  Someone needs to make sure that it
lands a spot on the drug archives.  I feel compelled to add to his
statements a lecture by Dr. Alexander Shulgin, one of the world's most
renowned drug experts.

[The following is an excerpt from Alexander and Ann Shulgin's
 _PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story_ (1992), reproduced without
 permission.  Some details may be out of date by now.  _PiHKAL_
 is available for $22.95 postpaid (+ $1.38 tax for California
 residents) from TRANSFORM PRESS, P.O.Box 13675, Berkeley, CA
 94701.]

CHAPTER 42.  LECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY


(Shura's voice)

  "For a goodly number of years I have been teaching a class in
the Fall, at the University of California, in Berkeley.  It is,
officially, a toxicology course with both lecture and
laboratory, dealing with the analysis of drugs in body fluids
with an eye to the preparation of evidence for the courts of
law.  But some years ago I made a point of writing out all of my
lectures, so that they could be read by my students before
class, and the actual lecture time could be used in offering
additional explanations, or answering questions.

  If there were no questions, then the two-hour slot became a
rich opportunity to explore any topic I wished to.  The
consistent underlying theme of these lectures was the excitement
of science and of learning.  I had been shocked, year after
year, by the total distaste that my students had for organic
chemistry, which was one of the prerequisites for my class.  It
apparently had been taught along the lines of, 'For next Monday
read from pages 134 to 198 in the text and we will have a quiz
on the material.'  They memorized reactions and mechanisms,
struggled through the exams, promptly forgot everything that had
been memorized, and never took the second year course.  They
hated it.

  So I would try to present chemistry as an art form, rather
than as a science.  Why are sugars usually white?  Why don't
food additives ever have smells?  Make a guess as to how some
interesting drug might change in the body?  How would you
explain chromatography to a jury with no scientific background?

  And sometimes I would be on a particular kick, and the whole
time would be devoted to a single subject that I felt deserved
emphasis.  Recently just such an occasion arose, and I presented
the following lecture to my fifteen or so undergraduate students.

----------
  I know that I have been scheduled to use this time to build up
a picture of the how's and where's of drug action in the brain.
It has been listed as a lecture on the pharmacokinetics and
pharmacodynamics of centrally active compounds.  But I am going
to exercise one of the precious freedoms allowed me as a
professor - I am going to change the topic, and make it a
lecture on politics and government.

  In fact, I am going to talk to you about our freedoms in
general, and about the loss of certain of these freedoms under
the shameful excuse of waging a war on drugs.

  Our form of government is known as a constitutional republic.
The federal structure was established by the signing of the
Constitution, some ten years following our Declaration of
Independence from England, and many of our present inalienable
freedoms were explicitly guaranteed by the passage of the first
ten amendments to our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, some
four years later.  These freedoms - of speech, of the press, and
of the practice of religion, our protection against unreasonable
searches and seizures, the rights of anyone accused of a crime
to know the nature of the accusation and to be judged by an
impartial jury - these are the bedrock of our nation and are
integral to our national way of life.

  This Bill of Rights is continuously being challenged, largely
through the enactment of laws by Congress which have been
written without sufficient thought as to whether they might
endanger or restrict basic freedoms.  The function of the
Supreme Court has always been to serve as a safeguard against
the enforcement of laws which do not respect the Constitution,
but it has become increasingly clear that we can no longer rely
on this protection.

  There are other freedoms that we retained from England, even
when declaring our independence from her.  England has never had
a written constitution; rather, there has been a structure based
largely on a few remarkable acts of reform such as the Magna
Carta.  From these collective acts came our concepts of _habeas
corpus_ (of what am I accused) and of trial by jury (by whom
shall I be judged), both now embodied in the sixth amendment to
the Constitution.

  There are three most important freedoms that are part of this
heritage which were never included in our Constitution, but
which have nevertheless been a foundation of our national
self-image.  These are the presumption of innocence, the right
to privacy, and freedom of inquiry.  These are being rapidly
eroded.  Also, one hears more and more voices declaring that the
relinquishing of these traditional rights is of little
importance, as long as the national purpose is thereby achieved.
The stated national purpose, at the moment, is the winning of
the so-called War on Drugs.  In the future, it may take the form
of a war against some other threat to our national security that
phrase has worked before, and it can be counted on to work
again- and the restoration of the lost rights and freedoms will
simply not take place; at least, not in our time, nor in the
time of our children or grandchildren.

  We must act by ourselves - those of us who are aware of what
is happening - either as individuals or collectively, to demand
restoration of what has been taken away, and to prevent further
losses.

  Laws are born as concepts, but must be recorded as the written
word when finally put into effect.  And the exact interpretation
of some of those words depends to a considerable extent upon
current popular usage and understanding of their meanings.
Since there cannot be complete consensus as to some definitions,
there will remain a certain degree of ambiguity.  I will examine
a few examples of recent shifts in the manner in which such
ambiguities are being handled, if not exactly resolved.

  Consider the basis for the determination of innocence or guilt
of a person who, as a potential defendant, has fallen under
official scrutiny because of some accusation.  In the past, the
accusation had to be stated as a formal complaint, an arrest had
to be made, and the task of providing evidence to support the
charge was the province of the plaintiff, usually the people.

  In a case where the crime is a felony (one which can be
punished by a stay in a Federal prison), guilt must be proven
beyond a reasonable doubt.  Doubts are obviously challenges to
presented evidence, but for heaven's sake, what is meant by
'reasonable?'  It has evolved in legal practice that what this
means is that a jury unanimously agrees that no doubt remains in
their minds as to an accused person's guilt.  This is the
criterion that must be met to convict someone of such a crime.

  However, in the current madness involving drugs and violation
of drug laws, it is no longer necessary to convene a jury or for
that matter - to even bring a charge, in order to hurt and
punish someone suspected of having been involved in drug-related
activity.  Only the thinnest of evidence, far short in quantity
or quality of what would be necessary to obtain a verdict of
'guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt' in a courtroom is now
regularly used to 'get' the suspected wrongdoer.

  If you are a person in authority, you now don't have to
confront the suspected wrongdoer; you confront his possessions,
instead.  Accuse his bank account of being the result of illegal
activity, and seize it.  Accuse his truck of having transported
illegal drugs, and confiscate it.  Accuse his house of having
been bought with cocaine dollars, and take it from him.  This is
a move from criminal procedures to civil procedures.  Such a
person, invested with the power of the law, can decide that your
car, your boat, your lower twenty acres of pasture land, have
been associated with the commission of a drug-related crime.  He
can and will seize this car (boat, land), invoking the
mechanisms of civil forfeiture, and you can't do a thing about
it.  By association with a crime, it is meant that the seized
item was used in the commission of a criminal act, or that it
was obtained as the result of a criminal act.

  All of the above acts on the part of the authorities are
possible without any jury findings whatsoever; in fact, without
a trial of any kind having been held.

  Our protection against civil forfeiture was also part of our
British heritage of common law, and it had been steadfastly
respected here in the United States since the time of the
founding fathers.  But it was dissolved in 1978 by Congress,
with the passage of the Psychotropic Substances Act.  That law
must be withdrawn.

  These acts of confiscation follow the criterion of 'a
preponderance of evidence.'

  Consider that phrase, 'preponderance of evidence.'  The first
thought that comes to mind is that the word, 'preponderance,'
suggests an excess or a superiority of evidence.  That is what
the dictionary says, but that is not its common usage in the
courts.  In legal usage, a relationship (say, between your car
and illegal drugs) is established as being valid by a
preponderance of evidence if it is deemed more likely, on the
basis of the available evidence, to be valid than not valid.  In
other words, the connection is at least 51% valid.  The decision
that no additional evidence need be sought, can be made by one
person, by one judge, even by one single policeman.  Thus, the
quality of proof can be minuscule.

  Keep in mind that the obtaining of additional information will
sometimes show a presumed fact to be fiction; additional
evidence might well establish evidence.

  If you are reentering the country from abroad and the stub of
a marijuana joint is found in your coat pocket, the immigration
authorities can seize your passport.  If I, as a person with
sufficient authority, discover that you have a $23,000 savings
account in the local Wells Fargo Bank, and I think the money
came from drug transactions, I can and will seize this money.  I
no longer have to file a criminal charge or even a criminal
complaint, and I certainly don't have to wait until you are
convicted of an unlawful act in a court of law.  I merely have
to state that, in my opinion, there is a preponderance of
evidence that you have been naughty.

  The frightening extension of this is that someone who feels
that you are doing things he doesn't approve of, can effectively
take from you your ability to travel abroad, or can seize the
assets that might have allowed you to establish your innocence
with the help of good legal counsel, if and when charges against
you are finally brought.

  Very recently, the courts have decided that, after a
conviction of a drug-related crime (using the 'beyond reasonable
doubt' criterion), the sentencing phase - which must follow the
sentencing guideline standards - can be made more severe with
the presentation of additional facts that need only meet the
'preponderance of evidence' requirement.

  As an example of how these distinctions can be blurred,
consider a person who was arrested with a given quantity of
ephedrine in his bedroom (ephedrine is a listed precursor to
methamphetamine, but not illegal to possess).  He might be
charged with the intent to manufacture the drug, based on the
possession of a precursor, and these days he will probably be
found guilty.  But, in the invocation of the sentencing
guidelines, the quantity of the (legal) precursor that was under
the bed can be used for determining the severity of his sentence.

  Next, consider the fact that, in this country, there has been
a long-standing prohibition of any involvement of the military
forces in civil law enforcement (the _Posse Comitatus_ statute)
unless specifically authorized by the Constitution or by
Congress.  This, too, Congress changed with the 1981 passage of
the Department of defense Authorization Act.  This specified in
detail the nature of assistance and support that the military
will now provide civilian law enforcement personnel involved in
the war against illegal drugs.

  In 1982 the military provided its initial help in the
President's Task Force, in South Florida, with aviation and
radar surveillance, and logistic and vessel support.  From then
on up to the present, with the phasing out of communism as a
military target, the drug war has received continuously
increasing military attention, as an acceptable justification
for continued funding by Congress.  The Pentagon has now been
given the lead responsibility to serve as the intelligence and
communications hub linking the anti-drug efforts of all U.S.
agencies.  This does not sit well with competing agencies such
as the DEA, FBI and CIA, each of which has its own intelligence
structure.  Recent military involvement with the local
government police against the well armed guerrilla groups in
central Peru may be laying the foundation for an actual shooting
war.  And recently, the National Guard was directed to make
their personnel available as customs inspectors, to swell the
manpower at ports of entry.

  The IRS, too, got into the act in 1982.  Tax information is
now available to law-enforcement agencies, on request, to
facilitate their prosecution of drug-related criminal cases.

  Now, consider the term, 'a reasonable suspicion.'  This is a
still more nebulous measure of guilt.  Yet it is one that has
been used in the drug areas with appalling effectiveness.  A
Coast Guard boat has always been able to come up to your sailing
boat to look for a violation of safety rules, but now the
skipper of the Coast Guard vessel can, by simply stating that
something looks odd to him and he has a reasonable suspicion
that there might be drugs aboard, search your boat for drugs.
What if they find nothing?  They may still seize your boat,
secure it for hours or days, remove chunks of it as they choose,
until they either succeed in discovering something illegal, or
give up in their search.

  All that is needed is a reasonable suspicion.

  Let us turn out attention to the phrase, 'in good faith.'  We
are getting further yet from hard evidence, and much closer to
an undocumentable whim.  Here anything goes, because to prove
that a man (or woman) of authority acted in bad faith you must
show that he or she acted recklessly, or lied.  And that is
pretty heavy duty proving.  'I smelled methyl amine, and this
has always meant to me a methamphetamine lab, and I got a
warrant based on this statement.  So it turned out to be an LSD
lab and there was no methyl amine present.  That's okay, since I
acted in good faith.'  The warrant stands.

  'My cannabis-trained dog told me, 'there is pot in there.'  It
turned out that there were psilocybin-containing mushrooms, yes,
but no marijuana.  That's all right, because I acted in good
faith, on the basis of my dog's response.'  The warrant stands.

  An extension of this is the use of profiles, and the stopping
and searching of people who are judged - again in good faith to
meet the composite picture of a person who is involved in drugs.
 The exact make-up of a profile is kept secret by the
authorities, but in airports it involves such factors as the
color of the skin, being in a hurry, having bought a one-way
ticket, and having bought it with cash.  If the profile is that
of a courier, he can be detained, questioned, and searched as
intimately as is wanted by the person in authority.  If the
profile is one of a swallower (one who swallows pouches of drug,
to be recovered later) he can also be X-rayed without his
consent and, if desired, held until the body contents are
expelled naturally.

  On the highways, the profile includes not only the driver's
appearance, but the quality and make of his car and, believe it
or not, the extent of his adherence to the local speed limits
(so as not to attract attention).  'He had a Florida license
plate, and an expensive-looking car, and was traveling at
exactly the speed limit.  In my opinion, he fit the profile of a
drug courier.  I pulled him over and found almost $5000 dollars
in cash in his glove compartment.  This money showed a
detectable presence of cocaine.  I seized the money, but I did
not charge him with any crime.'

  The seizures stands, because it was done in good faith, and it
can be argued that cocaine on the money suggested that some
drug-related criminal act had been committed.

  However, government forensic chemists have demonstrated that
randomly selected samples of paper money in the United States
are presently contaminated with a detectable quantity of
cocaine.  We have instruments now that are so sensitive, they
can potentially document a trace of cocaine on any piece of
paper money of any denomination, in anyone's wallet.

  Even though the Supreme Court last year endorsed the use of
profiles with airline passengers, I still feel that this form of
interception and interrogation can too easily be abused by the
authorities, and it is neither needed nor should it be wanted in
this country.

  Yet further down this graded scale of decreasing quality of
proof of guilt, there is a level where no guilt need even be
implied by a person in authority against an individual.  This is
a rapidly expanding area of drug-related police-state activity
that simply denies the person any presumption of innocence, and
as he is no longer presumed to be innocent he is, by default,
guilty.  It rests with the accused to prove that he is not
committing a felony.  I am speaking of the random urine test.

  What follows is a pretty harsh statement, but I mean it with
total sincerity, from my heart:

  There is no justification, at any time, at any place, in my
country, for a urine test to be made on any individual, unless
there is a reason stated for supposing that there has been a
crime committed.

  Let me state that again, in different words.  To demand that a
person pee in a cup whenever you wish him to, without a
documented reason to suspect that he has been using an illegal
drug, is intolerable in our republic.  You are saying to him, 'I
wonder if you are not behaving in a way that I approve of.
Convince me that you indeed are.'

  Outrageous.

  Intolerable.

  I don't care if the man is the pilot of Air Force One with the
President on board, or the trigger man on a nuclear submarine
with 24 Trident II D-5 missiles at his disposal; it is
unthinkable that there could ever be a urine test demanded of a
person, unless there were reason to suspect him of being
impaired.  Yes, it is possible that we might lose a plane here,
or a skirmish there, but such would be a minor price for us to
pay for having a nation that respects the privacy of the
individual and the presumption of his innocence.

  The pilot/trigger man could be in a bad state of mind for many
reasons (argument with a lover, burnt toast for breakfast), so
our efforts must be directed to an evaluation of his behavior,
his capabilities, and the intactness of his skills; there can be
testing of his reflexes and coordination, in order to give
evidence of impairment.  If he is  not considered completely
competent to do his job, then - and only then - can a search
into his urine be justified.

  In any case, a blind search for drugs in a pilot's urine can
provide only minuscule protection against aberrant behavior,
since he will fly his plane today, and the urine test results
won't be available until next week.  There is no protection
provided under these conditions.

  I believe that a major reason for the wide promotion of urine
testing is that, as a new, rapidly growing industry, it is an
extraordinary moneymaker.

  There are other actions of the authorities that illustrate
this 'assume them guilty and let them prove otherwise' attitude.
Last year the DEA contacted all the advertisers in the
counter-culture magazine High times who were offering hydroponic
horticultural supplies for sale.  Their customer lists were
confiscated, and all those who had made purchases of any kind
were visited by representatives of the DEA, on the assumption
that they were growing marijuana.  After a number of innocent
orchid growers had been raided, the authorities' enthusiasm died
down.  But the heavy-handedness of this undertaking does present
a frightening picture of our law enforcement authorities in
action.

  As a way of exacting revenge at the legislative level, and
also proving to the electorate that each and every congressman
is doing everything necessary to win the war on drugs, there is
a continuous demand for increasingly harsh penalties associated
with drug-related convictions.

  There have been established inflexible prison terms and fine
schedules that must be invoked for doing such-and-such with
specifically designated quantities of certain illegal drugs.
Your minimum time in prison is predicated on how much drug is
involved, whether you have some special skills, whether you have
been arrested before, and whether there was a gun involved.
Here is a very important thing to remember.  If there is any
detectable amount of an illegal drug present in a seized mess,
the entire weight of the mess will be considered as being the
weight of the drug.  If you are a boat captain, or a lawyer, or
have some advanced education, you have s special skill, and you
can be given an increased penalty.  You might have a gun in a
drawer in your bedroom at home, nowhere near the scene of the
alleged crime.  These particulars can all contribute to an
increased and inflexible minimum sentence in prison, with times
ranging from months to years to life, and with penalties
climbing up there into the millions of dollars.

  If you are a major drug dealer (whatever that means), under
certain of the above circumstances, several laws that are now
being proposed can demand that you receive a death sentence.  A
recently proposed law, just passed by the Senate, says that all
you have to do is deal in such-and-such a quantity of a given
drug, and that quantity alone will qualify you as a 'major'
dealer.  And if you are found guilty, you will be executed.
Capital punishment as a mandatory price to pay for possession of
more than XYZ grams of dope.  Where in the world, but here in
the United States, and in Iran, and maybe in Malaysia?  The
unauthorized possession of an atomic bomb, by the way, is worth
a maximum of 12 years.

  I am confident that this bill presently being prepared for
introduction into Congress (by Senator Gramm and Representative
Gingrich) will never be signed into law, but the very fact that
it is being seriously proposed is chilling.  It introduces a
whole new generation of penalties related to drug offenses (in
addition to the mandatory execution of a person possessing more
than an arbitrarily specified amount).  These penalties include
the denial of early release from prison until at least five
years has been served; it demands that the state be required to
conduct urine tests on anyone arrested, jailed, released or
paroled (as a condition of the state continuing to receive
Federal funds); it mandates that anyone convicted of use or
possession of a drug will have to pay the cost of his trial and
will also be fined 10% of his annual income; it says that there
will be explicit permission given to states, counties, cities,
school systems and private entities to engage in periodic and
random drug testing.

  A much more subtle and insidious form of freedom loss can be
seen in our schools.  There is _de facto_ censorship being
implemented within the colleges and universities by the
Government, in the way it funds research and thus controls its
direction.  There is an outright propaganda campaign being
presented through the informational media, and there is no
challenge being brought by those who know the facts and should
be insisting on adherence to truth.  Let me touch on these one
at a time, as each of them is directed at a different population
target.

  In the public schools, the efforts are being directed at the
student.  The message is, 'Just Say No.'  There is no effort to
inform, to educate, to provide the complex body of information
that will allow the exercise of judgment.  Rather, there is
given the simple message that drugs kill.  This is your brain.
This is your brain on drugs.  Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, and the
egg is suddenly fried.  Your sweet, virginal daughter was killed
because she didn't learn about drugs.  She should have learned
to, 'Just Say No.'  None of this can be called education.  It is
an effort to influence behavior patterns by repeating the same
message over and over again.  It is propaganda.

  All kinds of drugs are deeply, permanently, infused into our
culture, into our way of life.  Their values and their risks
must be taught to our children, and this teaching must be done
with honesty and integrity.

  And what is the status of research in the medical schools, and
the universities, and the industrial laboratories across the
nation?  I can assure you that since psychedelic drugs are not
officially acknowledged as a valid area for human research,
there is no money being made available in any university or
medical school for the exploration and study of their actions
and effects in humans.

  It is a fact of life that all research today, at the academic
level, is supported almost exclusively by federal funds, and if
a grant application does not meet the wishes or needs of the
granting agency, the research will remain unfunded, thus it will
 not be done.  In the controls which have been put into place
over the pharmaceutical industries, there is another effective
mechanism of prohibition of inquiry.  Research on drugs can only
be approved for eventual medical use if the drugs involved have
accepted medical utility.  And there is an official statement
that there are no drugs, not one single drug, in the fascinating
area of the psychedelics, that has an accepted medical use.
They are all, you understand, Schedule I things, and - by
definition - neither they, nor any of their analogues, have any
medical utility.

  As for the messages being pushed in the media?  All too often,
a lurid story is presented, and a later retraction is ignored.
A couple of examples can illustrate this.

  Consider the phrases, 'Even the first time can kill,' and
'Even pure material can kill,' as applied to cocaine use.  Both
were promoted as statements of fact, as an outgrowth of the
tragic death of s sports figure named Mr. Len Bias, who died
from an overdose of cocaine.  This happened at a critical time,
just weeks before the biannual drug bill was to be voted on.

  According to the newspapers, the autopsy report stated that
the young man was a first time user, and that he had used pure
cocaine.  This is patent nonsense.  Neither the purity of a
drug, nor the frequency of its use in the past, can be gleaned
from an analysis of the body's tissues after death.  When the
final autopsy report was released, it was published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association, and it seemed
apparent to the scientists involved that Mr. Bias had been given
a large quantity of cocaine by mouth (in a soft drink, perhaps,
as there was no alcohol in him) and the suggestion was advanced
that it might not have been self-inflicted.  Translated, that
means there was a possibility that he had been murdered.

  This latter view was not advertised, and the two catchy
phrases are still used for their 'educational' value.  Even the
first time can kill.  Even purse stuff can kill.

  The anti-drug bill, needless to say, passed by an impressive
margin.
  Then, there was a train crash outside the city of Baltimore,
in early 1987, that killed 16 people and injured 170 others.
The newspapers trumpeted the discovery that the engineer
responsible for the accident was found to have tested positive
for the presence of marijuana in his body.  This has been one of
the major driving forces in focusing te public's attention on
the need for urine testing as a necessary aspect of public
safety, especially in the transportation area.

  Six months later, a review of the evidence in this case
resulted in the appearance of a report which showed that the
supervisor of the testing laboratory which had presented the
marijuana findings (the FAA lab in Oklahoma City) had been
fabricating drug test results for months.  Results were being
reported from tests that had never been performed, because there
had been no one in the laboratory who knew how to run the
sophisticated instruments.

  When an effort was made to challenge the specific findings in
the case of this engineer, the original computer data had
apparently been lost.  And there was none of the original blood
sample left for a re-analysis.  It will never be known if that
engineer had indeed been impaired by marijuana, but political
and emotional capital is still being made from the original
story.

  The constant repetition by the press of the very term, 'Drug
War,' has an insidious influence on public opinion.  It evokes
an image of our side, as opposed to their side, and the
existence f a struggle for victory.  Not to be victorious is not
to survive as a nation, we keep hearing.  there is a continuing
message being advanced, that most of our nation's troubles -
poverty, increasing unemployment, homelessness, our monstrous
crime statistics, rising infant mortality and health problems,
even dangers to our national security involving  terrorism and
foreign agents - are the direct results of illegal drug use, and
all of these problems would neatly disappear if we would simply
find an effective solution to this one terrible scourge.

  Do you remember hearing the word, _Krystalnacht_, from the
history of the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, in the
late 1930's?  This was the night of broken crystal, when there
was a sweep of the state-empowered police and young Nazis
through the Jewish sections of the German cities, when every
pane of glass that was in any way related to the Jewish culture
- be it the window of a store, a synagogue, or a private home -
was shattered.  'If we rid ourselves of  the scum known as
Jews,' the authorities said, 'We will have solved the social
problems of the nation.'

  I see a comparable move here, with merely a few changes in the
words.  'If we rid ourselves of the drug scum of our society, if
we deprive them of their homes, their property, their crack
houses, we will have solved the social troubles of the nation.'

  In Germany the Jewish population was attacked and beaten, some
of them to death, in a successful effort to focus all
frustrations and resentments on one race of people as the cause
of the nation's difficulties.  It forged a national mood of
unity and single-mindedness, and it allowed the formation of a
viciously powerful fascist state.  The persecution of the Jews,
needless to say, failed to solve the social problems of Germany.

  In our present-day America, the drug-using population is being
used as the scapegoat in a similar way, and I fear that the end
point might well be a similar state of national consensus,
without our traditional freedoms and safeguards of individual
rights, and still lacking resolution of our serious social
troubles.

  How severe is the illegal drug problem, really?  If you go
down through the generalized statistics, and search out the hard
facts, it is not very large.  From the point of view of public
health, it is vanishingly small.

[continued in next message]


--

"There are a number of us these days who do not seek deliberately to go
to prison but cherish a dream of being sent there to enjoy,
paradoxically, true freedom." (Anthony Burgess, _1985_)

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From: Christopher B Reeve <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: What makes drug laws (il)legitimate? (2/2)
Date: Mon, 19 Sep 1994 16:13:53 -0400
Organization: Sophomore, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
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[continued from former message]

  Just the two major legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol, are
together directly responsible for over 500,000 deaths a year in
this country.  Deaths associated with prescription drugs are an
additional 100,000 a year.  The combined deaths associated with
all the illegal drugs, including heroin, cocaine, marijuana,
methamphetamine, and PCP, may increase this total by another
5,000.  In other words, if all illegal drug use were to be
curtailed by some stroke of a magic wand, the drug-related
deaths in the country would decrease by 1 percent.  The
remaining 99% remain just as dead, but dead by legal, and thus
socially acceptable means.

  What about the highly touted $60 billion cost to business
resulting from lost productivity in the work place?  This number
cam from a single study which contained a number of assumptions
that the National Institute of Drug Abuse admits were not valid.
 In this study done by Research Triangle Park, nearly 4000
households were surveyed, and the average incomes were
correlated with the admission that someone who lived there had
used marijuana regularly.  These families had a lower income,
and that decreased monthly pay-check was stated to be due to the
fact that there had been marijuana use.  When this was
extrapolated to the population as a whole, the calculations gave
a figure of $28 billion.  Then there were added the costs of
drug-related crime, of health problems and accidents, and the
number swelled to $47 billion.  Adjustment for inflation and
population increase increased it further up to the often quoted
$60 billion.  This shameful study is a major basis for our
crusade against he use of illicit drugs in industry.

  This is the only study of its kind that has been made, and in
this study, questions had been asked concerning other illegal
drug use.  Had the correlations used the findings that were made
with cocaine or heroin use, rather than marijuana use, there
would have been no lower average income at all.  The only
conclusion that could have been made (with cocaine or heroin,
rather than with marijuana) was that there was no cost to
business whatsoever, from drug abuse.  The drug that had been
used in the calculation was the only one that could have
provided the numbers that were needed to fuel the drug war.

  The drug problem may not be the size we are being told it is,
but it is large enough for concern.  What are some of its
causes?  There is a feeling of helplessness in much of our poor
population, particularly among young Black and Hispanic males.
There is a total absence of any sense of self-worth in most of
the residents of our inner cities.  There is extensive
homelessness, and an increasing state of alienation between the
middle-to-upper and the lowest classes.  On one side, there is a
growing attitude of, 'I've got mine, and the hell with you,' and
on the other, 'I've got nothing to lose, so screw you.'

  There is a shameful public health problem of massive
proportions (AIDS, teen-age pregnancies, rising infant mortality
and the abandonment of any serious effort to help those with
debilitating mental illnesses).  There are children who have no
families, no food, no education, and no hope.  There is near
anarchy in the streets of our big cities, matched by a loss of
community integrity in the rural areas.  All of this is blamed
on the 'drug problem,' although the use of drugs has nothing to
do with it.  Drug use is not the cause of any of these terrible
problems.  It may certainly be one of the results, but it is not
the cause.  Nonetheless, a major national effort is being made
to convince the American people that winning the 'War on Drugs'
will indeed cure us of all ailments, if we would but relinquish
a few more individual rights in the pursuit of victory.

  This war cannot be won.  And we will only lose more and more
of our freedoms in a futile effort to win it.  Our efforts must
be directed towards the causes, not just the consequences of
drug misuse.  But, in the meantime, things are going downhill at
a rapid rate.  People tell me that I am a defeatist to suggest
the obvious answer, which is to legalize the use of drugs by
adults who choose to use them.

  I have been accused of giving the message that drug use is
okay.  Remove the laws, they say, and the nation will be plunged
overnight into an orgy of unbridled drug use.  I answer that we
are already awash in illegal drugs, available to anyone who is
able to pay, and their illegality has spawned a rash of criminal
organizations and territorial blood-lettings, the likes of which
have not been seen since the glory days of Prohibition.

  Yes, it's possible that with the removal of drug laws a few
timid Presbyterians will venture a snort of cocaine, but in the
main, drug abuse will be no worse than it is now, and - after
some initial experimentation - things will return to a natural
balance.  There is no 'Middle America' sitting out there, ready
to go Whoopie! with the repeal of the drug laws.  The majority
of the population will, however, benefit from the return of the
criminal justice system's attention to theft, rape, and murder,
the crimes against society for which we need prisons.  Pot
smoking, remember, is not intrinsically antisocial.

  Let me ask each of you this simple question.  What indicators
would you accept as a definition of a police state, if it were
to quietly materialize about you?  I mean, a state that you
could not tolerate.  A state in which there is a decrease in
drug use, but in which your behavior was increasingly being
dictated by those in power?

  Each of you, personally and privately, please draw an
imaginary line in front of you, a line that indicates: up to
here, okay, but beyond here, no way!

  Let me suggest some thoughts to use as guides.  What about a
requirement for an observed urination into a plastic cup for
drug analysis before getting a welfare check, or to qualify for
or maintain a job at the local MacDonalds, or to allow your
child enrollment in the public schools?  Would any one of these
convince you that our nation was in trouble?

  More and more companies are requiring pre-employment urine
testing, and insisting upon random analysis during working
hours.  Not just bus drivers and policemen, but furniture
salesmen and grocery store clerks.  Some local school districts
are requiring random urine tests on 7th graders, but as of the
present time they are still requesting the parent's permission.
Recipients of public housing, of university loans, or of
academic grants must give assurance that they will maintain a
drug-free environment.  Today, verbal assurance is acceptable,
but what about tomorrow?

  What about the daily shaving of the head and body so that no
hair sample can be seized to provide evidence against you of
past drug-use?  There are increasingly strong moves to seize and
assay hair samples in connection with legitimate arrests, as a
potential source of incriminating evidence of past illegal drug
use.

  What if you had to make a formal request to the government,
and get written permission, to take more than $300 out of the
country for a week's vacation in Holland?  Or $200?  There used
to be no limit, then te limit dropped to the current level of
$10,000, but this number will certainly continue to drop as
legislation becomes more severe with regard to the laundering of
drug money.

  A lot of what I have been talking about has to do with the
'other guy,' not you.  It is your drug-using neighbor who will
have to live in fear, not you.  It is easy to dismiss these
invasions of personal rights when they don't affect you
directly.  But let me ask you a not-quite-so-simple question,
the answer to which is very important to you, indeed: where are
your own personal limits?

  To what extent do you feel that it is justifiable for someone
else to control your personal behavior, if it contributes to the
public's benefit?  Let me presume that the idea of urine tests
for cocaine use is okay with you.  You probably don't use
cocaine.  Would you allow demands upon you for random urine
tests for tobacco use?  What about for alcohol use?  The use of
coffee?

  To what extent would you allow the authorities into your
private life?  Let us presume that, having committed no crime,
you would permit a policeman, who is visiting you officially,
into your home without a warrant.  But what about officials
entering your home in your absence?  Would you still proclaim,
'I don't mind; I've got nothing to hide!'

  I doubt that there are many of you who feel disturbed about
the existence of a national computerized fingerprint file.  But
how about a national genetic marker file?  What about police
cards for domestic travel?  How would you react to a law that
says you must provide hair samples upon re-entering the country
from abroad?  How would you feel about the automatic opening and
reading of first class mail?  Any and all of these things could
be rationalized as being effective tools in the war against
drugs.  Where would you personally draw the line?

  Each of us must carefully  draw that line for himself or
herself.  It is an exquisitely personal decision, just where
your stick is to enter the ground to mark that boundary.  This
far, and no further.

  There is a second and equally important decision to be made.

  Let's ease into it by recapitulation.  The first requirement
is to establish a line, up to which you will allow the erosions
of liberties and freedoms, all in the good cause of winning the
drug war.

  The second requirement is to decide, ahead of time, exactly
what you will do, if and when your personal line has been
breached.  The point at which you say, 'This has gone too far.
It is time for me to do such-and-such.'

  Decide what such-and-such really is.  You must figure it out
well beforehand.  And beware.  It is so easy to say, 'Well, my
line has been exceeded, but everything else seems benign and
non-threatening, so perhaps I will relocated my line from right
here to over there.'  This is the seductive rationalizing that
cost millions of innocent people their lives under the Nazi
occupation in Europe.

  If you can move your line, then your line was not honestly
positioned in the first place.  _Where is your line?_  And if
your limits are exceeded, _What will you do?_

  Stay continuously aware of where things are, politically, and
in what direction they seem to be heading.  Think your plans out
ahead of time, while doing everything in your power to prevent
further dismantling of what rights and freedoms are left the
citizens of your country.

  Do not give away your rights imply to make the police
enforcement of criminal law easier.  Yes, easier enforcement
will catch more criminals, but it will become an increasing
threat to you, as well.  The policeman's task should not be
easy; the founders of this country made that clear.  A
policeman's task is always difficult in a free country.

  A society of free people will always have crime, violence and
social disruption.  It will never be completely safe.  The
alternative is a police state.  A police state can give you safe
streets, but only at the price of your human spirit.

  In summary, remember that the accused must always be assumed
innocent, and allowed his day in court.  The curious citizen
must always have open access to information about anything he
wants, and should be able to learn whatever interests him,
without having some other person's ideology superimposed on him
during the course of his learning.

  The maverick must be allowed to retreat to his private domain
and live in any manner he finds rewarding, whether his neighbors
would find it so or not.  He should be free to sit and watch
television all day long, if that's what he chooses to do.  Or
carry on interminable conversations with his cats.  Or use a
drug, if he chooses to do that.  As long as he does not
interfere with the freedom or well-being of any other person, he
should be allowed to live as he wished, and be left alone.

  I believe that the phasing out of laws regarding drug use by
adults, and an increase in the dissemination of truth about the
nature and effects - positive and negative - of different drugs,
the doing away with random urine testing and the perversion of
justice that is its consequence, will certainly lead to smaller
prison populations, and to the opportunity to use the 'drug-war'
funds for desperately needed social improvements and public
health matters, such as homelessness, drug dependency and mental
illness.  and the energies of law-enforcement professional scan
once again be directed towards crimes that deserve their skill
and attention.

  Our country might possibly become a more insecure place in
some ways, but it will also be a healthier place, in body and
spirit, with no further profit to be made on drugs by young men
with guns on the streets of our cities.  Those who abuse drugs
will be able to find immediate help, instead of waiting for six
months or more, in confusion and helplessness.  And research in
the area of drug effects and possible therapeutic use will come
alive again in our centers of learning.

  And we will once again be the free citizens of a free country,
a model for the rest of the world.

  Finally, I want to read an excerpt from a letter I received
only yesterday, a letter sent by a young man who has found the
psychedelics to be of great value to him in his growth as a
writer:


    Is it any wonder that laws prohibiting the use of psychoactive
  drugs have been traditionally ignored?  The monstrous ego (or
  stupidity!) of a person or group of persons, to believe that
  they or anyone else have the right, or the jurisdiction, to
  police the _inside_ of _my body_, or _my mind?_

    It is, in fact, so monstrous a wrong that, were it not so sad
  - indeed, tragic! - it might be humorous.

    All societies must, it seems, have a structure of laws, of
  orderly rules and regulations.  Only the most hard-core,
  fanatical anarchist would argue that point.  But I, as a
  responsible, adult human being, will _never_ concede the power,
  to _anyone_, to regulate _my_ choice of what I put into my body,
  or where I go with my mind.  From the skin inward is _my_
  jurisdiction, is it not?  I choose what may or may not cross
  that border.  Here I am the Customs Agent.  I am the Coast
  Guard.  I am the sole legal and spiritual Government of this
  territory, and only the laws I choose to enact within myself are
  applicable!!!

    Now, were I to be guilty of invading or sabotaging that same
  territory in _others_, then the external law of the Nation has
  every right - indeed, the responsibility - to prosecute me in
  the agreed-upon manner.

    But what I think?  where I focus my awareness?  What
  biochemical reactions I choose to cause within the territorial
  boundaries of my own skin are _not_ subject to the beliefs,
  morals, laws or preferences of _any_ other person!

    I am a sovereign state, and I feel that my borders are far
  more sacred than the politically drawn boundaries of any country.


To which I can only say amen.  That's it.  See you next week."

[I think Mr. Starr and Shulgin have just ripped to shreds any debating
opponents.  But, of course, I'm open to arguments against.  Anyone?]
--

"There are a number of us these days who do not seek deliberately to go
to prison but cherish a dream of being sent there to enjoy,
paradoxically, true freedom." (Anthony Burgess, _1985_)