FROM FLATBUSH TO THE STREETS OF KANDAHAR
Tuesday, 17. November 2009
**Updated November 22
The revelation1 that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s brother Wali is on the Central Intelligence Agency payroll and is a known drug lord has complicated President Obama’s already torturous internal debate on Afghanistan and dredged up questions about long-standing ties between the C.I.A. and illegal drugs.
Though controversial, there is evidence that from Laos2 to Nicaragua3 to Afghanistan, and many places in between, the C.I.A has a long history of links to illegal drugs as a means to buy allies and fund off-the-books missions.
The C.I.A first backed Afghan drug lords in 1979, according to David Musto and Joyce Lowinson, members of the White House’s Strategic Council on Drug Abuse, who wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed on May 22, 1980:
“We worry about the growing of opium in Afghanistan or Pakistan by rebel tribesmen who apparently are the chief adversaries of the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Are we erring in befriending these tribes as we did in Laos when Air America (chartered by the Central Intelligence Agency) helped transport crude opium from certain tribal areas?”4
Drug Enforcement Agency reports in 1980 showed Afghan rebel movements were “determined in part by opium planting and harvest seasons.”5
One U.S.-backed drug lord was Yunas Khalis. “He spent most of his time fighting, but the wars were not primarily with the Soviets,” writes Alexander Cockburn and Jeffery St. Clair.6 “Instead, Khalis battled other Afghan rebel groups, the object of the conflicts being control of poppy fields and the roads and trails from them to his seven heroin labs near his headquarters in the town of Ribat al Ali. Sixty percent of Afghanistan’s opium crop was cultivated in the Helmand Valley, with an irrigation infrastructure underwritten by USAID.”
The Soviets withdrew. But there have been consequences for the short-term strategy of “the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend,” when your new friends are opium kingpins or religious extremists. The civil war that followed brought the Taliban to power, with its monstrous mistreatment of women and girls. That did not stop the U.S. from negotiating with them over a pipeline deal, which eventually fell through.7
The Taliban then hosted Osama bin Laden in the run-up to 9/11 and the current eight-year U.S. war began. The stated purpose is to prevent the Taliban from regaining power so it cannot again facilitate another strike against the U.S. But security analysts are far from convinced that would likely happen again.
The war has the support of some Western women’s rights groups who contend that preventing a Taliban comeback is enough reason to spill blood and treasure. Many Afghan women disagree, arguing that NATO has made life worse for them. The U.S. backed-Karzai and tribal chiefs are little better. Girls now go to school. But Karzai signed a law making it illegal for a Shia wife to refuse sex with her husband, who can deny her food if she does.
Washington says it’s trying to interdict 92 percent of the world’s opium that fuels organized crime and enslaves 15 million addicts around the world, mostly in Europe, Russia and Iran. But opium production continues to increase and provides substantial funding for the religious Taliban. According to a new U.N. report, the Taliban derive as much as $160 million a year through imposition of an ushr tithe on opium production and trade.
“We are already a narco-state,” Mohammad Nader Nadery of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission told the Christian Science Monitor. “If the governors in many parts of the country are involved in the drug trade, if a minister is directly or indirectly getting benefits from drug trade, and if a chief of police gets money from drug traffickers, then how else do you define a narco-state?”
Abdul Karim Brahowie, Afghanistan’s minister of tribal and frontier affairs, told the paper “the government has become so full of drug smugglers that cabinet meetings have become a farce.”8 After Malalai Joya, a Member of Parliament, denounced drug traffickers and warlords in government, she escaped several attempts on her life.
The U.S. supports this drug-lord-infiltrated government with significant aid—a total of $5.1 billion in fiscal year 2009, according to the Congressional Research Service. C.I.A. budget outlays are secret. But the Pentagon provides 56 percent of this total fighting the drug-lord-supported Taliban partly by hiring illegal militias owned by drug lords, according to a recent New York University study. “The use of unregistered [private security companies] and militia groups by NATO … and US military contingents is widespread, “ said the report, The Cost of Security in Afghanistan. “Many of these [private security providers] serve as ready-made militias that compete with state authority and are frequently run by former military commanders responsible for human rights abuses or involved in the illegal narcotics and black market economies.”
Among the owners of these militias are Karzai’s brothers, Wali and Hasmat, as well as Hamid Wardak, the son of Defense Minister Rahim Wardak; Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Nangarhar province; and Hajji Jan Mohammad Khan, the former governor of Uruzgan, the report says.
In August, the Pentagon put 50 Taliban-tied drug traffickers on a list to be captured or killed. But it singled out none tied to the government.
The war in Afghanistan seems like a large-scale Brooklyn turf battle among petty drug gangs with government and Western-backed drug lords battling against the Taliban’s for control of a $65 billion a year illegal industry.
U.S. and C.I.A. intentions might well spring from a sincere belief that it takes getting in bed with anyone to stop another 9/11. But these drug lords may well be taking the U.S. taxpayer for a ride, gladly welcoming American support to help them gain opium market share.
The report says illegal, armed militias hired by the U.S. are better paid and equipped than the Afghan national army. The report estimates that $600 million are paid to these militias a year, though the exact amount is unknown. “Financing armed, alternative power structures fulfills security needs in the short-term at the cost of consolidating government authority in the long-term,” it says.
The Afghan Ministry of Interior has issued operating licenses to only 39 of these groups “to prevent their involvement in criminality,” but “the interests of Afghan elites and the international community have proven an obstacle to strengthening and enforcing the existing national regulatory and legislative framework.” In other words, the report says the U.S. and Afghan leaders have fostered the criminality of these groups.
Is this a temporary arrangement to defeat the Taliban after which the U.S. would then turn against its own drug lords? That hardly seems likely given that a military defeat of the Taliban would require as many as 800,000 U.S. troops, according to the U.S. Army’s new field manual on counter-insurgency. In fact there has been a direct correlation between the growth of NATO forces and the growth of the Taliban, spurring the argument that a reduction of the one will lead to the reduction of the other.
In some past cases, the C.I.A. used laundered drug money to finance operations. A Congressional investigation could determine whether that is still happening. Former C.I.A. director George Tenet complained at the beginning of the war that the agency’s efforts were being underfunded9. Where did those bags of cash given out to warlords come from?
At the very least, the Pentagon and the C.I.A. are supplying arms and money to keep the Afghan drug trade going. I asked a senior U.N. official familiar with the U.N.’s anti-drug policies whether he thought the C.I.A. was profiting from the Afghan drug trade. “You have good instincts, follow your guts,” he told me.
Officials are either in denial, or want to hide from the taxpayers their unwitting generous support of misogynistic drug gangs to fight the Taliban. I asked a senior U.S. official at the U.N. about the payments to Karzai’s brother. She told me she knew nothing about it.
I then asked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at a press conference. He wouldn’t comment on Wali Karzai, but said, “I have been repeatedly urging, whenever I had an opportunity of meeting President Karzai in the past, that he must make sure to eradicate these corrupt practices, including opium cultivation and opium trafficking. … Unless he addresses these corrupt practices prevalent in Afghanistan, it will not be possible to expect to have credible governance.”
It’s no wonder President Obama is taking so long. There is no solution: only bad short-term outcomes, some worse than others.
If he pulls out the troops and the Taliban resume power the Republicans would skin him alive in the mid-term and next presidential election. He cannot send the 800,000 troops the Army manual says is needed. If he deploys 40,000 more they will get bogged down, casualties will mount, with no resolution to the war, and he’ll suffer politically too. I’m not sure he likes the idea of forming alliances with drug traffickers, but what would be the consequences if he publicly confirmed the Wali Karzai story and said those days were over?
Perhaps the president might listen to the Afghan people. They want development, an end to occupation, to corruption, to civilian casualties at NATO’s hands and an alternative to both the Taliban and the government.10
That means Obama needs to find a counterforce to drug gangs on all sides. One idea might be to support Pashtun and Baluchi movements.
The Pashtun Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan were part of Afghanistan, Afghans claim, for a thousand years until the Afghan Amir ceded control to Britain after the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Britain made it part of British India in 1893. The border was known as the Durand Line—named for Mortimer Durand, the British India foreign secretary, who negotiated it. It split the Pashtun people into two different countries.
The same happened to the Baluchis further south. When Pakistan succeeded British India in 1947 it took over the border provinces, where it is currently fighting the Pakistani Taliban, with the fate of Pakistan and possibly its nuclear arsenal at stake.
One option for Obama is for the U.S. and the C.I.A. to fight the drug lords on all sides and instead foster a popular Pashtun alternative to both the Taliban and the Pashtun Karzai. The White House has talked about a so-called “small-t” Taliban strategy. But there are no “moderate” Taliban. They are extremists by definition that do not represent most Pashtuns who are fed up with the corruption, violence and trafficking of both sides.
There is a huge pool of disaffected people to work with. But Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency has made a point of killing “moderates” that try to form political groups by inviting them in and then disposing of them, say Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould.11 “It’s a very nasty business and the U.S. has been supporting it for 30 years,” they told me. “Most Afghans that work for the Taliban do it for the money, not for politics.” In that sense, though they may be working for the Taliban, they are not ideological members.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates threatened a few days ago to cut off aid to Karzai’s government if he does not fight corruption in earnest. That is a start that could lead to withdrawing aid from drug lords, starting with Karzai’s brother, and supporting anti-Taliban Pashtuns, even with arms.
This might be underway. The New York Times reported on November 21: “American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban. The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged the American and Afghan officials that they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the country.”
If indeed these independent militias are not tied to the drug trade, with NATO they could battle drug gangs on both sides to eradicate the crop while development aid is poured into alternative industries and agriculture. The C.I.A. could drop its adopt-a-drug trafficker program. If you defeat drugs, you could defeat the Taliban and Afghan government corruption. Let them thrive and this conflict will carry on, unless the U.S. and NATO could live with a narco-state, as long as its friends, and not the Taliban, are running it.
Joe Lauria is an author, foreign affairs correspondent and investigative reporter. He has covered the United Nations for 19 years for numerous newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Montreal Gazette and the Johannesburg Star. Joe is a member of the Sunday Times of London’s investigative unit. He is co-author of A Political Odyssey, a look at America’s defense industry and the false threats it thrives on.
1 Very possibly leaked to the New York Times by U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who crossed swords with Karzai, or Peter Galbraith, the deputy U.N. representative, who was fired by the U.N. for speaking out against Karzai’s attempt to steal the Aug. 20 presidential election. This article appeared 11 days before the scheduled second round of the election, made necessary because Karzai was found to have cheated in the first round, and appeared designed to hurt Karzai’s chances of re-election. He was declared the winner when his challenger withdrew because Karzai refused to replace corrupt members of the so-called Independent Electoral Commission.
2 See James Mills, The Underground Empire, p. 33 and Joe Trento, Prelude to Terror, p. 31-38 and Alexander Coburn and Jeffery St Clair, Whiteout, p. 246-247.
3 Alexander Coburn and Jeffery St Clair, Whiteout, p. 1-60.
4 ibid, p. 260
5 ibid, p. 260
6 ibid, p. 256
7 See Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Search for Bin Laden, by Jean-Charles; Dasquie, Guillaume Brisard, 2002.
8 Scott Baldauf and Faye Bowers, “Afghanistan riddled with drug ties,” Christian Science Monitor, May 13, 2005.
9 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, p.435.
10 WHAT AFGHANS WANT by Andrew Garfield, Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 30, 2009
11 See Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, Jan. 2009
T Says:
At this point, one thing in the Democrats vs. Neocons Battle is this. Nobody wants to be labeled as being the one who stuck the U.S. with ANOTHER Vietnam.
The neocons will do anything they can to destroy Obama. The Democrats are trying to counterspin this to balance two things. One, showing that they do care what the public thinks(most are against this war). And two, not appearing to be weak against “terrorists”.
But no matter what happens, both sides have millions in “campaign donations” for the 2010 elections.
Sibel Edmonds Says:
@T: Thanks for your comment. Indeed, it does look very grim. The most important, macro-level issue: our absurd & highjacked foreign policy.
Okay people please let us know what you think…
Metem Says:
I agree with Mr. Lauria’s assessment. The only quibble I have is that he says on the one hand, that there aren’t any ‘moderate’ Taliban and then he says that most people who work for the Taliban do it for the money. I think I know what he means but the question deserves some discussion. If he means that making deals with Taliban leaders wouldn’t work because they in particular are extremists then he may well be right. But I think it probable that many disenfranchised people we’re currently calling Taliban aren’t that bad. Particularly the ones who are only there because they need the money or because their daughter or brother was killed by NATO bombs. In fact I’ve suspected for a while that the term ‘Taliban’ is just being used as a catch-all for anyone in Afghanistan who shoots at us. So if used in that sense there probably are some ‘moderate’ Taliban. Where ‘moderate’ means if we left they probably would prefer to live relatively peacefully and not necessarily throw acid in women’s faces. But all in all Mr. Lauria is right the whole thing is a giant mess with no easy way out.
T Says:
Another point to keep in mind. Obama\’s still using the generic term \"terrorist\" to justify Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Taliban were responsible for 9/11. Hang on a minute. They had nothing to do with that. Yet, if anyone dares to question that, instantly you\’re labeled as being \"unpatriotic.\" Congress votes for the Patriot Act. Pelosi and some other Congresspeople go to Guantanemo and want more severe torture (if that\’s possible) done.
Then, more comes out about that. And now, when it\’s time to deal with the consequences of their actions (detainees being tried in the States), they can\’t be bothered.
Unfortunately, this is another example of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. Imagine if some Congressperson\’s wife/husband/kid was picked up and held for being a \"suspected terrorist.\" Can U.S. citizens be rendered overseas and held in secret prisons? If this happened, how much do you wanna bet they\’d be screaming bloody murder about it? And then, because it\’s \"a story with legs\", the MSM could actually be bothered to hype it.
Just out of curiousity, I checked with my health coverage re: PTSD treatment. They said if you were diagnosed and had started treatment six months prior to being accepted, they\’d cover it. If not, they won\’t.
Most PTSD survivors I know don\’t instantly get diagnosed and start treatment. Also, most health coverage limits therapy to a certain number of sessions per year. Have you ever heard of a PTSD survivor that can be cured in 20 sessions? It doesn\’t work that way.
Then again, Congresspeople have the best coverage money can buy.
T Says:
FYI: 10% of the U.S. population has some form of PTSD.
Does anyone say this is a national emergency that justifies single-payer health care right now? Nooooo…..
edit_mommies Says:
I don’t feel like any of the Afghan people will be climbing in American fighter jets and fighting the crazy farmer militants.
Sibel Edmonds Says:
@Metem: Very good point. Check out Asia Times; there is an excellent piece there on your points: Various groups from Central Asia joining the Taliban…
Bill Says:
‘bags of cash.’
Not only where did it come from, but when.
remo Says:
If I could just offer a thought or two on why discussion traffic is down?
Maybe its fear. Being out of depth. Not knowing. The intimidation of just not knowing enough. you must remember reading these letters[from the front] strikes a deep shock . not being in any loop of actually knowing , and without means to contribute except donate and read, we read and donate . Words fail at this level.
The diseases of a corrupt society stolen by covert operatives leaves a numb anger., even knowing the state of the union for quite some time previous, dosn’t equip me, out here in the fog of the world, to know how to deal with it. It becomes a personal choice. to say anything to anyone.
Besides. words have been and are being corrupted by the speakers of them, wrapped in constitutional disney world or whatever. Its a reality thing. The presidents men are wall street. Obama is wall street. Somewhere it dosn’t add up. somewhere, it does.
There is high crime afoot at a rate unknown. You are telling us and I believe you. it spins us into unknowing, if we don’t know it already. This is a criminal enterprise. At a critical time. For instance, 911 was an criminal act, an inside job. Everybody knows it but nobodies getting up to tell it. And when they do, it just gets added to the spin. Revolving doors of spin so fast that you don’t know who or what or when or where…That in itself is a diminishing factor in ‘folk’ wanting to open their mouths. Justice cannot deal with the levels of crime going on. Obvious! So how can we? of course we know we have to front up. SOMEHOW. take it on, but what is the break point for a silent sad sick population to get up and do that? with one voice? The empire is practised in crowd behaviour, and are watching for the known signs . By all counts have prepared for it. the worker ants are in their caves,confused, secretive, doing whats been told of them. the armed forces are part of a corporate state. Media its PR arm
Waking up to this nitemare in a cold sweat and struggle to deal with it. Maybe thats why the comments are down. We are all sweating too much? Or even worse., in denial?
Mizgin Says:
Excellent piece! Read this, listen to the Boiling Frogs podcast with Gould and Fitzgerald, and then check out the interview with Malalai Joya and you’ll have everything you need to know about America’s second Vietnam.
Then, with Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard in mind, and the only thing I can think is, “Oh, the irony!”
JamesLaffrey Says:
Sibel, I love your website. The posts followed by the deep-knowledge discussion in the comments make this a vital site in
- correcting the “history” we’ve been fed, and
- informing our future efforts, which I hope include governing this country after we defeat the bankster-corporate-military-intelligence complex.
ZicaTanka Says:
How about legalizing the production and use of heroine and all other street drugs in the U.S.A.? Does the author or others agree that this is the responsible path to take?
ZicaTanka Says:
I meant heroin. We already have our legal heroine (Sibel).
Ishmael Says:
Great informative piece. Mizgin is right about reading this and listening to Gould and Fitzgerald to truly understand this latest round of “The Great Game”.
Zen tasks us to see the world as it IS, without illusion. This website is part of that process. To some, it may seem we are but lone voices, crying in the wilderness. To them, I say, voices are being heard. I try to make it a point to talk up this site wherever I comment and blog. I also have great new questions to embarass my congressman’s staff with when I call them. The key lesson to me is to spread the word. So call in to talk shows on the appropriate subjects and point to this site. Post it on your blogs. Tell your friends and relatives. Their power is in trying to keep us isolated. Fight that by doing your part to build community. Send copies of this article to military families who may want to know the real reasons their kids are dying in Afghanistan.
Remember, For Every Enemy a Hero is Fashioned. To the elites, I offer this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53JkTgdTKd0
ian Says:
So in effect, dont we have a situation in which the US army is ostensibly fighting the taliban and yet another arm of the US, the CIA (questionable if it is really responsible to the US or just a rogue organization at this point), fighting each other? the CIA is not about to let its cash cow get decimated. If we really wanted those fields could be sprayed with a modern defoliant and that would be the end of it. but the CIA has to make sure their income source is not compromised so on the sly are they giving aid to the very enemy our army is supposed to be fighting? seems like a MAJOR conflict of interests. there have already been reports of taliban being picked out of harms way by unidentified helicopters and such. what we need is to end the CIA. nothing but trouble
Miguel Says:
ZicaTanka:
I don’t think legalization of heroin in the U.S. is politically feasible in the short term. Even if it was, I doubt legalization would solve any of our problems in Afghanistan.
Personally, though, I think it is ridiculous we have DEA and FBI agents trying to stop the drug trade while we have other federal agencies actively fostering it. Maybe we should take a chunck of the budget of DEA and FBI used for interdicting drugs and use for treatement clinics for addicts.
There is not, nor has there ever been, a “war on drugs”. This is a myth created by government propoganda. If it were a true war, you would not hear stories of the CIA and State Department blocking investigations into certain drug lords.
Simon Says:
Between 2006-2008 I worked with Jeanie Bockleman at Our Father’s Porch with heroin and methadone addicts. I also met Wayne Madsen’s publisher at Trine Day. Folks heroin is among us and because of its low profile, not addressed by an overworked police force. Crack and meth are much more visible problems because of the violence they spawn. Heroin just quietly kills. The addicts I met were down and out in their forties in Salem, Oregon. Madsen’s publisher documented how the intent of getting soldiers on pot and heroin in war theaters was to keep business going when they got back home. Now they have a little pill in Texas that was selling for a couple of dollars, a mix of aspirin and heroin. Because of the unregulated dosage, teens were dying when the dosage was suddenly upped. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone seeing ‘The Soloist’ saw the depravity in downtown L.A., much of that linked to heroin.
Sibel Edmonds Says:
@Bill: They call it ‘Black Operations’ with ‘Black Budget’:-) With billions of dollars in secret operations,milllions of classified documents, State Secrets Privilege… it sure looks like a democratic government, you know ‘The government of the people, for the people, by the people’!
@ Remo: Interesting perspective. Most people rather live in denial; enjoy those hotdogs during the Fourth of July, and …The truth hurts. However, this is the site for the Irate Minority…which happens to number in 10,000s, and I want to hear from them all!;-)
@Mizgin: Right on! I’ll be interviewing Pepe Escobar this evening. We’ll talk about Afghanistan and of course poppies. Right now he is in Bejing (covering Obama visit for ATimes).
@James Laffrey: Welcome to the site, and thank you for the encouragement. Hope you’ll visit us daily and share your views here…
@ Zica:
)) Hopefully we’ll start with ‘pot’…
@Ishmael: So eloquently expressed. Sometimes I need to read/hear those words, when things get too grim & negative. so good to have you on this team.
I’ll be back shortly, my toddler is demanding her post-breakfast milk!
ZicaTanka Says:
Miguel, I agree with your assessment of the political reality and the “war on drugs”.
Still, I believe the long term goal of legalization and regulation is the most responsible thing to do. The effect on war would be to reduce motivation and resources for war. This would apply not only to Afganistan, but to our cities and towns (and privatized prisons) right here in the US.
If domestic drug policy is part of the conversation, maybe there’s a chance that the political reality will change. Especially when the MSM can no longer provide cover for the high level govt. officials doing drug deals with warlords.
ZicaTanka Says:
@Sibel: Agreed and I think pot’s on its way.
Do you like your new title? “Our Legal Heroine”
ZicaTanka Says:
I haven’t tried heroin, so I don’t know which one is more addictive.
Joe Lauria Says:
Yes, I could have better expressed the issue of \\"moderate\\" Taliban. I\\\’m saying that Pashtuns who join the Taliban for money and not for ideological reasons aren\\\’t really Taliban, in much the same way many Eastern Europeans joined Communist Parties only to get a better job. These Pashtuns are the ones who could be pried away from the Taliban, but as Gould and Fitzgerald pointed out, the ISI, with US backing, have opposed such a strategy for decades.
I would also like to point readers to an important piece by Gareth Porter called The CIA\\\’s Afghan Payroll, at http://www.counterpunch.org/porter10302009.html
which further explains in detail how the US funds and arms drug lords in their fight against the Taliban. I think Americans in Afghanistan could have good intentions, even in the CIA, believing they are fighting to protect the US from another 9/11. But in fact it appears they are being used by some sides in their battle with the Taliban for control of the opium trade.
Miguel Says:
ZicaTanka:
As a father, I am very leery of all drugs being legalized. On the other hand, I do believe strongly in legalization (or at least decriminilization) of marijuana. Not only do I believe the negative societal effects would be minimal, but if it is taxed it could be a boon to revenue.
But, in any case, I think we can all agree that if we\’re going to look into our children\’s eyes and tell them \"Just Say No\", we ought to be able to tell the CIA thesame thing.
ZicaTanka Says:
Miguel, I share your concerns and think marijuana is less dangerous than many other street drugs. I think most people are still afraid to legalize most of them.
I would argue that more people die from gunshot wounds than overdoses when you consider the black market involved with these drugs. Addiction is a MEDICAL issue, not a criminal one. People are going to buy, sell, and use all of these drugs whether we like it or not, so the million dollar question becomes:
Who do you want selling these drugs?
a) The pharmacy or certified business
b) Your kids’ friends at school
c) Who knows
Also consider the quality of the product if your kid ever got a wild hair.
It’s pretty scary to imagine legalization, but to me it’s the only responsible thing to do and it can’t be as bad as the criminal (in so many respects) drug policies we have now.
T Says:
Here’s a point re: legalization that everyone’s missing.
How do you make this work? One key is to stop the stupid “distinction” between alcohol and drugs. The last time I checked, alcohol is a drug. Any reputable mental health/medical professional will tell you that. If you agree with that, then why do many people constantly say there’s a difference?
Because of a stereotype. Junkie=skid row bum. And since I’m neither of those, then I must be ok.
Hang on a minute. If you need your fix of caffeine or nicotine every day, you’re an addict. Why is it that AA and other 12-step programs never use any holistic tools to help people stay sober? They’re using cigarettes, coffee and candy as substitutes for booze.
If you mention this to them, what’s the reaction?:
Who the hell are you to criticize us?
Why do you need to do it this way?
Because this is the way it’s ALWAYS been done. (Kind of like “American politics”).
Unless you make this a key point in legalization, it’ll never work.
T Says:
Here’s another point to consider.
Treatment is a big business. Many reputable treatment centers will either say no to health coverage. Or, coverage is very limited.
Then you have others who say that their program is way better than traditional ones. Ex: In Malibu, a ex-TV producer now runs his own treatment center. If your program is that great, the how come all of your ads are on after midnight on cable?
Others are reputable and actually do a good thing. Eric Clapton has a treatment center in the Caribbean. Excellent all around. Yet, they don’t take health coverage.
There’s a British expat doctor in the States with Doctors without Borders. He runs a free health clinic that gets hundreds of people a day. He wants to make it nationwide. But he can’t. Why? Because it’s a threat to the AMA’s power and profit.
Why doesn’t Obama highlight him in his push for single-payer?
arealjeffersonian Says:
I have mixed feelings concerning legalization of drugs, but regardless of that, there is no excuse for our own government to be in the drug business – period.