Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
Posted on 01/11/2003 10:15:11 AM PST by tpaine
Ms. Nancy Snell Swickard - Publisher Shotgun News P. O. Box 669, Hastings, NE 68902
Dear Ms. Swickard,
I was very distressed to see the remark of one of your subscribers which you quoted on page 8 of your October 1 (1996) issue. The support of the "Drug War" by anyone who values the 2nd Amendment, and the rest of the Bill of Rights, is the most dangerous error of thinking in the politics of the "gun control" debate. This error is extremely widespread, although there have been some recent signs that some Americans are seeing through the propaganda of the Drug Warriors which affects all levels of our society.
Sadly, major players in the defense of the 2nd Amendment (like the NRA) show no signs of awareness of the part played by the Drug War in our present hysteria over violence. This is a serious error, because the violence produced by the Drug War is one of the main reasons that a majority of American citizens support gun control. Without the majority of a citizenry frightened by endemic violence, Mr. Clinton and his allies in the Congress would not enjoy the power they now possess to attack the Bill of Rights.
To understand the effect of the Drug War, we must understand it for what it is: the second Prohibition in America in this Century. I do not need to remind anyone who knows our recent history what a disaster the first Prohibition was. It is a classic example of the attempt to control a vice--drunkenness--by police power. It made all use of alcohol a case of abuse. It produced such an intense wave of violence that it gave a name--The Roaring Twenties--to an entire decade. It lead to the establishment of powerful criminal empires, to widespread corruption in police and government, and to a surge of violence and gunfire all over the land. And it produced a powerful attack on the Bill of Rights, including the most successful campaign of gun control laws in America up to that time.
Before the first Prohibition criminalized the trade in alcohol, liquor dealers were ordinary businessmen; after 1920 they were all violent criminals fighting for their territories. We had gang wars, and drive-by shootings, and the use of machine guns by criminals.
We now have the same effects of the first Prohibition in the present Drug War, and Americans appear to be sleepwalking through it with no apparent understanding of what is happening. It is testimony to the truth of Santayana's famous remark that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. We must understand that this has all happened before, and for the same reasons.
It is essential that defenders of the 2nd Amendment understand that the whole Bill of Rights is under attack by the Drug War, and that assaults on the 2nd Amendment are a natural part of that trend. What is the main premise of a gun-control law? It is that guns are implements which are too dangerous to entrust to the citizenry. What is the main premise of Drug Prohibition? It is that drugs are substances which are too dangerous to entrust to the citizenry. Both lines of reasoning say that because a few people abuse something, all Americans must be treated like children or irresponsibles. All use is abuse.
This is an extremely dangerous idea for a government, and it leads inevitably to tyranny. It is a natural consequence that such thinking will lead to attacks on the Bill of Rights, because that is the chief defense in the Constitution against abuses of government power.
Since the beginning of the Drug War, no article of the Bill of Rights has been spared from attack. There has been an enormous increase in police power in America, with a steady erosion of protections against unreasonable search and seizure, violations of privacy, confiscation of property, and freedom of speech. We have encouraged children to inform on their parents and we tolerate urine tests as a condition of employment for anyone. All who question the wisdom of Drug Prohibition are immediately attacked and silenced. These are all violations of the Bill of Rights. Are we surprised when the 2nd Amendment is attacked along with the others?
We understand that opponents of the 2nd Amendment exaggerate the dangers of firearms and extrapolate the actions of deranged persons and criminals to all gun owners. That is their method of propaganda. Do we also know that Drug Warriors exaggerate the hazards of drug use--"all use is abuse'--in the same way formerly done with alcohol, and extrapolate the condition of addicts to all users of drugs? That is their method of propaganda. Most Americans are convinced by both arguments, and both arguments depend on the public's ignorance. That is why discussion and dissent is inhibited.
Most Americans are moving to the idea that drugs and guns are evil and should be prohibited. Encouraging one way of thinking supports the other because the logic of the arguments is the same.
Why not prohibit a dangerous evil? If every drinker is a potential alcoholic, every drug-user a future addict, and every gun-owner a potential killer, why not ban them all? There is no defense against this logic except to challenge the lies that sit at the root of the arguments. Those are the lies promoted by the prevailing propaganda in support of all Prohibition. We cannot oppose one and support the other. To do so undermines our efforts because all these movements walk on the same legs.
If we do not explain to people that the fusillade of gunfire in America, the return to drive-by shooting, and our bulging prisons, come from the criminalizing of commerce in illegal drugs, we cannot expect them to listen to a plea that we must tolerate some risk in defense of liberty.
Why should we tolerate, for the sake of liberty, the risk of a maniac shooting a dozen people, when we cannot tolerate the risk that a drug-user will become an addict?
In fact, very few gun-owners are mass murderers and a minority of drug-users are addicts, but people are easily persuaded otherwise and easily driven to hysteria by exaggerating dangers. What addict would be a violent criminal if he could buy his drug from a pharmacy for its real price instead of being driven to the inflated price of a drug smuggler? How many cigarette smokers would become burglars or prostitutes if their habits cost them $200 per day? How many criminal drug empires could exist if addicts could buy a drug for its real cost? And, without Prohibition, what smuggler's territory would be worth a gang war? And why isn't this obvious to all of us?
It is because both guns and drugs have become fetishes to some people in America. They blame guns and drugs for all the intractable ills of society, and they never rest until they persuade the rest of us to share their deranged view of the evil power in an inanimate object.
They succeed, mainly, by lies and deception. They succeed by inducing the immediate experience of anxiety and horror by the mere mention of the words: Guns! Drugs! Notice your reactions. Once that response is in place, it is enough to make us accept any remedy they propose. An anxious person is an easy mark. They even persuade us to diminish the most precious possession of Americans, the one marveled at by every visitor and cherished by every immigrant, and the name of which is stamped on every coin we mint--Liberty. They say that liberty is just too dangerous or too expensive. They say we will have to do with less of it for our own good. That is the price they charge for their promise of our security.
Sincerely,
Amicus Populi
Sure. At the time, that was the primary concern.
But the courts have ruled that "to regulate" includes "to ban". As early as 1884, Congress banned the interstate shipments of infected cattle.
Any references you have on the commerce clause and it's history would be appreciated..
I will readily admit, I don't know a lot about it, and what I remember is some 40 years old, from elementary and high school history classes..
I have found the commercel clause doesn't come up very often during normal social converstations.
I can find no evidence that drug prohibition, begun in the early 1900's, has helped.
The addiction rate to opiates dropped by over 60% from 1880 to 1900 while still legal. Since 1900, the number of people addicted to either opiates or cocaine has tripled.
Meant to ping you, not Willam Terrell, to post #603
I'm sure James Madison would agree.
"Yet it is very certain that it [the power to regulate commerce among the several States] grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government"
--James Madison
Great supporting quote.. Thanks..
Inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c., are component parts of this mass."
"No direct general power over these objects is granted to Congress; and, consequently, they remain subject to State legislation."
Somehow, we have nuanced our way from Gibbons to Wickard.
I have found the commerce clause doesn't come up very often during normal social converstations.
Are you kidding me? All I have to do is mention Gibbons v Ogden and I get transformed into a chick magnet.
Chick magnet... LOL !!!
If the actual rate of addiction is up, it may well be a combination of factors.
Availability, certainly, could be one. More likely, though, is that the behaviour of addicts, once obvious to any who could see, is now relegated to areas not travelled by many who might become addicted, thus parents cannot point out the down side of addiction to their children as effectively as before. Pictures on the internet do not strike home like a sweating shaking junkie with the jones'.
Anonymity (gained largely with the demise of the more rural environments--small towns) has no doubt contributed as well, along with the erosion of the supoport of extended family as the culture has become more 'mobile'.
The previously unthinkable can be done without fear of sullied reputaion or familial retribution.
Children (adolescents) used to rebel in more tame ways, and one of the fruits of a society where the merely outlandish and dangerous has been replaced by progressively more extreme variants of 'extreme', is that rebellion now takes forms either unthinkable or unheard of a mere 40 or 50 years ago.
WHat prohibition has done, is drive the use, sale, and distribution, of drugs underground, create tremendous profits for the most ruthlessly lawless, and cause the deaths of both active participants, law enforcement personnel, and innocents caught in the crossfire.
At some point our society must weigh that toll against the presumed toll of deregulation, and decide.
WHat prohibition has done, is drive the use, sale, and distribution, of drugs underground, create tremendous profits for the most ruthlessly lawless, and cause the deaths of both active participants, law enforcement personnel, and innocents caught in the crossfire.
At some point our society must weigh that toll against the presumed toll of deregulation, and decide.
609Smokin' Joe
______________________________________
The power to regulate v. the power to prohibit
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1419654/posts
WHat prohibition has done, is drive the use, sale, and distribution, of drugs underground, create tremendous profits for the most ruthlessly lawless, and cause the deaths of both active participants, law enforcement personnel, and innocents caught in the crossfire.
At some point our society must weigh that toll against the presumed toll of deregulation, and decide.
609Smokin' Joe
______________________________________
The power to regulate v. the power to prohibit
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1419654/posts
The addiction figures are from the USDOJ, including the following mistitled article:
Legalization has been tried before, and failed miserably.
~snip~
It's clear from history that periods of lax controls are accompanied by more drug abuse and that periods of tight controls are accompanied by less drug abuse.
In 1880, many drugs, including opium and cocaine, were legal — and, like some drugs today, seen as benign medicine not requiring a doctor's care and oversight. Addiction skyrocketed. There were over 400,000 [=0.8%] opium addicts in the U.S. That is twice as many per capita as there are today.
By 1900, about one American in 200 [=0.5%]was either a cocaine or opium addict. [end excerpt]
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm
My calculations show that opiate addiction dropped from 0.8% in 1880 to at least 0.5% in 1900. If you toss out cocaine addicts included in the 1900 figure, the drop would be even greater. Now on to 2000:
_______________________________________
"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992." [980,000 is about 0.33% of the population]
--www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm
"The demand for both powdered and crack cocaine in the United States is high. Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year."
--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm
_______________________________
Using year 2000 figures from the USDOJ, and a population of 290,000,000, the rate of addiction to either cocaine or heroin is about 1.5%, or triple the rate in 1900.
How the hell did tpaine get banned but Roscoe(while not posting since 2004) and CJ still exist?
I considered tpaine a friend ... and i do miss him
Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here
Where did the DOJ get that number?
As I said before, you'll have to ask the DOJ, but it is the agency which should know. Do you have a more authoritative source?
"Do you have a more authoritative source?"
More authoritative than a DOJ estimate? Of course.
"The estimated number of current heroin users was 216,000 in 1996, 325,000 in 1997, and 130,000 in 1998."
-- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies, Results from the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, p. 18.
Wow! What a difference from your undocumented guess of 980,000. That really throws off all your comparisons, doesn't it?
Since the USDOJ chose the 980,000 figure to put on its website, is it not reasonable to conclude it thinks the figure more accurate?
"Since the USDOJ chose the 980,000 figure to put on its website, is it not reasonable to conclude it thinks the figure more accurate?"
IMO, the DOJ used those numbers for the same reason you did -- to support some previously reached conclusion.
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