For a fourth year running, the White House narcotics "blacklist" (officially the Presidential Determination on Major Illicit Drug Transit and Drug Producing Countries, released Sept. 14) named Venezuela and Bolivia as nations that have "failed demonstrably" to fight the drug trade, making them ineligible for US aid. Caracas and La Paz struck back angrily to the announcement. "Venezuela deplores the United States government's insistence on undermining bilateral relations by publishing this kind of document, with no respect for the sovereignty and dignity of the Venezuelan people," Venezuela's Foreign Ministry said, accusing Washington of a "permanent line of aggression against independent sovereign governments." Bolivian President Evo Morales said in a speech in the Andean region of Oruro: "The United States has no morality, authority or ethics that would allow it to speak about the war on drugs. Do you know why? Because the biggest market for cocaine and other drugs is the United States. They should tell us by what percentage they have reduced the internal market. The internal market keeps growing and in some states of the United States they're even legalizing the sale of cocaine under medical control." (EFE, Sept. 15)
This last claim is not true, and is rather an irony given that Morales himself has been a critic of prohibition, at least of coca leaf.
The report also again named Burma as having failed in its drug war responsibilities, but also saw progress there, finding that the regime has already eradicated more than three times the amount of opium than it did last year, and strengthened cooperation with regional and international partners such as the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Obama said that "given the government's demonstrated commitment to reform and promising signs of action on future poppy eradication, it is in the interest of the US government to grant Burma a national interest waiver"—meaning US drug war aid will resume there. (AFP, Sept. 15)
Obama reached the same finding regarding Venezuela and Bolivia, but both these governments refuse cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Drug War FAIL
Before Iraq
Before Vietnam
Before WW2,
They started the Drug War.
It STILL doesn’t work!
War is over if you want it!
Talk to your children!
Kids can ask some tough questions but those concerning prohibition are actually fairly easy to answer. Be straightforward: Explain concisely just how the unconscionable acts of parasitic prohibitionists at all levels of our bi-partisan police-state have raised gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootlegging;
Explain how these unconscionable prohibitionists have creating a prison-for-profit synergy with evil drug lords and terrorists;
How they were able to remove many of our cherished and important civil liberties;
How they’ve ensured that many previously unknown and contaminated drugs keep appearing on our streets, in our schools, and even in our prisons;
How they’ve overcrowding the courts and prisons, making it increasingly impossible to curtail the people who are really hurting and terrorizing others;
And how they’ve helped to evolve local street gangs into transnational enterprises with intricate power structures that reach into every corner of society, and with significant social and military resources at their disposal.
After you’ve explained all that: Show them how prohibitionists have manipulated well-meaning but gullible parents for decades; read them the following quote from Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”
“The State must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”
Finally, our children need to know that It’s always possible to prevent a dire situation turning into an irreversible and very bleak one; kindly explain to them what our very wise forefathers did back in 1933 —when they finally rejected the policy imposed on them by the exact same type of intolerant, hysterical, pathologically lying, criminally insane, corrupt, self-serving, control-freak bigots.
Educate, regulate, and tax!
Spam is over if you want it!
We agree with your sentiment, but you posted that exact same text to numerous other websites (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C), which violates our Posting Policy.
Don’t do that again.