How
the current official US drug Policy is confused,
hypocritical and
ultimately plays into the hand of
organized crime
The current US drug policy has come along way from the early
1920s when US first set up the US
alcohol prohibition. From there on
the US was an active supporter of the international initiatives to on
the regulation of drugs. These initiatives were broadly to eliminate
the circulation, production and use of some classified drug
substances as well as trade in the same. However alcohol prohibition
has not had many changes since 1933. President Nixon was the
initiator of the current ‘war on drugs’, which gave the law
enforcement powers to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs 1in
1970 and later to the formation of the Drug Enforcement Agency. Later
the Office of the National Drug Control Policy was set up by
President Reagan and its powers heightened by President Clinton. The
cost of the drug abuse and control effort has been running in
hundreds of millions of dollars.
There existed very high stakes efforts, at least going by
the senior US administration decree that drugs were outlawed in the
US. But as fate and private revelation would put it, some government
official were also secretly participating in the vice by either
funding, trafficking or facilitating its production. Earlier evidence
pointed to the Iran links. The money from these was allegedly being
used to fund the US foreign policy interest in some specific
countries such as in Afghanistan. Some states like the California
are on record for passing bills to allow for the use of cannabis as
natural medicine, a move that put the law and medicine at logger
heads. And the false pretence of using this drug has been causing a
steady arrest of citizen going by the statistics.
In the US, even possessing a pharmaceutical drug for use for
non- medical purposes is considered a felony. Today cannabis is
number four on the list of the most causes of apprehension in US.
But further interesting statistics show that most of these arrests
are racially biased. More black and Hispanics were targeted, yet it
is estimated that equal numbers and potential offenders.
Outside the US territory, there have been ‘proactive’
steps towards the war on drugs with the notable invasion of Panama
two decades ago, whereby its head of states was accused of being as
the ring leader of the vice. Curiously still, when two groups in
Columbia were positively identified to be participating in drugs, the
US is reported to have sided with one and financed it to attack the
other militarily. And while these two groups fought, the
paramilitaries seemed to be busy engaging in the illicit vice.
Sometimes back in 1986, there were strong sentiments of the Central
Intelligence Agency drug related involvement to the extent that money
from the trade was use to arm the agency. Worst news was still to
come in 1988, when a senate committee reported that some member were
involved in the drug menace to the extent of either financing or
accepting help from the dealers themselves. Again once some
trafficker were jailed, instead of the frozen funds being used to
fund humanitarian effort, there were leaked evidence that they would
be used to fund other dealers.
Gary Webb (1996) gave further indication of how drugs were
trafficked to L. Angeles for purchase of weapons amidst strong
denials by some quotas. The Wall street Journal ( January 1997) also
hinted that Bill Clinton was actively trying to conceal the vice
knowingly, and that he was known and in contact with one of the chief
architects Barry Seal who operated an airstrip. As fate would have
it, the same Barry Seal somehow finds himself a job at the CIA! And
having been frustrated by senior administrator above him, A CIA Gen.
Fredrick Hitz produced documentary evidence that was to attest to the
fact surrounding obstructed justice, abetting of drugs crimes and
utter knowledge of the successive developments by the US governments.
This report was later corroborated.
When the US went to war in the Afghan mountainous country
to topple the government, many people would not have been aware that
the US was earlier part of the problem. The were the makers of the
hardcore radical fighters, whom they supported to deal in drugs in
the 70’s and 80’s to enable them fight their arch rival the then
USSR. And typical to the adage of the hunter becoming the hunted, the
Afghan State found itself on the wrong pages of the US drug policy
laws when after the Mullah Omar government was toppled, they were now
ordered to burn out all the poppies that they were growing in