DRUG POLICY NOTES
by Sam Smith
How We Came to Hate Coca
Douglas A. Willinger, who has written on drug issues, offers some background
on Bolivian coca production: "Hard" drugs--e.g. "heroin"
and "cocaine"--have evoked great fears, leading people to advocate
or acquiesce to more repressive and expensive drug laws and drug law enforcement.
Yet prior to prohibition, opiates and cocaine were widely used as safely
as aspirin and caffeine are now. Because we are so conditioned to react
to the powder forms of these drugs, we forget that more direct modes of
ingestion--sniffing, smoking, and injecting--were formerly a relatively
rare phenomenon.
Prior to the twentieth century's "war on drugs," most people using
these drugs took them in dilute form, whether as raw plant material, or
plant preparation of comparable potency. Such plants and their popular preparations
were widely recognized medicinal agents, worldwide.
These substances have long and positive histories predating their criminalization
by U.S. federal statute via the 1914 Harrison "Tax" Act and successive
laws, and were used throughout the medical community as effective, cheap,
and safe treatments for a variety of ailments.
Opium poppies have been taken medicinally for thousands of years-topically,
smoked, and even brewed as a tea. The Extra Pharmacopoeia (the British counterpart
to the U.S. Pharmacopoeia) cited Coca as a "nervine and muscular tonic,
preventing waste of tissue, appeasing hunger and thirst, relieving fatigue,
and aiding free respiration ... useful in various diseases of the digestive
and respiratory organs ...."
Meanwhile, the wine of coca, Vin Mariani, became the most widely praised
plant preparation of the time. Vin Mariani's creator, Angelo Mariani was
hailed by Pope XIII as a "benefactor of humanity" for making coca
available around the world.
Any honest program of harm reduction must go beyond the narrow-minded discussion
of today's "hard drug problems"--heroin and cocaine hydrochloride--to
look at opium and coca, and to reveal the drug war's most intense effects--shifting
markets to infinitely more dangerous concentrated substances, while the
natural forms are virtually forgotten.
Coca leaf prohibition only serves such political interests as the tobacco
industry--an early recipient of this USDA derived government campaign against
the "menace" of a substance once widely sold as a tobacco habit
cure.
If You Can't Bomb Baghdad, Go After a Coca-growing Andean
One of the places where the American empire can still exercise its will
without annoying interruptions from allies and the UN is in Latin American
countries such as Bolivia.
Back in the Bush administration, a staggering $2.2 billion was appropriated
for an "Andean Initiative" to achieve three great objectives:
more democracy, greater economic growth, and a reduction in coca growing.
As it turned out, the last proved the most attractive, and so we have since
been involved in a form of low intensity warfare against that dreaded enemy:
the Andean farmer.
Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America with a life expectancy
of 60 and a stunning infant mortality rate of 75 deaths per one thousand
births. There are an estimated 60,000 coca farms and another 200,000 people
who are part of the coca economy. To get at them, the U.S. has used some
disreputable ways it has developed elsewhere, such as training police and
military in the brutal arts. It also helped the Bolivian government write
Law 1008.
At least fifty percent of the prison population is incarcerated as a result
of this law, most of the imprisoned (as in this country) are low level growers
and dealers.
It is not hard to put someone in jail under Law 1008, since it presumes
one guilty until the completion of the judicial process--which means in
some cases up to five years. One can be jailed the entire time with no recourse,
even should the trial result in acquittal. Acquittals are not easy to come
by since reports by police are taken as proof automatically admitted at
trial.
Part of the irony of this all is that there is no evidence that coca itself
is addictive. You need to use 41 chemicals just to extract cocaine from
the coca leaf and for each kilo of cocaine you need about 350 kilos of coca
leaf.
The coca leaf has all sorts of positive attributes. It is used as a stimulant
and to ward off hunger and thirst. It is also used for ritual purposes and
to ease the effects of high altitude. It is rich in vitamins, helps to cure
dysentery, ulcers and indigestion, and has been incorporated into more than
30 different products.
Such is the madness of America's "war on drugs." The next time
Madeleine Albright gives one of her sanctimonious little speeches about
the rule of law, remember Law 1008 and the wicked farmers of the Andes.
Andean Information Network
Casilla 4817, Cochabamba Bolivia,
(591-42) 24384, paz@pino.cbb.entelnet.bo
Drug Policy Foundation,
4455 Connecticut Ave NW #B-500, Washington DC 20008
202-537-5005 Fax: 202-537-3007, dpf@dpf.org
Drug Reform Coordination Network
http://www.stopthedrugwar.org/
Now Can Gary Webb Have His Job Back?
The CIA might be in a little trouble if it had to fill out income tax forms.
Under its definition, a non-employee of the agency in-cludes "assets,
pilots who ferried supplies to the contras, as well as contra officials
and others." Under such absurd rules, even though the CIA was slipping
Noriega payments greater than the President's salary, the Panamanian boss
remained an independent agent.
Not only would the average IRS agent look askance at such a transparent
argument, the CIA would find little relief in product liability law either.
Its denial of connection to the spread of drugs in the U.S. is analogous
to a major automobile manufacturer denying liability for a defective car
part because it came from a sub-contractor.
In recent testimony before Congress, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz
did admit something. Here's what he said: "Let me be frank:"
There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion,
cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who
were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity or take action
to resolve the allegations.. . .[But investigators] found no evidence...
of any conspiracy by the CIA or its employees to bring drugs into the United
States.
If you deconstruct the Newspeak of this statement, Hitz almost admits a
key point of repeated charges concerning CIA involvement with drug dealers
since the end of World War II: namely that the agency simply looked the
other way when it came across a drug trafficker who might be useful. It
did not "in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships"
with these traffickers nor did it "take action to resolve the allegations."
While the agency may not have conspired to bring drugs into the country,
it certainly has been criminally negligent in permitting people who are-verbal
contortions notwithstanding-de facto employees or sub-contractors to continue
their trade with impunity.
Marijuana Clinics
Arcata, California, according to that state's Attorney General, has the
only legal cannabis club. If your town is having trouble legally providing
medical marijuana to patients, the good green folk of Arcata invite inquiries
to any of the following:
Jason Browne: Humboldt Cannibis Center 707-825-0839 · Mel Browne: Arcata
Police Chief 707-825-2190 · Nancy Diamond: Asst. City Attorney 707-826-8543
· Jason Kirkpatrick: Vice Mayor 707-826-1688.
Drug Busts . . .
Incidentally, the leading drug involved in vio-lent crime is alcohol: 21%
of violent inmates were under the influence of booze-and nothing else-at
the time of their offense. The next most important drug in violent crime:
cocaine and crack. But only 3% of violent criminals were under the influence
of these drugs alone at the time of the crime.
-National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse http://www/casacolumbia.org.
Gulag America
AMerica imprisons more of its people than any other nation. Here are some
recent stats on the American gulags:
Number of persons in prison in 1971: 200,000
Number of persons in prison today: 1,200,000
Number of mentally ill persons in prisons today: 200,000
Percent of Alabama's population that is black: 25%
Percent of Alabama's prison population that is black: 55%
Percent of Massachusetts drug offenders who are black or latino: 85%
Percent of U.S. population that is black: 12%
Percent of federal drug offenders who are black: 35%
-U.S. News & World Report, Boston Globe, Criminal Justice Policy Foundation,
Birmingham Post-Herald, Detroit News
"Drug Policy Notes" is taken from The Progressive Review On-Line,
"WASHINGTON'S MOST UNOFFICIAL SOURCE," a service of The Progressive
Review, 1739 Conn. Ave. NW Washington DC 20009, <ssmith@igc.apc.org>
202-232-5544 Fax: 202-234-6222. Editor: Sam Smith, Copyright 1998.
The Progressive Review On-Line and archives are found at: http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/
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