"Just Don't Do It"

What the Hell is going on here?

This past week the media was talking about how Bob Dole was going to unveil a powerful new slogan to help fight the war on drugs. And he finally did at a special event.
The slogan is.... "Just don't do it."

Oh, yeah!

As a follow-up to the stirring "Just Say No." now comes "Just don't do it."

Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, but...

I can just see some black inner-city out-of-work teenager on crack hearing an 80-year-old rich white man who gets paid by the tobacco Industry saying "Just don't do it," and all of a sudden, everything falls into place. "That's it! That's the message I've been waiting for. I'm going to stop right now!"

A couple of days ago on C-Span, some republican congressman said that he was for mandatory drug testing for all US citizens. Oh, I can see that ! Send in your tax forms and include a urine sample. Well, they're welcome to my urine, but not packaged nice and neat in a plastic cup!

Dole has also been accusing Clinton of being soft on drugs because teen-age use is up. This is ridiculous because Clinton has already violated so many constitutional rights in his participation in the drug war, he would have to completely tear up the bill of rights to go any further.

But guess what. The President of the United States does not control whether people use drugs. Congress doesn't. Nobody goes to light up and says "Hmm... I wonder if the President would mind." And all Congress does is pass more laws with stiffer mandatory sentences, so that with the 1995 crime bill, it is actually possible to get the death penalty for merely possessing a certain quantity of certain drugs.

And guess what. People still use drugs.

The past two decades have seen an explosion in this hypocritical political so-called drug war that makes Vietnam look like a decisive victory.

People still use drugs. Some of you in the room are stoned right now. I'm not guessing, it's just a simple fact.

The rules have changed, is all. It's a little different than when I went to college. Pot was $15 an ounce for the good stuff. People pretty much smoked wherever they wanted in the dorms, and one time when I was with some friends who were smoking up a storm in the dorm common TV room, our university police walked by, looked in, asked if it was OK if they closed the door, and went on.

There were groups of students who smoked pot, and groups of students who drank beer. And the ones who smoked pot didn't put their fist through a wall or puke on their shoes.

Based on todays press, you'd think with that kind of permissive attitude, everyone would be dropping dead from overdoses, or turning into homicidal maniacs. But no. Then as now, only idiots went to class stoned, or drove under the influence. Some people had problems with moderation with drugs, just as with alcohol, and if they had good friends, their friends got them the help they needed. I admit that, as a musician, I enjoyed playing while stoned. But I only tried it once when I was working professionally in nightclubs. Spent the entire night going, "Am I playing this slower than usual? Maybe I am because I'm stoned. So I better speed up. But what if I'm not? If I speed up, everyone will know that I'm stoned. I better slow down. Damn, this is a great song. Wait, did I play that verse already? Oh, shit, I don't know where I am."

But we now have a hysteria in this country unmatched since McCarthyism. And guess what, all those people voting for tougher laws were in college with me smoking pot.

And with that hysteria is silence. It is political suicide to even suggest that maybe it would be a good idea to discuss various options other than our current drug war strategy.

Because this drug war is just too good. It's popular politically; it creates jobs for the drug enforcement branches; it provides income for them as well through seizure laws; it gives law-and-order hawks the excuse to cut back on constitutional liberties; and it provides drug king-pins with enormous sums of tax-free income. Because they're not the ones who get caught, and if they lose a shipment, they just increase the price. They know people will pay.

What has the drug war accomplished?

• Lethal overdoses, not from the drugs, but from the fact that the drugs are unregulated and expensive so often cut by the unscrupulous with dangerous chemicals.
  
• Increased crime from addicts who need to meet the increased cost of their habit.
  
• Increased use of guns as drug operations respond to the war by getting bigger and better weapons.
  
• Increased determination for drug operations to stay in business, because increased prices caused by the war cause increased profits.
  
• More people getting killed from bullets because of the war.
  
• Break-up of families as individuals (often fathers in poverty areas) are jailed from their participation with drugs.
  
• Victimization of the inner city as youths are given little hope for regular jobs, offered high-paying drug-related jobs, get arrested, go to jail and learn how to be better criminals and then go back to the street with no skills or job.
  Increased cost of prisons and arrests -- we spend $40 billion a year to make 1,350,000 drug arrests.
  
• Overcrowded prisons causing violent criminals to get out early.
  
• Loss of billions of dollars in potential tax revenue
  
• Lack of respect for law enforcement because of the unpopularity of drug enforcement.
  
• Lack of belief in what we're told, because so many know that lies are being told to them about drugs. The hypocracy is incredible. for every one crack-related death there are 300 tobacco related deaths, and as far as marijuana, the lethal dose is not known; no human fatalities have been documented.
  
  
• And, here's the good one, -- an actual increase in the use of certain drugs.
  Since President Nixon started the drug war in 1972 (probably to take our minds off Vietnam), annual cocaine use has risen from 50 tons to 300 tons
  

The Consumer's Union, the respected organization responsible for Consumer Reports has come out with a report:

"This nation's drug laws and policies have not been working well; on that simple statement almost all Americans seem agreed... They are the result of mistaken laws and policies, of mistaken attitudes toward drugs, and of futile, however well-intentioned, efforts to "stamp out the drug menace." [What we have in this country is] aptly called the "drug problem problem" -- the damage that results from the ways in which society has approached the drug problem."

Their recommendations were:

"1. Stop emphasizing measures designed to keep drugs away from people.
2. Stop publicizing the horrors of the 'drug menace.'
3. Stop increasing the damage done by drugs. (Current drug laws and policies make drugs more rather than less damaging in many ways.)
4. Stop misclassifying drugs. (Most official and unofficial classifications of drugs are illogical and capricious; they, therefore, make a mockery of drug law enforcement and bring drug education into disrepute. A major error of the current drug classification system is that it treats alcohol and nicotine -- two of the most harmful drugs -- essentially as non-drugs.)
5. Stop viewing the drug problem as primarily a national problem, to be solved on a national scale. (In fact, as workers in the drug scene confirm, the 'drug problem' is a collection of local problems.)
6. Stop pursuing the goal of stamping out illicit drug use."

[taken from the book "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do" by Peter McWilliams (available online at http://www.mcwilliams.com/)]

This is an incredible breakthrough in thinking about the drug problem that should cause a reevaluation of our entire approach. Do you know when this report came out? 1972!

Dammit, this was supposed to be a funny rant with lots of subreferencing and in-jokes, but I keep getting carried away with all this serious stuff and details. I must be on drugs.

there's a whole lot more I could talk about, including why Dupont Chemicals and William Randolph Hearst (the newspaper publishing giant) conspired to make marijuana illegal for their own financial gains, or how legalization could save forests from being cut down, or help aids, glaucoma and cancer patients,

Now remember, you can be against drugs and still be against the war on drugs. They're two separate things. Get rid of the violence and hypocracy and instead focus on drug treatment and education. They're the only things that work on people who cannot control their drug use. Laws have no positive effect.

And also, please don't go away from this thinking I am suggesting, or giving permission for you to take drugs. I'm not. For one thing, despite what I believe, you can get your ass thrown in jail (as some of you have). And just like alcohol, cigarettes, and coffee, you may be subject to being addicted.

But there's one thing I want you to learn from this. A change has to be made. It will be up to you to do it, because our politicians don't have the will.

So I am unveiling my own slogan for you.

When politicians talk about how they are controlling crime through the drug war
JUST DON"T BELIEVE THEM
When they talk about other politicians being soft on drugs
JUST DON"T BELIEVE THEM
When they tell you that they are taking away your freedoms to protect you from the drug menace
JUST DON"T BELIEVE THEM
When they say they can cut drug use in half by passing stiffer laws
JUST DON"T BELIEVE THEM
When they say they didn't inhale
JUST DON"T BELIEVE THEM
When they say they can solve the problems by having you say "Just don't do it"
JUST DON"T BELIEVE THEM

© 1996 Peter Guither.