End War on Drugs Letters to the Editor
Quincy Herald Whig
Quincy, Ill. 62301
Dear Editor:
"Those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success." says Bush. You’re on, George!
End the “War On Drugs”! Stabilize Afghanistan through legal opium, marijuana and hashish markets. They’ll produce these anyway - they’re the only things which make them real money - so let them do it above board for a change. After oil and armaments, “drugs” are the third largest cash market in the world. But it’s a black market! Strategically, don’t loud alarm bells go off? The UN estimates it’s worth at half a trillion dollars/year. This black market is the world’s greatest corruption engine. There will never be peace until it comes in out of the cold.
How did we get where we are? Follow the money. As the Iran-Contra and Bank of Credit & Commerce International (BCCI) scandals clearly showed, when the Reagan/ Bush I Administrations wanted to get around Congress - the Boland Amendment- to engage in extra-Congressional wars, all it took was a dip in the great ocean of black market drug money and bingo! - money for the Contras, money for the Mujahideen. Executive Branch proxy wars where the American people stay nicely in the dark as to what is really being done in their name. Or who pays for it or reaps the “benefits”.
The BCCI scandal showed the Reagan/ Bush I Administrations allowed the Mujahideen - i.e. Osama bin Laden - to launder drug money through the BCCI Bank in Pakistan to buy arms from US corporations and fight the Russians. Such a nice little trick! Only it brought the CIA, Islamic Jihadists, organized crime, various dictators, arms dealers and corporations together in a devil’s bargain which underlies the “blowback” of 9/11 and Bush’s folly in Iraq.
Congress has “the Power of the Purse” to serve as a check on Executive Branch warmongering. But if the Executive can just avail itself of a little laundered drug money to cancel that check then the “democracy” has lost control of the purse strings of war. “We the People” becomes “Me the Decider”.
The “War On Terror” and the “War On Drugs” are opposite sides of the same circular Equation of Corruption: “War On Terror “ / “Military Industrial Complex” = “War On Drugs” / “Prison Industrial Complex”. Strategically, to de-fund “terrorism” and cancel both sides of the above equation, the “drug trade” should be legalized.
Thank you,
Ned Behrensmeyer
6:40:37 PM 
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