Jerry Ford has died. As always when you mention the life of Ford, the question of Nixon comes up. I have lots of beefs with Nixon's career. This is my biggest. Using not just private henchmen, but the power of government to kidnap and injure your political opponents under color of law.
"You know," Nixon said, " those who use drugs are the protesters. You know, the ones who get caught up in dissent and violence. They're the same group of people."
Nixon said something similar to Haldeman on the Nixon tapes with the additional proviso that he thought pot was no worse than the martini he was drinking.
For Nixon, the drug war was never about drugs. It was a scheme to attack his political opponents based on some cultural characteristic.
It has always been thus. Alcohol prohibition was in part an attempt to destroy the Democratic Machine which organized in saloons. Laws against smoking opium were instigated because Chinese smoked opium. White folks, who traditionally drank opium had no such prohibition.
Sadly the pattern hasn't changed much. Blacks, buy, sell, and use drugs in aproximate proportion to their population. About 12%. They make up something like 50 to 60% of the prison population.
I'm with Milton Friedman on this one. This whole stinking pile we call the drug war is totally immoral. It is about persecuting the unfavored, strictly power and control. Sadly we are getting that way with tobacco users as well. What? Forcing people out into the cold to have a smoke isn't persecution? Give me a break.
Let me quote Professor Whitebread form the last link. From a speech he gave in 1995 when tobacco prohibition was just gathering steam. What he said seemed at least moderately fantastic at the time.
And so, yeah, we will continue the War on Drugs for a while until everybody sees its patent bankruptcy. But, let me say that I am not confident that good sense will prevail. Why? Because we love this idea of prohibition. We really do. We love it in this country. And so I will tell you what I predict. You will always know which ones are going out and which ones are coming in. And, can't you see the one coming right over the hill? Well, folks, we are going to have a new prohibition because we love this idea that we can solve difficult medical, economic, and social problems by the simple enactment of a criminal law. We adore this, and of course, you judges work it out, we have solved our problem. Do you have it? Our problem is over with the enactment of the law. You and the cops work it out, but we have solved our problem.
Here comes the new one? What's it going to be? No, it won't be guns, this one starts easy. This one is the Surgeon General has what? --Determined -- not "we want a little more checking it out", not "we need a few more studies", not "reasonable people disagree" -- "The Surgeon General has determined that the smoking of cigarettes will kill you."
Now, all you need, and here is my formula, for a new prohibition every time is what? We need an intractable, difficult, social, economic, or medical problem. But that is not enough. There has to be another thing. It has to divide by class --- by social or economic class, between US and THEM.
And so, here it comes. '
You know the Federal Government has been spending a lot of money since 1968 trying to persuade us not to smoke. And, indeed, the absolute numbers on smoking have declined very little. But, you know who has quit smoking, don't you? In gigantic numbers? The college-educated, that's who. The college-educated, that's who doesn't smoke. Who are they? Tomorrow's what? Movers and kickers, that's who. Tomorrow's movers and kickers don't smoke. Who does smoke? Oh, you know who smokes out of all proportion to their numbers in the society -- it is the people standing in your criminal courtrooms, that's who. Who are they? Tomorrow's moved and kicked, that's who.
And, there it is friends, once it divides between the movers and kickers and the moved and kicked it is all over and it will be all over very shortly.
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Comments
I agree generally with your stance on Prohibition, opium, Nixon and all of that, except to point out that you are oversimplifying. Prohibition was much more about rampant moralizing than it was a disguised attack on political foes. Smoking opium was not about race but using it for entertainment, with no cloak of medical self-treatment, which the moralizers saw as a big distinction.
Similarly, Nixon probably really thought there was something more wrong with smoking pot and mainlining smack than there was with drinking. In a lucid moment he probably also saw the illogic of that position, but mindsets don't just go away.
But wrt tobacco, you are stretching. Tobacco smoke is annoying, it makes everyting stink, and may (or may not, who knows) even cause illness secondhand. As such it causes harm, and I'd rather have the harm focused on the one who chooses to engage it.
There is no right to smoke where others are, any more than there is a right to play loud music at a chess match, shout in a library, or swing a baseball bat in a curio shop.
However, I am wary of the people who push smoking bans, since many of them have the nannylike goal of protecting smokers from smoking as their true motivation.
BTW the moralizing was the disguise of the attack.
Check out the "persecuting the unfavored" link.
As to the "right to smoke". You are correct in a narrow sense. However, we now have laws in certain places that prevent smoking in bars and restruants no matter what the owner wishes.
On tobacco, see Robert N. Proctor's "The Nazi War on Cancer," a fascinating look at Hitlerian anti-smoking campaigns. Unlike pinkos, the heilers largely limited themselves to exhortation so, in this respect, American liberals are more authoritarian than the Nazi Party.
Bleepless · December 28, 2006 06:37 PM
I thought the prohibition on marijuana was twofold: first, because the paper manufacturers didn't want the competition from hemp (the Act pushed through regulated hemp production in a manner which required official approval— which was simply never offered), and secondly because "marihuana" was something those "deadbeat Mexicans" did.
Hmm. Seems your culture war theory has some merit to it.
My mother smoked 2 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day and died at the age of 90! She lived a very unhealthy life, smoking, eating fatty meats, and never exercising. But I'm sure the Pall Malls gave her breast cancer at age 89 and that she would be here today but for demon tobacco.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
I agree generally with your stance on Prohibition, opium, Nixon and all of that, except to point out that you are oversimplifying. Prohibition was much more about rampant moralizing than it was a disguised attack on political foes. Smoking opium was not about race but using it for entertainment, with no cloak of medical self-treatment, which the moralizers saw as a big distinction.
Similarly, Nixon probably really thought there was something more wrong with smoking pot and mainlining smack than there was with drinking. In a lucid moment he probably also saw the illogic of that position, but mindsets don't just go away.
But wrt tobacco, you are stretching. Tobacco smoke is annoying, it makes everyting stink, and may (or may not, who knows) even cause illness secondhand. As such it causes harm, and I'd rather have the harm focused on the one who chooses to engage it.
There is no right to smoke where others are, any more than there is a right to play loud music at a chess match, shout in a library, or swing a baseball bat in a curio shop.
However, I am wary of the people who push smoking bans, since many of them have the nannylike goal of protecting smokers from smoking as their true motivation.