Legalize It
sez who? Well, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, for one. Or maybe I should say 'for many'. Check out their web site -- leap.cc. They have their heads on straight. I joined.

Why?
In case you flunked American History, or forgot, or whatever, there was this thing in the early part of the 20th Century called "Prohibition". It was an utter failure. It came about by way of a motivated, even fanatical, minority getting onto the ballot a measure for outlawing of alcohol, and an amused and apathetic majority not bothering to go out and vote because it was so absurd. Well, it passed. It became law. Serious law, written right into the Constitution. Of course that did nothing to reduce the demand, and a whole lot of American culture went crinimal. (I like that spelling for surreal subjects.)

And then ...
After a few violent years passed, the whole prohibition thing went into the trash where it belonged in the first place. We learned, or should have, that if you drive something underground, you turn over control of the situation to the undergrounders. And they're nasty.

So we have war ...
The Drug War. Are you as tired of this bullpucky as everyone else? Write your congressman and anyone else you think of and tell them to stop the war. There is only ONE way to do that. Take the money out of the picture. There is just one way to do THAT. Legalize. All drugs. You can regulate, tax, whatever, I don't care. Just take the criminal aspect out of the picture completely.

So who invented the drug problem?
The answer might surprise you, but it's quite clear: William Randolph Hearst. He was incredibly powerful and NOBODY would oppose him. There was no TV, and radio journalism didn't amount to much. It was all about newspapers. And any newspaper that opposed Hearst would find itself in an awkward situation: they wouldn't get any paper to print on.

When the measure for prohibiting a variety of drugs was presented to Congress, the major item in focus was cannabis, a.k.a. marijuana. There are worse drugs — alcohol, cocaine, opiates, tobacco — but the only one Hearst cared about was marijuana, and not because of anything at all to do with use as a drug. He was after hemp. He succeeded, and the votes in Congress were One Hundred Percent in favor of banishing the evil plant from the planet. It's such a menace, cripes — a single fiber can be three feet long. How could Hearst's massive timber holdings compete with that? Kill it!

In a column in Audubon Magazine in about 1999, Ted Williams wrote the best elucidation of the whole story I have seen yet. To find the story, google these three words: audubon williams hemp. Better yet, just click here: Incite