DRUG WAR NEWS NOT FIT TO PRINT

I have always marveled at how we spent almost $1 trillion taxpayer dollars since President Nixon declared war on drugs in 1972, and tolerate having absolutely nothing to show for that money. Worse yet: a recent poll indicates that 66 percent of us want to spend more money to fight drugs.

How can that possibly be?

Answer: Mainstream media sells us a war on drugs that they need a lot more than we do. Before you dismiss what I've just said, check my facts.

A glaring example of that sell appeared on the front page of last Sunday's New York Times (5/10/98) a headline article entitled "Dominicans Allow Drugs Easy Sailing."

Apparently the Times has rediscovered for twentieth time in fifteen years that the Dominican Republic is an "important" part of the route cocaine follows to the U.S.

As a test that this "news" article is really a revenue-inspired con job, review about five years of New York Times drug war articles and compare them to this one and the game becomes apparent.

Note that virtually every country in the world is mentioned as a drug- trafficking "problem," (some in multiple articles) ; likewise, every criminal cartel known to man; likewise, every international criminal ever "leaked" by a federal bureaucracy... yet the "news" story is basically exactly the same fill- in-the-blanks duplicate to the Sunday Times article, including a space for maps with arrows and diagrams to illustrate drug routes.

And it is not just the Times. This pro forma drug story is reprinted weekly by all the other mainstream magazines and newspapers and retold ad nauseam by every mainstream media broadcasting company. All deliver virtually the same message that the Times piece ended with: "...It's going to be a catastrophe..."

Now let's examine some major news stories from the past:

"SOVIET ACCUSED OF PLOT TO CONTROL WORLD'S DOPE SUPPLY," from the Universal News Service on February 20, 1931.

Or, "TONS OF ILLICIT NARCOTICS FROM EUROPE-NEW MENACE TO U.S., EXPERT REVEALS," also from Universal News Service, picked up by many US newspapers, 12/9/34.

I defy anyone to find a difference between these 64+ year old stories other than locations, names and quantities and the Sunday Times headline story. And these are only two of tens of thousands published during the past 75 years.

During my long career I was always struck by the startling difference between the reality of the so-called war on drugs, and the way it is presented to the world through easily manipulated media coverage. What I came to realize was that both the taxpayer funded bureaucracies and the mainstream media vendors of drug war "news" have a common customer, or as we say on the street, "mark" the American taxpayer.

This explains why in 1965, the federal and state combined drug war budgets were less than $10 million, and the current one is in excess of $50 billion,with absolutely nothing to show for it.

And this at a time that deserving children cannot afford a college education, the social security system is in danger of collapsing, hard working Americans cannot get health insurance, millions are without homes and adequate food, the national debt will impoverish future generations and our nation's public education systems have fallen behind most of the other industrialized nations.

I just can't wait to see the next thrilling drug war story.