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The Free Journal Volume 2 Issue 6
The Free Journal/ASCII Edition
Volume II, Issue 6
Copyright 1992 The Partnership for a Free America
(Individual articles copyright by author)
Editor-in-Chief: Sameer Parekh
(zane@ddsw1.mcs.com)
This is the Free Journal. Submissions are welcome. Some
characters have the high bit set. Distribute at will; cite authors.
(Or editors if no author is given.)
This is not meant to be an electronic newsletter. This is
meant to be an example of on-paper underground newspapers to educate
the masses about freedom and similar issues.
_______________________________________________________________________________
--
A Vision of the Future
--
I am sensing a new wave of change coming through the country.
This could be either good or bad. Previously I had noticed the seeds
of unrest in the disadvantaged communities, but I hoped it would not
come to this violence. I hoped that a leader would emerge among them
so that they may stop killing each other while their oppressors merely
watch on, gloating to themselves at the "stupidity" of the "lower
classes."
The government at this time thinks that it is in control.
There are no military threats to the United States. If the United
States wanted to interfere with the trade between two other independent
countries, if they like it or not, it can and does because of its
power. The people will soon realize that exerting this power to
satisfy the ego of a leader is an incredible waste of resources which
could be used to actually educate the young people instead of
subjecting them to the Public Indoctrination System where any vestiges
of individuality are wrenched out of the children, sometimes with
strong-arm tactics, if necessary.
It has been said that the 90's will make the 60's look like the
50's. The sixties effected change, but the power structure lashed
back, and we are where we are today. But the people have had a taste
of the wonder which is possible from a progressive return to the
individuality of their forefathers. They will not turn back.
Networks are spanning the globe opening up mass communications
channels which the authorities cannot control. People will connect
with one another. Barriers of race will be broken when people can
choose their own appearance in their virtual meetings with others. The
only problem in long-distance communication will be time zones. On the
network right now information throughput is doubling every year.
Within the next ten years, if the current rate of change does not
increase, which it probably will, thirteen thousand gigabytes of
information will have passed through the net. That's about 3 billion
pages full of information, or about one thousand large college
libraries of a few million volumes each. Will today's society be able
to comprehend such things? I don't think so. Something is going to
happen.
--Sameer Parekh
--
Martin Neimoller Revisited
--
First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE DRUG ADDICTS, AND I DIDN'T SPEAK UP,
BECAUSE I WASN'T AN ADDICT.
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE CASUAL DRUG USERS, AND I DIDN'T SPEAK UP,
BECAUSE I WASN'T A CASUAL USER.
THEN THEY CAME FOR THE HACKERS, AND I DIDN'T SPEAK UP,
BECAUSE I WASN'T A HACKER.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
-- Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
Capitalized portions by Sameer Parekh
--
"Drugzs"
--
Drugs are a vital part of American life. The entire American
society is obsessed with drugs, recreational and otherwise. 140
million people in the US use a lethal recreational drug which kills
100,000 people every year. Pharmaceutical companies are almost the
only companies which continue to do well during a recession--people
continue to get sick and want drugs to cure themselves.
If an American gets sick and goes to the doctor, will s/he be
satisfied if the doctor says, "Drink plenty of fluids and get some
rest"? Why would a patient pay 75 dollars for a visit to the doctor if
the doctor only tells him what he already knows? Most Americans would
not be satisfied unless the doctor prescribes some drug. Then they
think that the money has been well-spent.
Yet society has deemed that some drugs are not to be consumed,
and other drugs are to be allowed. While one drug may kill 100,000
people each year, remain legal, and actually be considered to be not a
drug by many, another kills 450,000 every year, and yet a drug which
kills absolutely no one is illegal and the subject of misinformation
campaigns directed by the companies which produce the more dangerous,
politically-correct drugs. A goal in the society is to be "drug-free."
I would never want to be "drug-free." If I get sick, I will use drugs
to help in my recovery. I am not going to let myself die because of
some "drug-free" principle.
Who is to say that one drug is not therapeutic and another one
is? While antibiotics clearly help fight bacterial infections, they
have their dangers if used improperly. Improper use of antibiotics
would build up a tolerance among the bacteria, making the drugs
ineffective. Similarly, d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25), if used
properly, can help rehabilitate violent criminals, help open up a
patient to therapy, and allow the human species to keep up with the
non-human technology it has been creating at an ever increasing rate.
(What use will be an incredibly complex computer if very few humans are
able to interact with it? Some say we have encountered the Information
Age. I call it the Information Overload. Something must be done to
allow the people to deal with the information with which they are being
bombarded.)
All drugs have dangers. Legal non-recreational drugs kill more
people than all illegal drugs combined. (The legal non-recreational
drug death rates are below or near 10,000 deaths per year. The legal
recreational drug deaths rates are over 500,000 per year, in the United
States alone. These numbers come from the National Institute on Drug
Abuse, a government-sponsored agency.) 80% of all cocaine and heroin
deaths are not due to the drug itself, but because of impurities in the
drug. (Which, of course, could be remedied with regulations on the
purity of heroin and cocaine sold, but it is much more difficult to
regulate a street drug dealer than it is to regulate Osco Pharmacy.)
I find it hard to believe many Americans who call themselves
anti-drug. I am sure that there are some people who don't believe in
taking drugs. I respect the fact that they refuse to be hypocrites.
These truly anti-drug people, however, do not constitute the majority
of the people who call themselves anti-drug. Again, every drug has its
dangers. Every drug has its benefits. A responsible decision is
decided upon with accurate information based on reliable scientific
study (not misinformation based on conjecture, half-truths, and
racism). And do you doubt the claims made in this article? Just ask
for the references. Try and see if you can find reliable double-blind
studies in the (limited) references presented by groups such as
D.A.R.E. I dare you to.
--Sameer Parekh
--
General Stuff
--
The Partnership for a Free America is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt
organization. With a few more memberships and donations, we will be
able to begin production of T-shirts for sale. If you would be willing
to purchase one, please contact Sameer Parekh or Drew Kinard.
On of the Partnership's goals will be the abolition of the
curfew law because they imply that those under 18 are not citizens of
the country who deserve all their rights as outlined by the Founding
Fathers. These laws are almost as discriminatory as the Jim Crow laws
of the early 20th century. Suggestions as to strategies will be
appreciated. (Civil disobedience tactics, etc.) New members are
always welcome. Contact Sameer Parekh or Drew Kinard.
To clear up any possible confusion, Sameer Parekh did not write
the article about BHT and Alcohol Dehydrogenase. This article was
written by bard@nntp-server.caltech.edu. It has been brought up that
BHT is a carcinogen (as are the chemicals in coffee). Decide for
yourself whether the carcinogenic risks outweigh the risks from
alcohol.
Once again, Parent CATS is advocating a dangerous practice.
The goverment threatens parents with criminal charges. This comment is
for parents--make a decision. Choose between a dead child, killed
while driving drunk to evade the authorities, or criminal charges based
on your advocacy of responsible use to avoid irresponsible abuse. (It
is the opinion of Sameer Parekh, however, that the risks associated
with alcohol use outweigh the benefits, but that is purely the opinion
of Sameer Parekh. Other people must choose for themselves.)
Apologies to Ms. Sugarman for falsely printing her name as Mrs.
Sugarman in Volume II, Issue 5. Any confusion which may have arised
from this is regretted.
AWAY IN THE SKY, beyond the clouds, live 4 or 5 Magicians. By
casting WONDERFUL SPELLS they turn the Most Ordinary Coach Trip into a
MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR. If you let yourself go, the Magicians will take
you away to marvellous places. Maybe YOU'VE been on a MAGICAL MYSTERY
TOUR without even realizing it. Are you ready to go? SPLENDID!
--
Who Legalization Would Hurt
--
Who would be hurt from the legalization of all drugs? The
people who would be hurt the most would be the gangs and drug dealers.
Just as the repeal of prohibition of alcohol eradicated the incredibly
high profit motive from the rum runners, the complete repeal of
prohibition will not allow the drug dealers to charge prohibitive rates
for the drugs. The drugs would be available at reasonable prices at
any pharmacy. The dealers charge these rates because of the legal
risks involved, and the dealers want compensation for the risks they
take. When was the last time you saw a shoot-out between liquor store
owners over turf rights? The profit will be taken from the drug
dealers and returned to the people of the community. Additionally,
inner-city children will not look up to the drug dealers because they
will no longer be rich.
Secondly, the law enforcement system would be hurt greatly from
legalization. The United States has the largest per capita prison
population in the world. This surpasses both South Africa's and the
former Soviet UnionUs prison population. Legalization would reduce the
money needed to be spent on law enforcement, and thus less police
officers would be needed because of the decrease in gang violence.
This would probably result in layoffs of the police, and thus it is not
in the police's best interests for legalization and less gang violence.
In addition, the prison population would go down, and less money would
need to be spent on larger prisons. This would also probably cause
layoffs in the prison employment sector, and thus it is not in their
best interests either.
Who gains from legalization? The people of the inner-cities
gain the mos. With legalization, drug prices would drop to reasonable
levels, and thus it would not be necessary for someone to steal in
order to afford to get high. Thus the only person being hurt by a
cocaine user is the user himself and no one else is hurt by the robbery
and murders which are taking place to pay for the prohibitive prices of
drugs. Also, the gang violence would be reduced because of the removal
of the markets from the street dealers to the pharmacies, and there
would be a lesser market for violent organized crime, resulting in less
drive-by shootings and innocent children caught in the cross-fire.
The rest of the people in the country would gain from
legalization because it would mean that the authorities have lost their
major excuse for the destruction of civil liberties in the country as
outlined in the Bill of Rights. The police would have no excuse to
search people's anuses just because they are coming from Nigeria. They
would have no excuse to steal a person's cash just because he's a
minority, and to them it is obvious that any minority who isn't poor
must be a drug dealer. The government would have to return to its
proper place in society from its current position as parent to all its
people.
Thus we see that the people who are hurt by legalization do
notJform the majority of the people in this country. Legalization
would be a step in the process of breaking the power lock in this
country to restore the governing of the country to the people.
--Sameer Parekh
--
Harm Reduction
--
The drug control buzzword in Europe these days is "Harm
Reduction," a logic that spurns legalization but also abandons the U.S.
metaphor of war. Its success is declared by police and health workers
alike because it draws drug users above ground while keeping in check a
far more deadly menace than any narcotic -- AIDS transmitted by dirty
needles.
In harm reduction embracing Holland, government figures show
the nation's addict population, smaller per capita than the U.S.'s, is
aging and not growing. HIV rates among injectors in the big cities
levelled off at 20 percent three years ago. (In New York the HIV rate
among junkies is around 60 percent.) In England's Liverpool, a harm
reduction pioneer hard hit by heroin, that rate is now 1.6 percent.
Harm reduction approaches take sometimes startling shape, as a
recent visit to The Netherlands and Liverpool revealed:
* Aggressive needle exchange. Backed by a well-endowed
national health system, 40 Dutch cities have syringe exchange programs.
Amsterdam alone swaps nearly a million syringes a year through clinics
and vans that crisscross the city, dispensing the heroin substitute
methadone, clean needles and AIDS advice. The mobile approach reaches
skittish users and also defuses citizens' Rnot in my neighborhoodS
attitudes toward permanent clinics.
In Rotterdam the health department has installed vending
machines to serve needle users when clinics are closed. Pop a used
needle in the syringe-shaped slot, and out slides a wrapped, sterile
replacement.
In Liverpool, the government-funded needle exchange got started
in 1986 by swapping bags of used needles with a major dealer. The
state issues plastic boxes to heavy users and even sellers, so they can
transport dozens of dirty needles safely back to the clinic, and get
more. * Health centers for ongoing addicts. "Drug services in this
country have been aimed at people who want to stop," says Allan Parry,
a founder of Liverpool's Maryland Center. "Now, because of AIDS, we
have to reach drug users who want to carry on. And that means we have
to change our services to suit their life-style." So his health clinic
sends savvy workers out to find drug users and not only swap needles
and hand out condoms, but teach them less dangerous ways of injecting.
The Center first attracts addicts by offering syringes, then ends up
treating abscesses and other conditions they would rarely have revealed
to the regular health care system.
* A Junky "Union." The Dutch government pays drug addicts to
fight for their rights, giving nearly $100,000 a year to the Amsterdam
Junkybund (Junky Union) ensconced in an old canalside office.
Headed by non-drug using Rene Mol, addicts press for late-night needle
exchanges and less police harassment. The Junkybund also advises the
government on its drug programs and helped work the bugs out of the
needle vending machine.
* Public places where drug use is allowed. In Rotterdam,
Father Hans Visser makes a spacious lavatory in the basement of his
church available to addicts, and refuses to speculate on what goes on
in the stalls. His logic is that "it is better than doing it out on
the streets," and gives a chance to reach drug users with treatment and
AIDS information, as well as religion. Motivated by similar logic,
Switzerland allows addicts to shoot up openly in a city park.
Holland's famed "coffee shops," where technically illegal
cannabis can be bought and smoked, are sanctioned refuges because, as
Dutch officials explain, they "split the market" so that a marijuana
buyer won't be urged to try dangerous stuff. Coffee shops caught
purveying harder drugs, like cocaine or heroin, are promptly shut down.
* "Flexible" drug enforcement. Holland's "drug czar"
Eddy Engelsman, perhaps Europe's leading harm reduction proponent,
argues that severely criminalizing drug use just drives it underground,
making health and crime problems worse.
The best approach, says Engelsman, is nuanced, pragmatic,
businesslike -- zakelyk is the Dutch word for all three rolled into
one. Holland's drug laws carry stiff penalties for users and sellers,
but police and judges are given wide latitude in how they are enforced;
the official goal is that the punishment should never outweigh the harm
that drug taking itself causes.
The Netherlands inverts the U.S. drug budget ratio, funneling
the bulk of its funds into prevention, treatment and research, funding
a wide range of rehabilitation programs, and a curriculum that teaches
kids the risks of all intoxicants. For fear of glamorizing illegal
drug taking's outlaw appeal, "We keep a low profile," says Engelsman.
"No mass media campaigns. No policemen into the school. No fingers
pointing, saying you shouldn't do this and that. Reduce the problem,
control the problem and DON'T MAKE A MORAL ISSUE OF IT." [Emphasis mine
--SP]
* Prescribed drugs for addicts. From his bland offices
in the town of Widness just outside Liverpool, psychiatrist John Marks
carries out the most controversial of all harm reduction approaches.
He writes out dozens of prescriptions for heroin, crack-style cocaine
and amphetamines for local addicts who declare no intention of
quitting.
It has been British policy since 1924 that the best way to
treat addicts is to wean them off drugs, but if that can't be done, to
prescribe whatever the doctor thinks they need. Marks is one of the
few doctors with the stomach to prescribe hard stuff, though. He
reminds that heroin addicts finance their habits by buying more than
they need, cutting it with "something nice and heavy, like brick
dust," pushing that to new recruits, thus expanding the industry.
Marks asserts that his prescriptions have undermined that criminal
pyramid scheme. "Nobody's going to pay a fortune to gangsters to get
rubbish and perhaps be threatened, when they can get pure, excellent
stuff from me for free."
Given a way out of the black market hustle, Marks argues, his
clients might now be able to imagine a future beyond the next fix, and
if that leads them to decide they do want to kick, Marks is there to
guide them into one of many free rehabilitation programs. His
willingness to cooperate with police -- he turns in patients he knows
are committing drug crimes -- plus the fact that heroin street sales
and drug-related crime has dropped in the Widness area, has the
powers-that-be on his side, says Marks.
While harm reduction methods can set an American's ethical
compass tumbling, so can the increasingly skewed casualty figures from
this country's own war on drugs. Although 80 percent of U.S. drug
users are white, the majority arrested are black. (Drug prosecutions
of white juveniles actually dropped 15 percent between 1985 and 1988,
while jumping 88 percent for minority youth.) The U.S. now
incarcerates its citizens at a higher rate than any other nation, and
three quarters of the new $10 billion drug war budget continues to go
to policing and prisons instead of education and treatment.
Middle-class cocaine use is down, but inner-city crack and heroin use
is on the rise and the HIV virus spread via dirty needles is today the
number one source of AIDS in the United States, hitting minority groups
especially hard.
Dr. Arnold Trebach, who teaches criminology at American
University in Washington D.C. and heads the nearby private Drug Policy
Foundation, argues that it is time this country began experimenting
with harm reduction techniques, for the simple reason that they save
more lives. "What the English and Dutch have taught me," he says, "is
that you can disapprove of drug use, but you don't have to hate
users."
-- David Beers
The following is a list of deaths by substance for 1990. (U.S. Surgeon
General's Actuarial Information)
Tobacco 360,000
Alcohol 130,000
Prescribed drugs 18,675
Caffeine 5,800
Cocaine 2,390
Heroin 2,147
Marijuana 0
Deaths caused by certain drugs listed on a per-user basis. (From James
Ostrowski, _Thinking_About_Drug_Legalization_. Cato Institute Paper #
121, May 25, 1989 $2.00.)
Tobacco 650 deaths/100,000 users
Alcohol 150 deaths/100k users
Heroin 80 deaths/100k users
Cocaine 4 deaths/100k users
