There will be a United States senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs hearing “Law Enforcement Responses to Mexican Drug Cartels” Please FAX them today your opposition to continuing the war on drugs.
Majority Office
Phone:202-224-7703
Fax:202-224-9516
Minority Office
Phone:202-224-5225
Fax:202-224-9102
Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs
Majority Office
Phone:202-224-0558
Fax:202-228-0623
Minority Office
Phone:202-224-5972
Fax:202-224-9102
Senate Judiciary Committee
Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs
DATE: March 17, 2009
TIME: 10:30 AM
ROOM: Dirksen-226
Following is the letter that I faxed to the Committee and Subcommittee chair and minority leaders.
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United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
March 16, 2009
RE: Law Enforcement Response to Mexican Drug Cartels hearing
Dear Chariman Patrick J. Leahy, Ranking Member Arlen Specter and Judiciary Committee Members:
On Tuesday March 17, 2009 the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the topic of “Law Enforcement Response to Mexican Drug Cartels”. The real topic should be the United States congress continued support for the drug prohibition that gives the cartels, and terrorist armies of the world, unfettered access to billions of dollars a year in funding. Funding that incites gangsters to anarchy. funding that would not exist without the insistent complicity of the United States congress with its imposition of the prohibition against responsible regulation of the intoxicant drug markets.
The prohibition by congress against regulating the criminal and terrorist anarchy out of the distribution of intoxicant drugs violates the most fundamental guarantees of the United States Constitution. At the same time prohibition provides significant tangible “aid and comfort” to America’s sworn enemies. Support for the war on drugs by the United States Congress is, I firmly believe, tantamount to an act of treason against the United States of America.
It is the prohibition that imposes a regulatory vacuum that gangsters, cartels and even stateless terrorist armies are able to capitalize on and thrive in.
In 2003 the United Nations estimated the global retail drug market to be worth $320-billion a year and the United States accounted for 44% of $141-billion a year. Congress prohibition against regulation of this massive market forbids responsible adult supervision of the markets leaving sales in the hands of abusers, addicts and gangsters. The least responsible people in our society.
The biggest reason that the United States and Mexico are having the problems that we are having on the border is because the drug black market is so lucrative that it inspires entire industries dedicated to circumventing our best security efforts. Black market profits so huge that they encourage anarchistic levels of blood letting. We could end this national security and public safety debacle today by regulating the criminal and terroristic anarchy out of the distribution of intoxicant drugs but the treasonous United States Congress just says no!
In May 2003, then DEA assistant administrator for intelligence Steven W. Casteel told the Senate Judiciary Committee: “Of the 36 groups designated by the State Department as foreign terrorist organizations, 14 (or 39 percent) are connected to drug activities, testified Steven W. Casteel, assistant administrator for intelligence of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
He said they range from Middle Eastern terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, the Shining Path in Peru and the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines.”
These known terrorist groups are materially strengthened by congress continuing the war on drugs.
According to the Oct. 2007 report to the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute titled “Opium and Afghanistan: Reassessing U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy”, analyst John R. Glaze found that “..an estimated 70 percent of the Taliban’s income now comes from protection money and the sale of opium.”
If the government would end the prohibition against public health based medical regulation of hard drugs it would materially weaken America’s sworn enemy, the Taliban, without firing a shot or sending more troops to Afghanistan. The U.S. government just says no. And so it is the government and congress that is providing a multi-billion dollar ‘aid and comfort’ subsidy to the Taliban and other stateless terrorist organizations that support themselves in part or entirely with profits derived through the government enforced and maintained drug black markets.
“creating chaos and instability”
Further, the 2004 Congressional Research Service report, “Illicit Drugs and the Terrorist Threat: Causal Links and Implications for Domestic Drug Control Policy”, enumerated five specific ways that the illegality of drugs supports terrorism.
“The international traffic in illicit drugs contributes to terrorist risk through at least five mechanisms: supplying cash, creating chaos and instability, supporting corruption, providing “cover” and sustaining common infrastructures for illicit activity, and competing for law enforcement and intelligence attention. Of these, cash and chaos are likely to be the two most important.”
Insanely, that same report concluded:
“American drug policy is not, and should not be, driven entirely, or even primarily, by the need to reduce the contribution of drug abuse to our vulnerability to terrorist action. There are too many other goals to be served by the drug abuse control effort.”
What goals can conceivably be more important than reducing “our vulnerability to terrorist action”? We certainly are NOT protecting children from drugs by leaving sales in the hands of users, abusers, addicts and gangsters. We could put drug sales in the hands of responsible regulated adult supervision but the congress just says no.
Instead, congress insist that the markets be left to addicts and gangsters. So that the morals and ethics of addicts and gangsters dictate access by children to drugs. Protecting children with the current policy is absolutely not a priority.
In fact the congress has known since the 1990’s that bin Laden and the alQaida are flooding the west with heroin as an asymmetric weapon specifically targeting western children. Literally! As the World Trade Center and Pentagon still smoldered Sen. John Kerry told reporters, “That’s part of their revenge on the world,” Kerry said. “Get as many people drugged out and screwed up as you can.”
Congress knowing this, and keeping the prohibition policy in place makes children nothing more than cannon fodder in the war on terror with addiction being accepted collateral damage.
The earliest open source confirmation I have of this is 1998, the Indian Times in a story titled “Heroin in the Holy War”.
The crop will be opium and the farmer will be Osama bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist in the world. Bin Laden, accused by the United States of bombing two of their embassies in East Africa this summer and a string of other attacks, sees heroin as a powerful new weapon in his war against the West, capable of wreaking social havoc while generating huge profits, according to sources in eastern Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
In 2003 Newsweek gave the alQaida campaign a name ‘silent jihad’. “Some militants view opium as something more than a source of cash; they say it’s a legitimate weapon in what they call a “silent jihad.” Khurshid, a 20-year-old Nangarhar native, says drugs are Afghanistan’s way of striking back at the West for sending “liquor, obsceneTV and pornographic films” into Afghanistan: “Immoral Western culture destroys the minds of our children, so it’s only just that we export opium and heroin to destroy Western youths.”
The U.S. congress continued prohibition against the regulation of the distribution of intoxicant drugs intentionally provides this asymmetric tactical ‘aid and comfort’ to America’s sworn enemy, alQaida. Treason! Knowing all of this, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee’s support for the war on drugs amounts to treason against the United States of America.
And just in case even all of this is too oblique in Sept. 2006 Afghan expert New York University professor Barnett R. Rubin told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “The international drug control regime, which criminalizes narcotics, does not reduce drug use, but it does produce huge profits for criminals and the armed groups and corrupt officials who protect them. Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies.”
“Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies.”
How much clearer does it have to be before the United States Congress decides to rethink the failed national security hypocrisy of a drug war policy?