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| Why We Must Not End Prohibition |
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Posted by FoM on February 27, 2002 at 16:29:01 PT By M. L. Simon Source: Rock River Times 
I know enforcing prohibition sounds just like the opposite of what I have been preaching for years in my personal life and for the last year here in this paper. There is a very sound reason for this new attitude. It is a very old reason: money.If we end the drug war, a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on it will get hurt. I'm not talking your average street-level drug dealer or the police officer who might not find a job because of reduced crime. I'm not even talking about the lawyers who will be looking for a new set of clients when the million or so people arrested for drug possession every year become rather ordinary citizens again. I'm talking about your mother or grandmother, whose stocks will drop like rocks when drug money no longer supports the stock market. Let us do what Deep Throat suggested and follow the money. The kind of money we are talking about is not your billion here and hundred million there. I'm talking big money. A trillion dollars a year, or more. This is not your Cayman Island Bank-type money or even Swiss Bank-type money. This requires some place to dump the money where it won't be noticed. The biggest money-laundering island in the world—Manhattan. Why are stocks still selling at outrageous multiples despite a recession? Boom or bust, the hot money has to go somewhere. The U.S. of A. has two things the hot money people desire: a stable currency and the ability to enforce its laws around the world. Think of what the hot money means to the American economy. A lot of ill-thought-out projects that turn out to be resource wasters get funded. But to the hot money people, a decline of 50 percent means they still have laundered half their money. What a disaster for an honest business. What a great deal for hot money. But America is addicted to this hot money. The ability to tolerate so much failure means America has to advance economically faster than anywhere else because we get efficient faster. This is one great American advantage over the rest of the world. We can let go of our failures. This is what bankruptcies and hot money do for the economy. So we have this great engine for economic progress, but it is fueled at its core by narco dollars. Do we root out the drug business by legalizing all drugs (with certain ones still under a doctor’s supervision), or do we keep prohibition—with all its attendant miseries and racism—going so our stock market and economic system doesn't collapse? Does the money mean more to us than doing the right thing? Is our world power so important that we need to keep this vicious game going? I first got turned on to these questions by reading a series of articles written by Catherine Austin Fitts, who is a former Assistant Secretary of the Federal Housing Commissioner under Bush 1, a former managing director and member of the board of directors of Dillon Read & Co, Inc. She is currently the president of an investment advisory firm Solari, Inc. The articles can be read here: http://narconews.com/narcodollars1.html - http://narconews.com/narcodollars2.html - http://narconews.com/narcodollars3.html This week’s saying: If the 1920s plus the 1990s teaches one thing, it is this: “It’s not the drugs, stupid, it’s the prohibition.” If the 2000s teach us nothing else, it will teach us: “It’s not the drugs, stupid, it’s the money.” Ask a politician: Do you support drug prohibition because it finances criminals at home, or because it finances terrorists abroad? “The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper into our lives than most people believe. It’s possible they are calling the shots at all levels of government.” - William Colby, former CIA Director, 1995 This week’s politician: Senator Arlen Specter (R) PA M.L. Simon is an industrial controls designer and independent political activist. Source: Rock River Times (IL) Related Articles: The Drug War Book - M.L. Simon How The Terror War Took Your Rights Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #9 posted by Sudaca on March 01, 2002 at 11:20:42 PT |
| Well, decriminalizing one at a time might be a solution if it the illegal drug market were equally divided.. however Pot accounts for a much higher percentage than anything else (that'w why the core of the WOD is about MJ in spite of it being the least harmful of all recreational substances. So legalize pot and the illegal drug market suffers its greatest blow. The only alternative I can think of , much harder to swallow, would be a complete amnesty to those (and their money) involved in the trade of the substance to decrim, which would allow them to recognize the existing revenue so that it could still be reinvested; it means that the same players which are funneling dirty money into the economy can still control that investment flow; it means leaving the forked-tounged sobs which currently pull the strings, on top. Why? The money in the trade will still exist because there's a market for drugs; legalizing means cutting off the flow to the established channels, which are circulating that money into the legal economy (for their own benefit of course!). the fear is that redirecting that flow (by making pot legal) will hurt the legal economy because the old trafficks will be out of their business, their profits will surely be affected first and foremost, and their money laundering schemes will be out of fuel. que bronca, this doesn't give me pleasant dreams anymore [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #8 posted by kaptinemo on March 01, 2002 at 06:51:27 PT:
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| as to the enormity of the problem. Last year at the NORML conference in Washington DC, The Good Doc Russo, The Observer and myself had reached the exact same conclusion...and for precisely the same reasons as stated in this article. How do we, the 'harm reduction' people, reduce the awful harm associated with government and economic institutions addicted to the DrugWar? The extent of this addiction is frightening; it reaches into the very autonomic nervous system of the military/industrial beast that has been running things for 50 years. Interrupt that flow of money, and the beast may well behave like someone addicted to barbiturates; enter into convulsions and die...and take everything plugged into its' hide along with it. And as centralized as our society is now, the impact won't be glacially slow and gradual, but felt within days. We as a movement have been focusing largely upon the immediate effects of the DrugWar, most notably the ruined lives, the civil liberties infractions and the unlawful deaths of children committed by zealous DrugWarriors and their political 'fellow travellers'. But a much, much larger problem exists. One that can literally destroy, not mearly one country, but the entire planetary economic infrastructure. I'd really like to know what such luminaries like Milton Friedman would have to say on this...because we will wind up facing this, sooner or later... [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #7 posted by Dan B on March 01, 2002 at 04:10:16 PT:
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| I understand why someone might think that this article works against our cause. In fact, the opposite is true. This article works to our advantage because in the guise of supporting prohibition, it in fact undermines it by hitting it at its most vulnerable point: the truth. More than anything else I have read on Cannabis News (and that includes thousands of articles), this one reaches into the heart of the totalitarian control we have increasingly experienced over the past thirty years: money. The fact of the matter is that M. L. Simon (by proxy, actually these things were first illuminated by Catherine Austin Fitts) is telling us exactly why the Republicans and Democrats both want to keep prohibition alive: because they know what will happen if they do not. Fortunately, this article gives us links to the three-part article written by Fitts which tells us that, yes, the American economy is propped up by drug money, but no, repealing prohibition does not have to end in an economic collapse. She recommends repealing prohibition gradually (e.g., one drug at a time) and emphasizes the economic benefits of ending prohibition once and for all--benefits that stem from having safer communities, less fear of one's neighbors and of one's government, etc. I recommend that everyone click the links in the above article. This three-parter is a real eye-opener. Dan B [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #6 posted by Sudaca on February 28, 2002 at 14:37:02 PT |
| for a second consider that Mrs. Fittts analysis is correct. What does this imply? The illegal drug market is propping the American economy, and the pensions for the baby boomer generation; so, ending prohibition would cause a stock crash that would make the great depresssion look like the little pout .. no use complaining to the authorities since they're onto the deal; they MUST protect the status quo for they profit from it and the country's economy profits from it.. what are you left with? the DEA can't be successful in its endeavors either, for the same reasons stated above. what to do? [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #5 posted by live_or_die62960 on February 28, 2002 at 13:35:04 PT |
| whos side are you on? If cannabis were legal it would be a multi-trillion dollar business. The POWER would go back to the people. Clean the environment and we would not need oil that supports terrorists I mean corrpuret America. The federal government and government are two different intities. One uses the same tactics as Adolf Hitler The other seeks TRUTH through self-knowledge. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #4 posted by unknown pleasures on February 28, 2002 at 13:24:06 PT |
| Holy crap man, i think this guy might be... sane. Wow, man, a breath of fresh air in an empire of bull$hit. Sick... gotta get away from that smell... America Reeks... [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #3 posted by blaze on February 28, 2002 at 05:23:34 PT:
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| Thank you so their is someone besides me who can see [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #2 posted by DdC on February 27, 2002 at 21:54:25 PT |
| Prohibition Inc. http://boards.marihemp.com/boards/politics/media/37/37825.gif Why I Support Cannabis Prohibition? Maintaining Dysfunction The Money Drug [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by mayan on February 27, 2002 at 16:45:29 PT |
| I love Ruppert's site(copvcia.com)...he has balls the size of grapefruits! "Dirty Money" Foundation of U.S. Growth & Empire http://www.copvcia.com/free/economy/053101_banks.html [ Post Comment ] |
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