cannabisnews.com: Drug Money





Drug Money
Posted by FoM on March 15, 2000 at 17:08:54 PT
By Arianna Huffington 
Source: Salon Magazine
With our foreign policy toward Colombia hogtied by campaign finance and business interests, the war on drugs could be better waged against Washington.On Thursday, the House of Representatives will vote on a $1.7 billion emergency-aid package for escalation of the war on drugs in Colombia. 
Initiated by the White House and enthusiastically backed by the House Republican leadership, it is a product of the drug war's perverse priorities and another example of the disturbing link between campaign cash and public policy. Let's start with the cash being spread around Washington to help grease the wheels for the aid bonanza. The Colombian government hired Vernon Jordan's law firm, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld (which he has since left), to stump for it on Capitol Hill. Indeed, when the House Appropriations Committee met last week to consider the White House proposal, a member of the committee, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., noticed that an Akin, Gump lobbyist was in attendance. He must have gone away happy because the committee not only approved the president's $1.2 billion request but added an additional $500 million to the pot. The Colombians have other powerful allies in Washington. Most persistent has been a collection of multinational corporations with operations in Colombia -- including Occidental Petroleum, BP Amoco and Enron -- that have been lobbying both Congress and the administration for a big-bucks package that would serve their business interests there. And speaking of business interests, more than $400 million of the aid will be spent on the purchase of 63 helicopters manufactured by two U.S. firms -- Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of United Technologies, and Bell Helicopter Textron -- that have also been playing the Capitol Hill money game. In the past two election cycles, Textron and its employees donated close to a million dollars to both Republicans and Democrats, and United Technologies gave more than $700,000. "It's business for us, and we are as aggressive as anybody," one Bell Helicopter lobbyist told the Legal Times. "I'm just trying to sell helicopters." Underscoring the incestuous relationship between commerce and drug policy, Tom Umberg, the architect of the administration's Colombian initiative, is now moving from the White House Office of Drug Control Policy to the law firm of Morrison & Foerster, where he will represent Colombia and other Latin American countries on trade issues. In Colombia, as in Washington, no good deed goes unrewarded. Unfortunately, some good deeds have deadly consequences. Colombia is in the midst of a protracted three-way civil war pitting the Colombian army, which has one of the worst human-rights records in the Western Hemisphere, against leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups, both largely funded by the drug trade. It is the army that will receive the lion's share of the U.S. money -- prompting senior U.S. defense officials to express privately their fear that our military's expanding role in fighting the war on drugs could draw the United States into another Vietnam. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/10/07/colombia/Maybe that's why the Clinton administration decided to introduce the Colombian aid as part of a larger emergency-spending package, bundling the potentially controversial measure with proposals only a coldhearted misanthrope would oppose. Along with the money for Colombia, the bill includes $2.2 billion for relief from natural disasters such as Hurricane Floyd and $854 million for military health care. It's an old legislative ploy designed to squelch debate and force politicians to vote for wasteful -- or even terrible -- measures because they don't want to be painted as being against God, country and disaster relief. And we just saw how George W. Bush was able to twist John McCain's opposition to such legislative chicanery into an attack ad portraying him as indifferent to funding for breast cancer research. Jackson is one of the members who will nevertheless vote against the bill. "It's absurd," he told me. "There wasn't even any language added tying the aid to human-rights concerns. And [Rep.] Nancy Pelosi's [D-Calif.] amendment to spend equivalent amounts of money on the demand side was defeated during the Appropriations Committee markup -- even though treatment has been proven to be 23 times more cost-effective than eradication of crops and 11 times more cost-effective than interdiction." The cost of the helicopters alone would provide treatment for almost 200,000 substance abusers or drug-prevention services for more than 4 million Americans. We're about to spend close to $2 billion on Colombia, while here at home 3.6 million addicts are not receiving the treatment they need -- this despite the fact that drug czar Barry McCaffrey's budget is expected to rise to a proposed $19.2 billion next year. When Richard Nixon -- hardly someone who can be accused of having been soft on crime -- declared a war on drugs in 1971, he directed more than 60 percent of the funds into treatment. Now, we're down to 18 percent. Since 1980, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, the emphasis has turned to interdiction, crop eradication, border surveillance and punishment. The evidence is clear that it has been a misguided use of resources. But putting $1.7 billion into Colombia, in the middle of a civil war, is more than misguided -- it's nuts. And if it's not voted down in the House on Thursday, it needs to be stopped in the Senate. About the Writer:Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of seven books. Her eighth book, "How to Overthrow Your Government," was published in February by Regan Books (HarperCollins).salon.com | March 15, 2000U.S. Officials Cite Trend in Colombia http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread5056.shtmlArianna Onlinehttp://www.ariannaonline.com/CannabisNews Articles On Arianna Huffington, Colombia & Salon Magazine:http://www.google.com/search?q=cannabisnews+Ariannahttp://www.google.com/search?q=cannabisnews+colombiahttp://www.google.com/search?q=cannabisnews+salon
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Comment #5 posted by Frustrated on March 16, 2000 at 21:25:21 PT
So is there any hope?
First, thank you to everyone for posting their views and allowing me to educate myself on these issues. I am 25 years old and stuck smack in the middle of the Republican South so i don't even have the benefit of open discussion among my peers here on the southeast coast.My question: is there any hope for the future? i read that things are looking up, then Uncle Sam smacks us down again (ie Prop. 215, D.C.'s I-59). Will we evr make any headway for legalization? in my lifetime? i now try to encourage everyone to vote for their beliefs, but will we ever win?thanks.
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Comment #4 posted by Tim Stone on March 16, 2000 at 15:47:06 PT
kaptinemo said...
"But no American wants to fight and die for Big Oil. So a more 'palatable' flavor of BS has to bepresented to the American people to justify our expending our treasure - and our kid's lives! - in thisforeign adventure. And the War on Some Drugs foots that bill very nicely, indeed. Nothing like anhonest-to-God Crusade Against Evil Dope Dealers Poisoning Our Chil-drun! to get the Americanpeople worked up into jumping into a meatgrinder like Colombia."*****Well, maybe increased military intervention in Colombia is what it takes to bring about a latter-day "Tet offensive," something to shock the majority of American boob-tube watchers into realizing that the drug jihad is unwinnable and we need to pursue alternativer policies. Unfortunately, there are no Uncle Walter Cronkites anymore who can definitively declare the folly of the drug war on the nightly news. There's a great Kurt Vonnegut quote from one of his semi-autobiographies (I forget the name at present.) Which quote goes like so:"Monstor screwups engineered by your own government are not to be treated with disrespect until the damage done is unforgivable, incomprehensible and irreparable."We just haven't got there yet in the crystal-clear 'Nam-drug war parallel. 
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Comment #3 posted by dddd on March 16, 2000 at 02:52:03 PT
non-issue
Just watch how this bill snakes its' way through.You will see minimal press coverage,,,it will be seen as a non-issue...and if you saw all the pork that's piled on to this,,you would FREAK! All this stuff is so ghastly and absurd,,I'm tired of Freaking.But if you havnt been shocked into freaking out yet,and are interested,there's plenty of unbelievable stuff left out there,to make you question reality. Just watch as this bill,and news about it,drifts on by today.Just watch........dddd
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Comment #2 posted by kaptinemo on March 15, 2000 at 18:34:38 PT:
Some more proofs
As you can see, I am not the only person who sees it this way.
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n366/a08.html?397
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on March 15, 2000 at 18:05:36 PT:
The REAL reason for our involvement there!
Twenty years ago, a prime time series called DYNASTY was on the tube. It was the story about the unsavory doings of super-rich oil magnates forever engaged in either sleeping together or stabbing each other in the back. In the beginning of the pilot episode, the head of the family is just informed that nationalists in some Middle Eastern country have appropriated his oil wells there. He shouts angrily into the phone: 'So, where were the Marines?'As you'll see, this is a matter of art imitating life, not the other way around.'The Colombians have other powerful allies in Washington. Most persistent has been a collection of multinational corporations with operations in Colombia -- including Occidental Petroleum, BP Amoco and Enron -- that have been lobbying both Congress and the administration for a big-bucks package that would serve their business interests there.' Right there! Right in that one paragraph is the real reason for all this hoopla. Petroleum. Oil. The FARC has been making things hot for the oil companies. And one thing you don't mess with is Big Oil; ask Saddam if you don't believe me.But no American wants to fight and die for Big Oil. So a more 'palatable' flavor of BS has to be presented to the American people to justify our expending our treasure - and our kid's lives! - in this foreign adventure. And the War on Some Drugs foots that bill very nicely, indeed. Nothing like an honest-to-God Crusade Against Evil Dope Dealers Poisoning Our Chil-drun! to get the American people worked up into jumping into a meatgrinder like Colombia.I forgot who said it, but it was once said that you'll never go broke underestimating the stupidity of the American people. I don't generally hold to that (being an American, you can see why) but in this particular instance, I sadly have to agree.
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