U.S. Drug Czar Likens Fighting Drugs to Terror

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States should employ some of the techniques it is using to fight international terrorism in its war on drugs, U.S. drug czar John Walters said on Tuesday.

Interviewed a day before President Bush was due to release his national drug control strategy for 2005, Walters said international drug traffickers shared many characteristics with terrorist networks, although there were also some important differences.

"Maybe the brutal experience we've had with terror helps to make this more concrete and understandable," he said.

Like terrorist networks, most drug organizations were no longer centrally controlled, with one command running the trade all the way from production to distribution, or as Walters put it, "from the farm to the arm."
...
The administration has singled out two domestic programs for major increases while targeting others for deep cuts or elimination. It wants to raise funding for random drugs testing in schools from $10 million to $25.4 million, arguing that such testing is "powerful, safe and effective."

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=7707786

[chicagojoe]

Well, they're failing at both.

[sniffa]

1. i Liken the DEA and the bush admin

to terrorists. they empLoy many of the same tactics of fear....

[leveymg]

2. DEA probably feeling a little left out these days, budgetwise.

Oh well, they had their fifteen years of infamy. Still, there is compensation. BushCo's WOT has generated tons more Afghan heroin to track around selectively. Kinda like the good old days when Air America had direct flights out of the Golden Triangle.

"First Class passengers now boarding . . ."

[NorthernSpy]

5. yup -- auditioning for a bigger slice of the Homeland Security pie...

Also, re the War on Drugs... Is it just me, or does anyone else regard it as an ominous sign that our government seems to have lost the ability to retire even the costliest of its failed policies? This growing inability to change gears (even when doing so is overwhelmingly in our interest) -- this tendency to wind up eternally married to harmful and arbitrary policies -- has characterized failing governments throughout history.

[Mandate My Ass]

3. Increasing random drug testing in schools

This would be so much cheaper and easier than going out and finding and catching drug lords. They can still fill up those prison cells with high school stoners. It doesn't matter to them who is in the cell, they just want warm bodies.

[aneerkoinos]

6. Let them try

I will fucking rip apart anyone who tries to put my kidds under that kind of fascist controll.

Getting rid of all the prohibition laws is the only way.

[ixion]

8. drug testing is unconstitutional

and the War on Drugs is a war on millions of decent citizens.

[bemildred]

4. Bemildred likens fighting drugs to mental masturbation.

If you want a centrally organized drug "network", take a look
at Pfizer or one of those corporations. If you want to end the
drug cartels, then de-criminalize drug "abuse". Duh.

[ernstbass]

7. It has been a colossal failure

and a total waste of money. So in Shrubya's administration this would mean increasing their budget tenfold.

[bemildred]

9. Peru's first lady: Coca good for you

Peru's first lady has defended the country's rampant cultivation of coca which contains cocaine, saying a practice of thousands of years cannot be stamped out.

The United States says Peru is the world's second largest producer of coca leaves, from which cocaine is extracted and Washington has spent millions of dollars trying to eradicate coca crops in Peru, 90% of which goes to illegal trafficking.

But anthropologist Eliane Karp, wife of Peru's President Alejandro Toledo, said coca had a positive side as well.

"Coca has many, many virtues in addition to health and ritualistic uses," she said.

al Jazeera

[FlyByNight]

10. Prohibition failed the first time

This is sadistic. I sincerely believe that proponents of the War on (untaxed) Drugs simply enjoy punishing people.

Cigarettes and alcohol kill more people in this country than any other substances and those are legal. Complete hypocritical madness.

:eyes:

[Stanchetalarooni]

11. The US plan would be / is to become the major player in both.

Drugs are used as ecconomic weapons, population control, and extermination.

[tanyev]

12. Uh, yeah.

Make a lot of noise and create the appearance that you are doing something about it, while in reality accomplishing very little. They are using the exact same strategy on both.

Walters said international drug traffickers shared many characteristics with terrorist networks... Seems to me Sibel Edmonds has said that many terrorists are drug traffickers. If Bushco really wanted to shut down drugs and terrorism, wouldn't they want to get to the bottom of Sibel's allegations instead of trying to silence her?

[Mizmoon]

13. Prisoners can buy drugs in prison

If they can't stop drugs in prison, where people have virtually no civil rights, how do they expect to stop them out here?

They can't. Give up. Time for a new strategy.

[William Bloode]

14. Nice to know i am a terroist.

But what gets me is the random drug testing. I am glad i taught my childeren to be distrustfull of the police, and higher authority. I am also very glad i talk to them enough that they know if they are ever selected for one of these random tests to refuse, and call home right away.

[cosmicdot]

15. "employ some of the techniques"

like torture?

put the money into a National Healthcare Program

[EFerrari]

16. What, truth from the Cabal? He's right, Both are fake. n/t