{"id":18425,"date":"2023-06-26T10:29:32","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T14:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=18425"},"modified":"2023-06-26T15:14:11","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T19:14:11","slug":"my-40-year-war-on-reefer-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/26\/my-40-year-war-on-reefer-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"My 40 Year War on Reefer Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"

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My 40 Year War on Reefer Madness<\/a><\/h1>\n

by Jim Bovard<\/a><\/span> | June 26, 2023\u00a0\u00a0 Libertarian Institute<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Forty years ago last week, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner<\/i> published my first attack on the federal drug war. The previous year, the Reagan administration unleashed its \u201cJust Say No\u201d program, vilifying anyone who smoked a joint, sniffed the wrong powder, or used non-approved hallucinogens. I was mortified to see Ronald Reagan\u2014who was elected on a promise to get \u201cgovernment off your backs\u201d\u2014double-cross his supporters with what morphed into the most intrusive scheme in American history.<\/p>\n

Like kids everywhere in the 1970s, I laughed at the 1936 \u201cReefer Madness\u201d movie in my high school health class. I\u2019d occasionally smoked marijuana but hadn\u2019t felt compelled to burn down any orphanages afterwards.<\/span> When Reagan went on the antidrug warpath, I was \u201claying for him,\u201d as Mark Twain would say.<\/p>\n

The Herald Examiner<\/i> was a conservative leaning paper so I slanted my argument accordingly: \u201cMany heavy marijuana users voted Republican in 1982, so there is no proof that it causes irreparable brain damage.\u201d I pointed out that legalizing and taxing marijuana could raise enough money to pay for the MX-missile program that Reagan championed. (Pentagon boondoggles were much cheaper back then.) Ending marijuana prohibition would put hundreds of lawyers out of work, I cheerily noted. Reagan\u2019s drug crackdown was playing to a culture war theme which I mocked in the final sentence of my piece: \u201cPersonally, I\u2019m all in favor of locking up hippies, but we need to find a better reason.\u201d The editor wisely deleted that last sentence before printing the article.<\/p>\n

My attempts at humor were not universally appreciated.<\/strong> When I took the page from the Herald Examiner <\/i>to a photocopy shop in uptown Washington, the cranky old manager was outraged by the article\u2019s headline: \u201cMaking Pot a Crime Is, Well, Un-American.\u201d He railed about how drugs were destroying the nation and wagged his finger so hard he almost threw his shoulder out of joint. The real problem, he said, was troublemakers like me. I just grinned at him and found another copy shop.<\/p>\n

Two years later, writing in The San Diego Union Tribune<\/em>, I declared, \u201cThe only things drug laws achieve is to make drugs more dangerous, crime more prevalent, and government more obnoxious.<\/strong>\u201d I scoffed: \u201cIf the FBI didn\u2019t have a thousand agents chasing dope dealers, would the Soviets be having so much success stealing U.S. military secrets?\u201d I also whacked the feds\u2019 narcotic nitwittery<\/strong> in The Detroit News<\/em> and other papers.<\/p>\n

My pieces had as much impact on the drug war as bouncing a ping pong ball off the hull of a battleship. After the drug war became politically profitable, the number of drug offenders in prisons rose tenfold. More people were locked up for drug offenses than for violent crimes, and possessing trace amounts of cocaine was often punished with longer sentences than rape, murder, or child molesting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1992, I headed to Guatemala to give a few speeches on perfidious U.S. protectionist policies. Outside of Guatemala City, I met farmers and small businessmen who explained to me how the U.S. drug war was ravaging their country. A Guatemalan banker told me that the DEA was involved in shooting down or forcing crash landings of small planes suspected of carrying drugs. A prominent Guatemalan politician told me, \u201cIf you criticize the Drug Enforcement Agency, you might lose your visa\u201d and be banned from visiting the U.S.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Bill Clinton\u2019s inauguration in 1993, the The Washington Times<\/i><\/span><\/a> published my report on Guatemala: \u201cU.S. anti-drug activities are wrecking the environment, terrorizing the people, and subverting the market economies that the U.S. loves to champion.\u201d U.S. aid was pouring into the coffers of\u00a0 <\/span>military forces notorious for committing genocide against the Mayans and other minorities. I observed: \u201cGiving the Guatemalan army more weapons to fight marijuana growers is like giving the Mafia bazookas to combat jaywalking in New York City.<\/strong>\u201d Just in case I hadn\u2019t riled up officialdom enough, I tossed in a closing line: \u201cExporting our drug war to Guatemala and other Latin American nations is Yankee Imperialism at its worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bingo: DEA chief Robert Bonner was enraged. \u201cColumnist sprays tons of misinformation over your pages\u201d was The<\/em> Washington Times\u2019 <\/i>headline for his response. Bonner claimed that I had done \u201ca great disservice to your readers\u201d and declared, \u201cWe certainly are not behaving as if the \u2018drug war gives us the right to impose martial law<\/span><\/a> on foreign nations,\u2019 as Mr. Bovard contends.\u201d The DEA later became notorious for wreaking havoc throughout Central America. DEA was dousing Guatemala with Round-Up pesticides, but Bonner claimed that \u201cadverse human health effects\u2026are virtually nonexistent.\u201d Turn on late night TV nowadays and you\u2019ll see a torrent of ads soliciting class action claimants for American victims of Round-Up. And the massive U.S. aid for the Guatemalan military became a propellant for drug smuggling that was spearheaded by top generals and elite Special Forces units.<\/p>\n

Writing about the drug war got me vilified from all sides. In early 1994, I pummeled\u00a0 <\/span>DEA entrapment operations at Grateful Dead concerts in a Newsday<\/em> article. My piece, <\/span>headlined, \u201cNarcs Should Let the Deadheads Be<\/span><\/a>,\u201d pointed out that \u201cabusive federal prosecutions\u201d were destroying far more lives than LSD, the DEA\u2019s pretexts for witch hunts. One enraged antidrug zealot howled to Newsday: <\/i>\u201cObviously, James Bovard sees the world through the same haze many deadheads do,\u201d and I was to blame for the \u201ccrime problem in this country\u201d because I opposed holding people \u201caccountable for their actions.\u201d Flipside, a fan of the band denounced me for \u201cperpetuating false stereotypes of Deadheads,\u201d including the notion that they tended to be \u201caging hippies.\u201d As Joe Biden would say, \u201cC\u2019mon, man!\u201d<\/p>\n

Later that year, I began hammering and lampooning drug warriors for Playboy<\/i>. A November 1994 piece blasted the use of drug courier profiles<\/span><\/a> (later a favorite topic for social justice warriors). A December 1994 headlined, \u201cOops -You\u2019re Dead<\/span><\/a>! No-Knock Raids\u201d helped put that proliferating atrocity on the national radar screen (followed by a 2000 update<\/span><\/a>). I also flogged asset forfeiture<\/span><\/a> abuses, the informant scourge (\u201cUncle Scam Wants You<\/span><\/a>\u201d), the prison industrial complex<\/span><\/a>, and the perverse sentencing guidelines that made talking about drugs worse<\/span><\/a> than murder. In a piece with an evergreen theme, I detailed how kinfolk of members of Congress and other powerful Washingtonians routinely received wrist slaps or had their drug charges<\/span><\/a> dismissed (Senator John McCain\u2019s wife was a prize example). And some folks think that type of favoritism only began with Hunter Biden\u2026<\/p>\n

At the end of the 1990s, I turned to American Spectator<\/em> to thump Clinton\u2019s program that was deluging hundreds of square miles in Colombia with deadly pesticides to suppress coca production. The program got some bad press when U.S.-funded crop dusters repeatedly fumigated school children, sickening many of the kids. Clinton administration officials trumpeted their drug war salvation mission at the same time the wife of the U.S. military commander in Colombia was convicted for smuggling kilos<\/span><\/a> of cocaine to New York. Luis Alberto Moreno, Colombia\u2019s ambassador to the U.S., attacked a piece I wrote for the The Baltimore Sun<\/span><\/a><\/em>. Moreno claimed the Clinton aid package was carefully targeted and would \u201cstrengthen law<\/span><\/a> enforcement institutions and help protect human rights.\u201d Alas, some of the torrent of U.S. aid was diverted to \u201ccarry out spying operations and smear<\/span><\/a> campaigns against Supreme Court justices,\u201d crippling the nation\u2019s judiciary that was exposing mass-murdering paramilitary groups allied to the governing regime.<\/p>\n

During the George W. Bush administration, I jibed his drug czar for demonizing drug users in federally funded TV ads and portraying people who bought drugs as terrorist financiers threatening America with annihilation. Federal drug warriors arrested cancer patients who smoked marijuana to control chemo-induced nausea and busted doctors who gave suffering patients more pain killers than the DEA preferred. I ridiculed the federal vendetta against comedian Tommy Chong<\/span><\/a> (and again here<\/span><\/a> last year) who was sent to prison for selling bongs. Shortly after his arrest in 2003, Chong scoffed at the nationwide raids to seize drug paraphernalia: \u201cI feel pretty sad, but it seems to be the only weapons of mass destruction<\/span><\/a> they\u2019ve found this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the Global War on Terror and Bush\u2019s invasion of Iraq spiraled out of control, I shifted my focus away from the drug war. I still got in an occasional slap. A decade ago, I lamented in USA Today<\/em>: \u201cToo many lives have already been destroyed<\/span><\/a> so that politicians could win votes by appearing to be tough on crime.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since that first piece in the Herald Examiner<\/em>, more than 10 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana violations. Many states have legalized marijuana possession but more people continue to be busted each year for marijuana offenses than for all violent crimes combined. The federal drug war continues with more drug fatalities than ever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Actually, drug policy debates have become more depraved (if not demented) in recent years. During the 2020 election season, the media mostly portrayed Joe Biden as a progressive, compassionate alternative to President Donald Trump. But for decades, Biden had been the biggest drug warrior on Capitol Hill, championing policies that sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to prison. In a 2019 piece headlined \u201cJoe Biden and the Era of Mass Incarceration<\/span><\/a>,\u201d The <\/em>New York Times<\/i> hyped Biden\u2019s favorite fix: \u201cLock the S.O.B.s up!\u201d (That article ran before Biden had a lock on the Democratic presidential nomination.) Republicans seem hellbent on out-boneheading Biden.\u00a0 <\/span>Republican presidential frontrunner Trump is now calling for death penalties<\/span><\/a> for drug dealers. Trump has not yet specified what other Taliban-style reforms he will endorse. Several Republican presidential candidates are calling for invading Mexico<\/span><\/a> to curb drug imports. Maybe these wizards don\u2019t realize that Pancho Villa got away a long time ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before I fired my first salvo at the war on drugs, I was captivated by a line from an 1839 essay by British historian Thomas Macaulay: \u201cIt is mere foolish cruelty to provide penalties which torment the criminal without preventing the crime.\u201d That line remains the best summary of the folly and inhumanity of criminalizing victimless crimes. As the Grateful Dead\u2019s Jerry Garcia wrote, \u201cWhat a long, strange trip it\u2019s been.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I wrote in Lost Rights<\/span><\/a><\/em> in 1994, \u201cThe war on drugs is essentially a civil war to uphold the principle that politicians should have absolute power over what citizens put into their own bodies.\u201d<\/strong> But there is scant hope that politicians will forfeit any punitive power regardless of how many lives they continue to blight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My 40 Year War on Reefer Madness by Jim Bovard | June 26, 2023\u00a0\u00a0 Libertarian Institute Forty years ago last week, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner published my first attack on the federal drug war. The previous year, the Reagan administration unleashed its \u201cJust Say No\u201d program, vilifying anyone who smoked a joint, sniffed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2124,3793,51,65,1359,1783,113,2902,137,2876,23,283,484,88,3794,708],"class_list":["post-18425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biden","tag-bonner","tag-clinton","tag-dea","tag-deadheads","tag-drug-enforcement-administration","tag-drug-war","tag-george-w-buh","tag-george-w-bush","tag-guatemala","tag-marijuana","tag-mark-twain","tag-playboy","tag-reagan","tag-tommy-chong","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nMy 40 Year War on Reefer Madness - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Recap of my 40 years of attacks on the federal drug war.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/26\/my-40-year-war-on-reefer-madness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My 40 Year War on Reefer Madness - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recap of my 40 years of attacks on the federal drug war.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/26\/my-40-year-war-on-reefer-madness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-06-26T14:29:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-06-26T19:14:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/jpb-40-years-fighting-reefer-madness-twitter-sized-illustration.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"700\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@jimbovard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jim\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2023\\\/06\\\/26\\\/my-40-year-war-on-reefer-madness\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2023\\\/06\\\/26\\\/my-40-year-war-on-reefer-madness\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Jim\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f\"},\"headline\":\"My 40 Year War on Reefer Madness\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-06-26T14:29:32+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-06-26T19:14:11+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2023\\\/06\\\/26\\\/my-40-year-war-on-reefer-madness\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1786,\"commentCount\":4,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/2023\\\/06\\\/26\\\/my-40-year-war-on-reefer-madness\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2023\\\/06\\\/jpb-40-years-fighting-reefer-madness-twitter-sized-illustration.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Biden\",\"Bonner\",\"Clinton\",\"dea\",\"Deadheads\",\"Drug Enforcement Administration\",\"drug war\",\"George W. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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