President Carter meeting a very young Bill Clinton

Following the defeat of President Carter whom GOP had unfairly branded as weak the Reagan led Conservative Republicans then tried to cast an image to the American public of liberal Democrats as unpatriotic hippies who used drugs, as Godless atheists , liberals got abortions, and neglected their children. In contrast much like today the GOP wanted to be seen as the party of God , morality, tradition, and family values.

South Park Hippies

With this in mind many Congressional Democrats felt that they had no choice but to support the bills that dealt with illegal drugs. This fearful mood created by Reagan continued even after Bush 41 was sent packing due to propagandized publics perception of drugs. At first President Clinton simply continued the same Drug War policies of his GOP predecessors however in a more positive light he did succeed in toning down much of the hysteria and propaganda that the GOP had so readily used to manipulate the public into supporting them. There was even hope for some Drug law reform but that hope soon faded as the hard core extremist GOP Drug Warriors led by current Drug Czar John P. Walters started hammering Clinton as being soft on Drugs. John P. Walters who at that time was the President of the New Citizenship Project a far right-wing neo-conservative think tank located in Washington DC prior to that he had been the chief of staff for Bush 41 Drug Czar William Bennett. John P. Walters used the extreme right-wing funding of the New Citizenship Project to fabricate statistics that painted a misleading picture of a massive resurgence of drug use since Clinton first took office.

President Bill Clinton

National Drug Control Strategy Hearing

April 6,1995

ONDCP Director, Dr. Lee Brown testified before the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice. The hearing was a continuation of the one held on March 9 at which Nancy Reagan and former Drug Czar Bill Bennett were among the witnesses.

Members continued the theme of criticizing the Administration's lack of leadership on the issue of drug abuse. Dr. Brown responded to vigorous assaults on everything from failure to provide leadership to questions about his honesty in using travel funds. Dr. Brown continued to defend the Administration's focus on hard core drug users. He emphasized that money spent on treatment is a good investment.

Bush Drug Czar Walters with Drug Warrior High Priestess Calvina Fay

It's very important to remember that in 1994 the GOP had just won majorities in both the House and the Senate so Clinton was considered vulnerable at the time although he later beat Bob Dole quite easily. The Conservative Drug Warriors had what they deemed crippling political Ammo such as the 1992 MTV Show "Choose or Lose" Special (to see it click on this link) - [MTV VIDEO] - to use against President Clinton. So with the upcoming 1996 Campaign less than a year away he made some quick changes. He got Lee Brown who had been somewhat of a reformer to resign as drug czar replacing him with the magnetic 4-STAR General Barry McCaffrey. As intended President Clinton neutralized his critics with this quick Cabinet shuffle. Obviously unable to portray the much decorated General McCaffrey as soft on anything Walters and other GOP Drug Warrior stooges of his ilk had to adopt a new line of attack so now they blamed Clinton for neglecting the War on Drugs during his first term which they claimed had created a new generation of teenaged Drug users. However the brainless Neo-Con Henchmen led by Walter's weren't a match for the political genius of Bill Clinton and this time he not only silenced them but he permanently solidified his own tough as GOP drug warrior status by signing into law the controversial Plan Colombia.

General Barry McCaffrey

Another sign that Clinton had initially planned to reform at least some of our drug laws was his appointment of Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders who was also from Arkansas and had served as head of Arkansas's health department when President Clinton was Governor there. Dr. Elders blunt scientific honesty on health issues is what did her in. She had refreshingly realistic yet often outspoken views such as favoring a study on the legalization of drugs and the distribution of contraceptives in public schools. She criticized the Catholic Church for its opposition to abortion and Dr. Elders had spoken in favor of distributing contraceptives in public schools to prevent STD's and teen pregnancies.

For her realistic approach to the nations health concerns she became a prime target of GOP Conservatives. I welcome an honest expert medical opinion about health issues but GOP can't accept science. When it was reported that she had condoned the idea of teaching schoolchildren to masturbate as a way of avoiding the spread of the AIDS virus Conservatives went ballistic and Clinton caved in to GOP and fired Joycelyn Elders. Clinton should have told them to fuck off not only due to the fact that Surgeon General's serving GOP President's had also made Controversial statements on health issues but just because it wasn't their role as Legislators to interfere with health and science statements released from the Office of the Surgeon General

I truly believe that had the hard core Drug Warriors not constantly harassed Clinton on his initial Drug policy that he would have moved towards some drug law reform but they drove him in the opposite direction. While I certainly can admire Former President Clinton's political skills we would have been much better served as a nation had he told the Drug Warriors and the nation that their policy had not only failed miserably but that it was also morally bankrupt. Clinton has already admitted making a critical mistake concerning his refusal to lift the ban on federal funding of needle-exchange programs he now needs to go one step further and endorse a policy of harm reduction in our drug laws. Just as President Clinton appointed a General to enhance his questionable image as a committed drug warrior our current President who also has somewhat of a problematic situation in regards to his prior drug use has installed a fanatical religious right-wing zealot at the helm.

It was President Reagan who signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts in the 1980's a series of measures that allocated money for prisons and established strict mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders. The direct result of his inhumane Zero-Tolerance measures after just 8 years in office was Federal prisons nearly doubled from 1980 to 1988, largely because of changes in sentencing. There were 329,821 inmates in 1980 and 627,402 in 1988. But this doesn't reveal the mass numbers of drug offender inmates in the 50 states that were also trapped in similar strict mandatory minimum sentences modeled by state legislative penal codes that were almost carbon copies of Reagan's harsh Anti-Drug Abuse Acts. The vast majority of all types of offenders are in the states prison systems. For whatever ugliness that was committed in the name of the War on Drugs by President Reagan's predecessors as well as the President's who followed him, it was the Reagans who, through the repetition of a moronic anti-drug slogan, Just Say No taught American children to spy on their parents and denounce them to the police a most despicable practice of both NAZISM and COMMUNISM.

Elvis &  Nixon

If you think that Richard Nixon was a crooked jerk you are definitely correct however Nixon was a far better person than Ronald Reagan could ever dream of being. Nixon even hung around Elvis at the White House in fact he made Elvis an honarary DEA agent.

Richard Nixon--the first U.S. President to declare an "all-out war on drugs"-- was also the first, and only, president to recognize the value of treatment as a sound investment of public funds. In June 1971, Nixon requested an extra $155 million to fight the drug war--$105 million of that amount was targeted for the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts.

But Nixon's program for treating heroin addicts was dismantled by Ronald Reagan. Nancy Reagan preached the message of "Just Say No" as her husband cut into the federal budget for drug treatment. Law enforcement became the priority, and the few treatment centers that did survive fiscal cuts were overwhelmed by the onset of the crack epidemic.

Both Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter left Nixon's Drug treatment program intact Carter also wanted to decriminalize Marijuana and move towards a harm reduction policy in regards to all illegal drugs.  

Fortunately, the drug issue was not exploited in the 1976 campaign. Carter had endorsed decriminalization early in his campaign. I had assumed he was motivated by a combination of intellectual honesty and political necessity: the former because he knew his sons had smoked, the latter because the issue was important to a lot of young activists and to rock stars, like the Allman Brothers, whose support he sought. Having endorsed the no-jail concept, he rarely mentioned it unless asked, for he was aware of the basic political fact that the great majority of voters were anti-marijuana. His opponent, Gerald Ford, waffled on the issue. He said he didn't want smokers to go to jail, but he never quite endorsed decriminalization. Still, he never tried to exploit the issue,perhaps in part because he, too, had sons who had smoked and a wife who said she might have if it had been around in her younger days.      

Before Reagan there was a Center-Right Party which was the Republicans and we also had our Center-Left Party which was the Democratic Party. Now nearly thirty years later we sadly have a Far Right Wing almost Facist Party in the Republicans and the Democratic Party of today is a pure Centrist Party. Sure we still have some prominent and very powerful left-wing members in todays Democratic Party but the political reality is that the Centrists or at least a Centrist orientated policy sets the agenda for our current Democratic Party. The far Right Wing totally controls todays GOP in fact GOP moderates are nearly extinct. This unfortunate political shifting of both major parties to the right is the true Reagan-Bush-Falwell Religious Right inspired Drug War legacy.

Sadly today due mainly to Reagan and his giant shadow we now have much more in common with Communist Red China than we do with the other Democracies of the World. Even a totalitarian regime like Communist China doesn't even come close to locking up as many people as we do yet they have 2,300 Million Citizens with only 1.4 Million Prisoners contrasted to the USA having a mere 300 Million citizens with 2.2 Million inmates. Communist China comes in a distant second place to the so-called land of the free in locking up their citizenry. Communist China also still uses the death penalty although not as much as we do.

Since the GOP seems hell bent to stay on the road to self destruction maybe once they finally implode we will move back towards a more socially progressive indeed a pure leftist orientated Social Democratic Party. Maybe then we will finally be able to legalize Marijuana and at the very least reduce the personal possession penalties for the so-called dangerous drugs from felonies to misdemeanors but more importantly we need to free the Million hostages of the failed War on Drugs from bondage it is only in this way that we can return to being the nation that once inspired the rest of the World.

Are there any Drug War Skeletons lurking in your closet ?

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