Today's Stories

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

Weekend Edition
February 6-8, 2009

Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909

By DALE GIERINGER

This week marks the centennial of a fateful landmark in U.S. history, the nation's first drug prohibition law.  On February 9, 1909, Congress passed the Opium Exclusion Act, barring the importation of opium for smoking as of April 1.  Thus began a hundred-year crusade that has unleashed unprecedented crime, violence and corruption around the world —a war with no victory in sight.

Long accustomed to federal drug control, most Americans are unaware that there was once a time when people were free to buy any drug, including opium, cocaine, and cannabis, at the pharmacy.  In that bygone era, drug-related crime and violence were largely unknown, and drug use was not a major public concern.

The Opium Exclusion Act applied only to the opium processed for smoking that was favored by Chinese immigrants —not the medicinal opium that white Americans commonly kept in their household medicine cabinets. Smoking opium had attracted unfavorable notice from temperance advocates, missionaries and moral reformers. Inflamed by anti-Chinese sentiment, San Francisco had outlawed public opium dens in 1875 and many other communities with Chinese settlements followed suit. Nonetheless, the private use and commercial sale of smoking opium remained legal, with import duties yielding a million dollars per year to the U.S. Treasury.

Congress was moved to Act in 1909 not by any drug abuse crisis, but by foreign policy concerns.  Per capita opium use had begun to decline by 1900, and only one in a thousand Americans indulged in smoking opium.    Nonetheless, the State Department determined that an initiative against opium smoking would be useful in opening the door to China, which had long chafed under British compulsion to allow the opium trade. At the invitation of Theodore Roosevelt's administration, an international commission was convened in Shanghai in December 1908 to sign a treaty ending the trade –the first step in what would become a far-reaching international system of drug control.  As a gesture of good faith, the State Department called on Congress to pass legislation that would ban the importation of smoking opium, thereby creating the first illegal drug.  

The Opium Exclusion Act was the opening shot in the U.S. war on drugs.  Across the country, Customs and pharmacy agents moved aggressively to arrest smugglers, confiscate contraband, and raid and bust dealers and dens.  California, at the forefront of the war on Chinese smoking opium, went beyond the federal ban on importation by outlawing simple possession as well,  thereby inventing a new class of criminals, illegal drug consumers.  The new law was challenged by Yun Quong,  a Chinese Californian who plausibly argued that it violated his rights to liberty and property. The state Supreme Court ruled otherwise, opening the way for mass criminalization of illegal drug users in subsequent years,

In the short run, the crackdown produced dramatic results, creating a shortage that forced prices through the roof.   The LA Times pronounced the new law as "the death sentence of Chinatown," reporting that "dozens of them are dying monthly because forced to abstain from the 'dream pipe'." ("Without Opium, Chinamen Die," Aug 17, 1909).   Before long, however, it became obvious that the opium trade hadn't halted, but rather been taken over by criminal traffickers.

 Authorities responded by escalating the war with an unprecedented wave of raids and arrests. In California, a new law was passed to ban opium paraphernalia.  Pharmacy agents were duly dispatched into Chinatown, where they staged gigantic public bonfires of seized opium, pipes, and outfits.   While the dens managed to survive for years to come, many users moved on to other, more potent forms of opium,  such as morphine, which was more legal and readily available.

Congress moved to close this loophole in 1914 by passing the Harrison Act, which prohibited all non-medicinal use of opium, morphine, and cocaine.  Once again, a short-term shortage developed, followed by longer-term black market problems.  Before long, the Los Angeles Times reported a "saturnalia of violent crime" by drug fiends, which police attributed to the price pinch caused by state and federal restrictions. ("Drug Fiends Make Crime Wave," Nov. 30, 1919).

Drug crime and violence would become a staple item in the press in coming years as drug prohibition took root. An ever-expanding list of new drugs was prohibited, from cannabis to coca leaves to mushrooms and peyote. Penalties escalated from misdemeanors to felonies.  Yet none of this prevented an explosion of drug use in the 1960s and ‘70s. In response,  yet more laws and penalties were enacted, causing drug cases to skyrocket once again in the ‘80s and ‘90s, by over 300%.  

International Failure

The U.S. government has spearheaded the major international drug prohibition efforts.  Following the Shanghai Commission, another anti-drug conference was convened at U.S. urging, the Hague Convention of 1912. U.S. representatives imposed a tough prohibitionist line, overcoming reluctance by other nations like Britain.  U.S. narcotics authorities, led by the infamous Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger, drafted the Single Convention treaty of 1961, which obliges every country in the world (except North Korea, the only non-signatory) to tow the U.S. line on drugs  —ignoring alcohol and tobacco, but prohibiting drugs traditionally allowed in foreign cultures, such as coca and ganja.     U.S.-inspired United Nations treaties in 1971-2 and 1988 added a long list of other prohibited drugs and also required signatory countries to criminalize their possession.

The result of this so-called "international drug control" has been unprecedented prohibition-related drug crime, corruption and violence around the world. In Colombia, U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $3.5 billion in anti-narcotics aid fighting a decade-long insurgency funded by the coca crop. In Afghanistan, the U.S. has been losing the hearts and minds of farmers who would rather profit from the sale of opium than see their fields bombed and destroyed.   Under new rules, U.S. forces can now bomb drug labs if their analysis shows that it would not kill "more than 10 civilians.” In Mexico, more than 6,800 have been killed by drug gangs fighting to meet the demands of U.S. consumers.  Innocents are killed in botched drug raids and prohibition-related gang wars and robberies on both side of the border.

Early 20th-century Americans would be astounded to see what a problem drugs have become since the establishment of drug prohibition. Every year, two million Americans are arrested and 400,000 imprisoned for drug offenses that did not exist in their time.  Drug laws are now the number-one source of crime in the U.S., with one-half of the entire adult population having violated them.   Long gone are the days when Americans were free to keep opium in their closet; today, even gravely suffering patients are denied pain-killing narcotics by their doctors out of fear of federal prosecution. While smoking opium has faded from the scene,  the country is now rife with more potent and lethal narcotics, which are widely sold on the illegal market. 

In 1937 the federal government banned all uses of cannabis —medicinal and industrial, as well as social relaxant.  Federal courts have upheld this policy by ruling that Americans have no right to use government-unapproved drugs even when necessary to save their own lives.  Yet despite the growth of the drug-police-state, Americans are no less free from addiction than they were when the market prevailed. The drug addiction rate of a century ago has been estimated by historians at around one-half per cent. Today the rate is said by NIDA researchers to be 2%.

Seen in retrospect, drug prohibition ranks as one of the great man-made disasters of the 20th century.   This March, on the 100th anniversary of the Shanghai Commission,  the U.N. Committee on Narcotics will be meeting in Vienna, to discuss the next decade of  international drug control.  Last year, a U.N. Conference of North American NGO's in Vancouver expressed "great dissatisfaction" with the current system and suggested replacing prohibition with a "regulated market respectful of human right and public health principles."   Discussion of such fundamental reforms is nowhere near the table due to the powerful opposition of the drug-law-enforcement establishment.

European countries are proposing modest steps towards harm reduction, such as approving needle exchange.  In opposition to this hopeful development, the U.S. delegation, still under the influence of holdover Bush administration hardliners, is reported to be insisting on a tough prohibitionist line. A century after the Opium Exclusion Act, the U.S. government should abandon its bankrupt and counterproductive policies of drug prohibition.  It's time to end the 100 years' war on drugs.

Dale Gieringer, Ph.D.,  is the director of the Drug Policy Forum of California and author of numerous articles on the history of prohibition and marijuana control. He is also the California coordinator for the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).  He lives in Oakland California. He can be reached at dale@canorml.org.

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