Once again Adults

Front Range Toastmasters 20010227

War. Some picture postcards from the front.

A blast of gunfire tears the morning air. A mother holds her baby close in fear as suddenly a bullet rips through her brain. Blood splatters the whitewashed walls as the baby drops to the floor, crying forever for her mother.

A firebomb thrusts gouts of flame from the windows of a church where boys and girls are huddled in sanctuary from the violence outside. They cringe and scream as the flames begin to singe their hair. Their helpless agony mercifully ends as the church crashes in upon them.

The office building's daycare center echoes with the happy chatter of playing children. A bomb blast from hell rips the front of the building off and crushes their budding lives into nothingness.

War is a horrible, extreme solution, and its only excuse is that it can be a valid response to an even more extreme problem. A problem like tanks and soldiers from another country invading your country and killing your family.

But is war an appropriate response to a problem like -- drugs? Drugs like ethanol alcohol. In the early part of the last century, the politicians still had the decency to pass a Constitutional Amendment before banning alcohol in These United States. But the War on Alcohol was a complete and utter failure. And the 18th Amendment was repealed after nearly 15 years of open violence and violation.

Unfortunately, politicians today have lost what little decency they might have once had and are perpetrating a War of Prohibition without Constitutional sanction. They call it The War On Drugs. It has imprisoned one million three hundred thousand of our fellow Americans, mostly minorities. It has killed and maimed thousands, including those whose pictures I painted earlier.

Why then, does drug prohibition continue, when its results are exactly comparable to the Prohibition of Alcohol?

It continues because the politicians know that it is not really a War on Drugs, but is truly a War on People, because they know that people caught up in a war get turned into children, whose parents, the politicians, are the only ones who appear to be able to help.

This is a war on people whose skin color is different, since it's easy to spot and harass someone whose genetics make them easy targets for the soldiers of the Drug War.

This is a war on people. People whose religion encourages them to explore reality through the ingestion of sacred chemicals. This is a war on people who've immigrated from Mexico and who prefer to relax with a joint of marijuana instead of jug of Ripple. They're a lot like the immigrants from Europe in the early part of the last century, whose religion encouraged wine-bibbing during church services, and who thus struck fear into the hearts of the teetoataling Protestants who supported the War on Alcohol.

This is a war on people. American people who have been infantilized by their political masters into believing that politicians alone can care for their bodies. This is a war on people whose childlike faith in their leaders keeps them from seeing that their leaders' true motiviation is to keep them children, keep them unable and unwilling to make adult choices for themselves. This is a war on people who are parents, and who are so scared of the responsibility of parenthood that they want the politicians to protect their children from drugs rather than embracing that responsibility for themselves.

These United States were once the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Because of Drug Prohibition, we have become the land of the imprisoned and the home of the scared.

I don't use drugs. I don't recommend them to anybody. Especially Ethanol Alcohol, a contributor to more than a third of the violent crime in this country. Especially Nicotine, a part of more than a third of the preventable deaths in These United States.

But more importantly, I don't recommend the racist, religious infantilization of the American People caused by Drug Prohibition. You and I are adults. We are parents. We are citizens. We can no longer tolerate being made into children by our political masters. We must insist on being allowed to be adults. Tonight. Right now.

Adults. Once again.