This is Your Government on Drugs
{ Speech given on the steps of the Denver City & County building in 1996, slightly revised for currency.}
It's the year 2020. Hindsight shows us that the 21st century has continued the downward trend of its predecessor. Murder is up again: there are now pre-teenaged Crips and Bloods roaming our streets with illegal handguns and air pistols, blasting one another in turf wars over crack cocaine profits.
The Border Patrol, Customs Service and the DEA have erected a 20 foot high concrete barrier at the Mexican border topped with broken glass and barbed wire and yet the cigarette smugglers still seem to find a way to smuggle illegal cigarettes into the country.
Hot Springs Arkansas is still the sleepy little resort town it was back when William Jefferson Clinton proclaimed that Nicotine was an addictive drug and should be made illegal. But now Bill lives in the Hot Springs Federal Convalescent Center. Every morning he puts on a pair of jogging shorts to remind himself what he once was. It's breakfast time and the attendant brings in a tray of pureed food and several medicine cups full of pills. Bill pours one of the pill cups into his mouth and tries to wash it down with some lukewarm milk. But instead of going down his throat a bunch of the pills stick in his craw and he begins to choke. It's all over in a couple of minutes because the attendant can't hear the muffled gasping from three doors down.
Bill arrives at the Pearly Gates and is met by Saint Peter, who looks Bill in the eye and asks, "When you were back on the Planet did you ever smoke anything?" Bill looks terrified and says, "No. No. No. No. No. I didn't do Waco. It was Janet Reno!"
Friends, welcome to the War Zone. The Drug War Zone. This is Your Government on Drugs.
A Religious War
We've got to admit that we are in a war. And it's the worst kind: a religious war.
A Civil Religion has sprung up in our fair land in this century. It's a religion that has as its central core belief: Government is the source of all good and all order. Civil Religion is intolerant of the private behavior of citizens. Civil Religion is the motivation behind government's incessant meddling in all our lives.
Civil Religion today has as one of its corrollary beliefs that you are not smart enough to make good choices for yourself. This isn't surprising considering most people are educated in government monopoly schools. Schools where programs like D.A.R.E. encourage kids to snitch on their parents. Did some of those retired KGB agents emigrate here or what?
Condemned to Repeat Sorry History
Perhaps the government monopoly schools don't teach George Santayana's famous phrase: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
We can't remember even 70 years ago. "For nearly 14 years--from Jan. 29, 1920, until Dec. 5, 1933--the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages was illegal in the United States." Once again, it was a religious issue: "Forces favoring Prohibition represented a reaction against changes that were taking place in the United States. Rural and small-town values were being challenged by rapidly industrializing cities. Millions of new immigrants--mostly Roman Catholics--from Eastern and Southern Europe were viewed as a threat by the Protestant majority. Prohibition was an attempt to reassert what were considered traditional American values and to force newer members of the population into a life-style that they were unwilling to accept. Prohibition was enacted because rural, small-town America held the balance of power in state legislatures and in Washington, D.C." {--Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia, 1994}
Parents are Scared
Isn't exactly the same thing happening today? Parents of impressionable children are deathly afraid their children will adopt the lifestyles of the poor and infamous. So they support spending thirty billion dollars of your tax money and mine each and every year in fighting the War on Drugs. These are the same parents who are all for cutting back government spending on welfare and bureaucracy but who can't see that pouring $30,000,000,000.00 down the drain of the black hole of the War on Drugs not only wastes that money but promotes this Civil Religion I've been talking about. The Civil Religion which robs these parents and the people in Waco of their inalienable rights to their own religious beliefs. The Civil Religion which wants to usurp our God-given jurisdiction over both our bodies and our choices. The Civil Religion which would rob us of our freedom to pursue happiness and wealth as we see it.
War is Hell
War is not a pretty thing. Combatants tend to kill people and break things. Now I see some of you government servicepeople out there who I know listen to AM 850 from 12 to 3 every weekday in your cars. Don't you just hate it when, as happened in Boston not too long ago, you get a story from an informant who tells you that somebody in a certain house is dealing crack, so you bust the door down and go in guns at the ready and frighten a retired black preacher to death? Don't you just hate it when that happens? When you government servicepeople wield the drug of power, be careful it doesn't turn out to be a steroid, with disastrous consequences for the long term. Make sure the jackboot doesn't fit or suddenly you'll find yourself wearing it.
I welcome you government servicepeople to the War Zone. The Drug War Zone. THIS is Your Government on Drugs.
A Modest Joke
Oh, and have those of you here who aren't government servicepeople, have you heard about the latest forensic technique where your friendly local gendarmerie are now tapping your sewer pipes to see if your doo doo has any drugs in it? I can just see the newspaper headline now: "Police Deny Sewer-tapping " and the subheadline: "Libertarian Admits, 'It was a joke.'"
But we are here today on the steps of the Denver City/County building to celebrate the lowly hemp plant. Useful for making rope and clothes and paper. Medicinal for people who have glaucoma and AIDS. Relaxing for people who enjoy chemically adjusting their psyches. Big business for the people of Kentucky: it's their largest cash crop.
Equal Rights Balance Equal Responsibilities
I'd like to talk to those of you who regularly use hemp for its psychogenic properties. I'd like to talk not like the fork-tounged weasels we call politicians but like a depolitician, a Libertarian. Libertarians, unlike certain famous radio personalities, are in relentless, and I mean relentless pursuit of the truth. The truth is that people who ingest psychogenically active substances must be willing to take responsibility for their actions. Jerry Garcia was undoubtedly willing to take that responsibility: are you? Do you whine about the government interfering with your chemical pursuit of happiness and yet live off government interference in everybody else's economic life? If so, consider that libertarians support freedom in both areas. Freedom is a two-edged sword. With every right to ingest chemicals comes an equal and opposite responsibility to bear the costs of that behavior.
Caught in the Crossfire
Now I'd like to talk to those of you who are parents of impressionable children. Do you want your children in the midst of a war? Do you want them in the crossfire between rival gangs blasting one another for turf on which to make obscene drug profits?
Who's Creating Criminals?
Perhaps you'll have to have the courage to face up to the truth that the drug war isn't working any better than the war on poverty and that they're both dehumanizing our neighborhoods and our children. If you truly believe that you are a responsible parent, don't you think that you should shoulder the responsibility of keeping your children out of the drug culture and not slough it off on government by supporting laws that fill up our jails with victimless criminals, leaving little room for the real predators who are out to get your property and your children?
War is News (Surprise!)
Finally, I'd like to speak to you media people and the politicians you support with your subjective reporting. Will you leave this rally and go write a story headlined, "Libertarians Support Legalizing Marijuana?" Or will you note that that's the very first time I've use the word marijuana in this speech and that I support not mere legalization, but responsible use of all drugs, even "legal" drugs like nicotine and alcohol and, Heavens to Murgatroid, prozac and valium?
Politics is War
And to all of you who vote for the politicians those media people support, isn't it time for a change? A real change this time. A change away from politicizing every detail of our lives and toward our libertarian heritage of limited government: government that neither pays people to live in poverty nor forbids the chemical pursuit of happiness. If you're used to voting for the two monopoly political parties, I invite you to join the American third party: the Libertarian party. For 27 years Libertarians have opposed the Democrats' Civil Religon of forcing you to part with your money to finance their vote-bribing of the less fortunate among us. For 27 years Libertarians have opposed the Republicans' forcing you to adopt the Civil Religion of their holier-than-thou morality.
Politicians: Welcome to the War Zone. The Drug War Zone. You Democrats and Republicans up there on Capitol Hill and here in the Denver City/County building are My Government on Drugs.
Advice from Tom
I'm proud to be a Libertarian, a Libertarian who wishes to declare peace and justice in this war zone. I'm proud to be in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, that great founder of the Democratic party who said, "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
My name is Earl Allen. If you'd like to learn about Libertarians in Colorado, click here.
To learn more about Libertarians and the way they think, check out the Future of Freedom Foundation
W. Earl Allen's home page: 
http://www.allmax.com/wea
