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"I think the money should be followed, period. That's why, in the early 1990s, I wrote extensively about the American Civil Liberties Union taking huge amounts of cash from the tobacco industry, while supporting legislation wanted by the industry and not telling its members of either activity." Veteran reporter, Morton Mintz said recently. Mintz is a senior adviser to the Nieman Watchdog Project, Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Bill Moyers said, "that the quality of journalism and the quality of democracy are inseparable." Good journalism tries to level with the reader the best it can, allowing for the possibility of being wrong. Yet, stories that really matter to our safety, health and pocketbooks, even to the survival of our country, are consistently ignored or trivialized.

David J. Garrow's "Mental Decrepitude on the U.S. Supreme Court: The Historical Case for a 28th Amendment," suggests a constitutional amendment should be passed forcing judges to retire at 75. Most court observers now concede that Thurgood Marshall had lost much of his hearing and half his bag of marbles by his final years of service on the court. Garrow blames the Supreme Court press corps for not aggressively covering either such mental slippage or Rehnquist's "publicly visible struggle with deleterious Placidyl overmedication."

"From the mid-1960s through much of the 1980s Congress played an integral role in drug safety. Lawmakers meticulously probed the regulatory histories of dubious drugs, uncovered FDA weaknesses and ordered corrections." according to an article in The American Prospect." Then Congressional oversight of the FDA began to decline with passage of a highly dubious law allowing the industry to pay so-called user fees as a way to speed FDA approval of new drugs.

Oversight collapsed when the Republicans took control of the House and drug and tobacco industry lobbyists and campaign contributors took control of them. Speaker Newt Gingrich called the FDA the "leading job killer in America." He denounced its then-Commissioner, David Kessler, who wanted to regulate tobacco, as "a thug" and "a bully," and the consequences were catastrophic.

By the Fall of 2002, 13 dangerous drugs were pulled from the market after causing many hundreds of deaths and many thousands of injuries. Just seven of the unsafe medicines had caused more than one thousand deaths. Viox, alone, has more recently been touted as causing more deaths than the Vietnam War.

David Willman of the Los Angeles Times found that the FDA had become a partner rather than a supposed watchdog of the pharmaceutical industry in a superb investigative series that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002,. This industry has more lobbyists than Congress has members, it fills the campaign coffers of friendly lawmakers to overflowing, and dangles the prospect of high-paying jobs before Capitol Hill overseers who don't oversee.

"House leaders and committee chairs had no interest in investigating the FDA's role in approving even one of the drugs that caused needless deaths and injuries on their watch. Least of all did they and the other lawmakers who were themselves partners of the industry want to investigate why and how the FDA had become a partner of the industry," Morton Mintz pointed out..

He said, "As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Billy Tauzin had prime FDA oversight jurisdiction but didn't exercise it. Over the course of 15 years, he took $218,000 from the drug industry. In January 2005, the Louisiana Republican became president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. His annual pay package is reportedly worth at least $2 million. Tauzin's successor, Joe Barton of Texas, is cut from the same cloth."

Early last year Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Finance Committee undertook tough oversight of the FDA, including its handling of childhood antidepressants and Vioxx and related painkillers. Moreover, Grassley gave notice that he'd protect the FDA's internal whistleblowers, like medical officer David Graham, who had called Vioxx a "profound regulatory failure" by an agency "incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx."

For a full decade, the press failed to inform the public of the prolonged, corrupt pre-Grassley abdication of congressional oversight of the FDA responsible for the safety of our medicines. They were silent about the causes, consequences and implications of that abandonment. They turned a blind eye when the blood of thousands of their neighbors was being spilled. Unfortunately, much the same story can be told about other agencies and issues.

Where is a story in which Billy Tauzin, or Joe Barton, or House Speakers, or House and Senate majority leaders, were asked why no oversight investigation into any of the seven drugs that caused the deaths of a thousand Americans has been instigated? Or a story on Senator Mike Enzi asking why his Health committee hadn't done the FDA oversight done by Charles Grassley's Finance Committee.

Instead the press went crazy over Terri Schiavo. Our DEA got a little bad press for harassing the sick and dying so to balance that the Administration went to bat for Terri. Proving if you are brain dead our government will do anything for you. But if you have a brain and want to use it, that will be over their politically dead bodies.

In the aftermath of Katrina, a sea-change occurred, the mainstream press is being justly praised for asking tough questions, for speaking truth to power. Down through the years, thousands of substantive questions should have been but were not asked of presidents, lawmakers, religious leaders, etc.

"The United States and Russia together have approximately 4,800 nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert. These weapons have a combined destructive power nearly 100,000 times that of the atomic bomb which leveled Hiroshima. Within a few minutes, a wrong call about a supposed incoming missile, or, say, a terrorist electronically hacking into a launch-control system, could start a war that would destroy humankind." Mr. Mintz warns.

Campaigning Bush said,"[F]or two nations at peace, keeping so many weapons on high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch. ." Mr. President, what have you done to lower the risks that you cited five years ago?" Mr. Mintz asks.

Here's several questions Mr. Mintz and all of us want President Bush to answer. " Many of your appointees to Cabinet-level and other high regulatory posts had been lobbyists dedicated to weakening or killing the very regulations that on taking office they solemnly swear to enforce. What philosophy underlies such appointments? Have you been appointing foxes to guard the chicken coops?"

"Economic inequality in the United States today has for a long time been greater than in any other industrialized country. Yet the gaps in income and wealth have been steadily widening. Of 367 leading corporations today, the pay of the top boss averages 431 times that of the production worker. Are the economic inequality and the chasm in income healthy for our democracy?

"Why does the United States need nuclear weapons in numbers sufficient to destroy every major city on the planet ten times over?"

"Does every American have a right to basic health care?"

"Why aren't business executives who knowingly and willfully market products that they know will needlessly kill, injure or sicken people, or who knowingly expose their workers to preventable death, injury or disease criminally prosecuted?"

Mainstream press lets the candidates select the issues in election campaigns. This disconnect of a great many issues of highest importance from election campaign coverage is a huge failing on the media's part. Hmmm, mainstream media is owned by, controlled by large corporations, enough said.

Issues like nearly 5,000 nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert, lobbyists becoming regulators, economic inequality are but three of a host of examples, Bush and Kerry didn't mention in the 2004; consequently, they were non-issues. for political editors, reporters and debate moderators.

Here are a few illustrations from the past to underscore the persistence of the disconnect between issues that really matter and the issues emphasized in campaigns: The four paragraphs below are from the text of a talk by Morton Mintz on Sept. 13, 2005, to the Southeastern Sussex County Democratic Club at Bethany Beach, Delaware:

In May 1988, while the presidential campaign was revving up, newspapers and television newscasters gave top billing to an alarming report by the Surgeon General of the United States. Cigarettes, warned Dr. C. Everett Koop, an appointee of President Reagan, "are addicting in the same sense as are drugs such as heroin and cocaine." (Actually tobacco is 30% addicting compared to 10% for alcohol and all other illicit drugs except marijuana which is nonaddicting, according to Consumer Report's, "Licit and Illicit Drugs")

Despite countless opportunities between the prominent news coverage and the November election, or indeed in the ensuing 17 years, to my knowledge, and despite the more than 400,000 premature deaths smoking causes every year, political reporters have not asked a presidential or congressional candidate questions such as: Do you accept Dr. Koop's evidence of the addictiveness of cigarettes? If you don't, what scientific evidence supports your position? You don't take money from the cocaine cartel, of course. But how is it moral, or right, to take money from the maker of an addictive but legal product that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans annually?

In 1996, no one asked presidential candidate Bob Dole whether he stood by a statement he'd made in 1983: "When these political action committees give money, they expect something in return other than good government."

In 2000, after a decade of unparalleled prosperity, it was somehow not a campaign issue that 13.5 million children, one out of every five, were hungry; and that three out of four of the hungry children had parents who work. Nor was welfare of $125 billion a year to politically-wired corporations and industries. Nor was the massive transfer of cash, securities and other assets to foreign tax havens. The resultant evasion of US income taxes was in an amount equivalent to, by one unofficial estimate, the sum of "every tax dollar paid by everyone in New York State and New Jersey who earns less than $200,000 a year."

Thank you, Morton Mintz for pointing these failings of the press out. We must all be better watchdogs for our liberty. Truly, our lives and those of our descendants depend on it.

You hear a lot about the law of unintended consequences but with modern statistical reporting we can see where our laws are causing more harm than good and change accordingly. Empirical statistical evidence strongly shows that more democracy leads to less internal violence and democide. Democide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel in his book, DEATH by GOVERNMENT to describe "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder".

The HEA Aid Elimination Penalty senselessly hurts those students most in need. If you or anyone you know has been denied financial aid as a result of a drug conviction, please contact Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

This student organization has launched a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the HEA Aid Elimination Penalty, with pro bono legal representation from the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. SSDP is still seeking additional plaintiffs in this class action lawsuit. Please take five minutes right now to call your two U.S. senators and one U.S. representative and urge them to repeal the harmful and unfair aid elimination penalty. To help Students for Sensible Drug Policy identify new plaintiffs, please visit the SSDP lawsuit web page.

The odd thing about the Department of Education's numbers is they do not enumerate college applicants punished for drug convictions. They count the number punished for truth telling, owning up to drug convictions. The state of Texas denied aide to 27% of its applicants for being honest. Ryan Grim, writer of a recent web article suggests students, "just check no," as many already have done, most likely.

Here's the latest outrage: Bush and his allies in Congress think that young people with drug convictions are fit to go to war for their country but aren't good enough to go to school, please help us generate a strong message to Congress: End the Drug War Draft Now!

Following the death of a student at Stephen F Austin from alcohol poisoning, SFA is being accused of being far more lenient toward alcohol-related incidents than marijuana-related ones. The Colorado-based nonprofit group SAFER criticized SFA for policies that penalize marijuana use more heavily than alcohol, despite statistics that show alcohol is related to far more deaths than marijuana.

Drinking by college students, ages 18 to 24, contributes to an estimated 1,400 student deaths, 500,000 injuries and 70,000 cases of sexual assaults or date rapes each year, according to a 2002 study commissioned by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Task Force on College Drinking.

SSDP, Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) and NORML, (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) say students should not be punished for making a safer health choice in recreational drug use. Recently 64% of University of TEXAS students urged administrators to reduce penalties for marijuana.

Florida State University recently passed their referendum by 60%. University of Maryland SAFER Initiative passed by 65%; 6000 people voted, a record. turnout to vote in the election!

A drug conviction hurts those students most in need and it is adding insult to injury to take away student aid for a safer choice.

SSDP officially took action to defend students' rights in a brief filed in the most important Supreme Court case ever to deal with student free speech about drugs and drug policy. SSDP filed an Amicus Curiae (Friend of the Court) brief in the Supreme Court case of Morse v Frederick, better known as the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case: Read the brief!

Drugs, sex and politics; a national shame!
by Ma Freedom

First I want to point out that, like Mark Twain, reports of my recent demise have been greatly over exaggerated. Perhaps you thought Uncle Sam was a benevolent spirit, well I tell it like it is! He began ravishing me early on and continues to get away with it!! Also, be aware, you may be next to get screwed by your government. Citizens deserve to live without fear of a no-knock raid, busting down the front door or, God forbid, the bedroom door.

Prohibition fuels corruption of public officials and injustice in our courts. It triggers violence in our streets and along our borders. It incites terrorists by forcing senseless policy on other countries. The black market supports despicable people who sell to children and who recruit them to sell to their peers. The statistics reveal that racism is epidemic in the drug war.

Everyone wants to feel safe; to live without fear. Kind parents want that for their children. Most people solve their problems without violence. Ethical governments work toward that goal using arbitration and diplomacy.
Most of us want to feel that we are doing good; having a positive impact. Some think of it as being on the side of right; being on God's side. Remember, "God loves everyone," but probably prefers fruits of the spirit over religious nuts!

Join the easy revolution! The web is the fastest growing communications medium in the history of the world. A powerful tool, a window of opportunity, in our war of good over evil; the Internet continues to revolutionize the way we communicate and has enormous potential for reshaping the political process.

"Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free." US
Congressman Ron Paul notes. Have you heard about the Revolution March in DC July 12,2008?

Thousands March, major media ignores them! A 3rd party or real choice for real change would just complicate things for the money and power mad financiers that actually are the corrupt powers that be in ours and several other countries.

Our flag is a symbol of liberty, justice and freedom! It is a beacon for hope in a troubled world. Don't let its reputation be tarnished by incidents of torture. Recapture the Flag by demanding a government that respects human rights, leadership that rejects all forms of corruption, and elected officials who fiercely challenge anyone who seeks to undermine the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I want to be perfectly clear about my being ravaged by that beastly Uncle Sam, need I remind you he's my Big Brother! Throughout history, big government has caused more harm than good; often hiding tyranny under the guise of good intentions. Our founders knew big government would always mean a gang of evildoers.

My friend, Mark Twain mused, "In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce and brave man, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."

"If you research it you will find that there were few overdose deaths before prohibition. New Mexico recently passed legislation to protect Good Samaritan 911 Calls (for alcohol and drug overdose cases) from "drug crime"prosecution. Many European countries have had similar policy for decades.

We need to repeal the whole war on drugs," said Doctor Ron Paul.. "This is a disease, not a crime." We will do a better job preventing overdose deaths, of keeping intoxicated folks off the road and our children drug free with compassionate policy offering helpful treatment.

Politicians are concerned about the next election because there are few true patriots among them. Too, many of these folks want to serve God, but only as advisors. Few are Public Servants who are concerned about the rights of the individual and working for downsizing to a more limited constitutional government. These are true patriots as defined by our founders.

The blinded by the light of billions in tax and lobby money, bleeding leaders thus corrupted are blithely unconscious of the societal harm their policies cause. Many of today's leaders seem to have minds like concrete; thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."as my mentor Mark Twain put it.

There is nothing kinky about ethics. Ethical people and governments can make dollars and sense. When will ethics rule sex, drugs and politics?

Our politicians play on our fears to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources. Flushing $69 billion per year down the drug war drain fails to prevent cannabis, hemp or marijuana from being America's number one cash crop! For perspective, a billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. Flushing those billions of tax dollars failed to staunch the flow of black market drugs and made out teens more aware and curious about them!

Prohibition has become a war on parental authority, local government decision making and free speech. Shame on US! How did this happen; US, the evil empire? Americans live in fear of an ever-expanding and ever more corrupt big government.

We have freedom of religion, all faiths are welcome here, but we have separation of church and state to keep the government out of moral issues. That is how our founders set things up based on Jesus' teachings. Our constitution is a plan to create the land of abundance in Bible prophecy.

Many have been turned away from the church in the past because of the drug question. In the name of justice and humanity, wise church leaders know respecting individual rights and treating drug abusers as patients instead of criminals is the answer.

All major religions believe that life is sacred. The war on drugs devastates the lives of drug users and their families. People of all faiths and goodwill can stand together for more just and compassionate alternatives to the current senseless policy. What does the Bible say about cannabis?

"Bong Hits 4 Jesus," Alaskan high school student, Frederick's banner was a perfectly nonsensical poke at our irrational policy. Or was it?

Prisons propagate sexual abuse, violence and crime. Placing nonviolent drug users in this "breeding ground" is policy bordering on insanity or reefer madness! The tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical gangs deal drugs that kill many more annually than all illicit drugs. We tolerate their salesmen!

Parents or students do not necessarily hold the same values as the politically and economically powerful who run our government. A separation of school and state might be in our future to insure students of free speech and a propaganda free education.

"Bong Hits for Jesus," is right on, about religious freedom. Holy smokes, Cannabis is often used as a sacrament. Why does that scare people of faith instead of excite them? It is down right sinister, a crime against humanity, for the healing properties of cannabis to be suppressed!

Carl Sagan said, "The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world."

Patients testify to Cannabis' help in treating chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, gastrointestinal (GI) tract disorders and HIV/AIDS! A 2007 Columbia University in New York study reported smoking average strength cannabis was as effective as taking 8 times the US FDA recommended dose of Marinol! The patients who smoked cannabis dramatically reduced their requests for over-the-counter medications and reported better sleep patterns. Most "08 presidential candidates support medical marijuana.

Some scientists speculate that cannabinoids play a protective role in the brain, slowing the rate of disease. A study has shown THC is far more effective than available Alzheimer's drugs to treat symptoms and halt the disease's progression. . Ooooops! Who spilled the beans? Scientists and patients all over the world, that's who!

Studies have shown it to slow the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice namely: a virus-induced leukemia, lung and breast cancer. In another study THC destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats!

Harassing the sick and dying over their medicinal use is
the most un-American activity I can think of!

Science based, fiscally prudent, and compassionate public policy is the wave of our future. I see our Legislatures acting decisively to prevent the spread of AIDS by allowing needle exchange programs, as a turning point to letting all drug policy be governed by science and compassion.

Texas Representative Ruth Jones McClendon, in the final hour of this session attached an amendment to budget bill (SB 10) allowing for a pilot needle exchange program in San Antonio. TX HOUSE TX SENATE

Most people are responsible drug users and practice safe sex. Adults deserve the right to choose safe sex even if incarcerated. Providing addicts with clean needles and making condoms available to prisoners is safer for us all. Almost half of HIV-infected State prison inmates at end of 2004 were in New York, Florida and Texas.

Yes, our Texas reform work is bearing some fruit! As of this coming Sept. first,, a fine-don't-incarcerate
option applies to hundreds of different Class B misdemeanors including people who are found with less than 4 ounces of marijuana? Such options for
"nonviolent and victimless crimes" will relieve prison overcrowding and prevent fiscal waste.

Maybe these aren't leaps but they are definitely wonderful first steps to making science based, fiscally prudent, and compassionate public policy the wave of our future!

Restore justice in America; construct science based drug policies about saving and rehabilitating instead of ruining lives. Warriors can get their adrenaline rush increasing public safety; chasing murderers and sexual
predators. Move America out of the dark ages of war by returning to our roots.

Support for the federal war on drugs is inconsistent with support for individual freedom, constitutional government and the teachings of Jesus. It's time to end the terror by changing our intrusive, big-bully policies,
both foreign and domestic. The monetary and environmental costs are staggering and the human suffering unconscionable.

French researchers report; Cannabis ingredient may prevent Mad Cow Disease. A Polish woman grew marijuana to calm the nerves of her cow and has been charged with cultivating a narcotic. The rowdy cow once broke someone's arm. After a friend suggested mixing cannabis in with its feed, "The cow became as calm as a lamb," the 55-year-old woman said, according to the PAP news agency.

The drug war has made the US a prison kingdom. Texas has the highest incarceration rate in the world! We have ten times the incarceration rate of Communist China!

U.S. police arrested an estimated 829,625 persons for marijuana violations in 2006, according to the latest FBI annual Uniform Crime Report. That total, the highest ever recorded for marijuana violations, made up 44 percent of all drug arrests.

Meanwhile across the US last year 40% of the murders, almost 60% of the rapes and about half of the aggravated assaults became cold case files! The cumulative effect of this is horrendous. While we police individual recreational and medicinal use of drugs; murderers and violent sexual predators roam free.

"After millions of people arrested and incarcerated, it is clear that the "war on drugs" has reshaped the way America responds to crime and ushered in an era of instability and mistrust in countless communities." According to a new report from the Sentencing project, a half million poor souls are presently incarcerated for drug offenses. Drug abusers deserve
medical help. Instead we lock them in prison, a breeding ground for crime.

Vested interest's hype surrounding hemp, another variety of cannabis or marijuana, has overshadowed the plant's benefits as a source of paper pulp and substitute for other wood products, its uses as a cotton and bio-degradable plastic substitute, its nutritional uses and more.

These are real snake oil salesmen who, with the petrochemical industry and our corrupt, sold-out government, prefer to incarcerate more of our people than any dictatorship in the world, incite terrorists by forcing senseless policy on other nations, destroy our national forests, cause global warming and have us all using poisonous products instead of the beneficial and virtually harmless plant, cannabis or hemp.

Fear mongering and war runs their gravy train!

Problems don't go away just because the government makes them illegal; they go underground, creating a black market, causing worse problems. Sellers arm themselves since they cannot rely on police protection, they form gangs, recruit minors to sell to their peers, charge monopoly prices and kill the competition. Customers steal to pay the high prices.

America gets an F in two out of three public safety indicators comparing world governments' statistics concerning homicides, assaults and thefts The US is a material world so we get just above average marks for protection from and solving thefts. Where our government fails is in protecting us from and solving homicides and assaults.

Switzerland and Netherlands do a much better job with their violent crime. Their drug laws help lessen the harm Ma Freedom continues below ad

to society by triggering less assaults and homicides. Their teen drug use is down. Could it be because they live in a safer, saner world? Maybe, but California's teen use of marijuana is down so maybe it has more to do with drug sales being handled by legitimate business people less likely to sell to a child or to recruit a minor to sell to their peers.

Willie Nelson and buds, arrested for a safer choice, are true American heroes. They are rebels with just cause taking a stand for freedom; as our founding fathers did. Remember, those brave men who defined what a patriot would be. Harassing responsible citizens is un-American activity! Texans who seek change keep up to date on cannabis policy.

Let people be responsible for the choices they make. Drug abusers who seek treatment and can afford to

Responsible adults deserve the right to choose their own recreational or medicinal intoxicant. We deserve the right to the best buy on our medicines worldwide. Americans deserve better protection from violence, especially our children and babies! We deserve better protection from fraud, especially government moralizing and propaganda.

"As females become sexually active at younger and younger ages, state legislatures have stupidly raised the age at which it is legal to engage in sexual activity. Today, a significant percentage of new prisoners are young men imprisoned for engaging in sexual activity with teenage girls. In the US, criminal justice (sic) has more to do with ruining people than with punishing criminals," says Paul Craig Roberts. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

In many of these cases the so-called victim did not want to prosecute; meanwhile violent sexual predators get away with murder. Once all voluntary associations were permissible in America -- economic and social.

Have you noticed opportunity may knock once, but temptation bangs on your front door forever or how forbidden fruits create many jams? Sex and drugs, for both abstinence is safest but few choose it. When individuals remain in control of their own bodies (including drug, alcohol, prescription use) society benefits.

Our children are healthy, young animals, entering their sexual primes, over 40% of whom will have had sex before they are fifteen. They should be taught every safety precaution and offered condoms. Still, that is 60% who choose abstinence and they should be free to choose to, "just say no," to Gardasil.

"Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once he grows up," said Pablo Picasso. There are all kinds of artists. Some make living well an art. Life is pure creative energy; a creative force dwells in each of us.

Take heart, the American dream comes directly from God and God has the power to accomplish it. Spirit filled leaders are channels for Good Orderly Direction! The "Spirit of '76" was and is the Holy Spirit! Return to these roots and the task ahead of us will never be as great as the Power behind us! Ethics will rule America. and we will be a true example of liberty to the world.

Current policies destroy families and official lawlessness rules. Alcohol makes domestic violence 8xs more likely, cannabis does not. Taking children out of homes of nonviolent cannabis users and placing them in homes in which alcohol is the drug of choice is policy bordering on insanity!

Americans deserve policies that build family bonds instead of destroying them. Our children deserve an education free of lies, half truths, innuendoes and any similar government propaganda.

We just have to love our kids, teach them that their body is the temple for their soul and hope they make the right choices. You can't live their lives for them; they will not allow it.

Drug testing is useless except as a money making scheme. It is another big waste of our tax dollars.

Peter Bensinger former DEA head and former drug czars, Robert L Dupont and Carlton Turner shamelessly promoted drug testing as the solution to drug problems while they held office. Bensinger, Dupont & Associates is now the world's largest drug testing company. This Association formed by these same big drug warriors is reaping a fortune on the drug testing laws they wrote.

The only beneficiaries of drug testing are the makers of the tests. Statistics reveal that random student drug testing doesn't work and can deter students from extracurricular activities; the very activities that
increase students' connection to their schools and to caring adults. What's worse, studies even show that student drug testing does not deter drug use.

Read the story of how one student's life was turned upside down by drug testing and how drug testing created a devastating false sense of security for another family.

The truth about drugs will keep our children off them. Sound medical and unbiased scientific knowledge are the most effective moral persuasions. Present policy falsehoods and scare tactics undermine our credibility.

We want to encourage drug free behavior not awaken their curiosity. Effective drug education based on medical science builds student's confidence to make informed responsible choices. Scare tactics, drug testing and fear don't work as well as truth, trust and reason.

Consider truthfully educating our young, treating our addicts and respecting the rights of adults to choose their recreational/medicinal intoxicant. It would free law enforcement to better protect us from violence and fraud and create room in prison for those selling drugs to children.

As long as there is a demand for illicit drugs they will be made available. As long as work is available; they will come. As long as people are physically able to make love; they will! The free market with its laws of supply and demand always manages to carry on; no matter what new laws are written to slow the process.

Celebrate our similarities; instead of prisons, build bridges of tolerance to differences in religion, race and lifestyle. Change to a more compasionate policy about rehabilitating all but the most hardened. God Himself does not propose to judge a man until he is dead. So why should we? Except to protect our selves from violence or fraud we could adopt a policy of live and let live.

DNA testing has shown our judgment to be totally unreliable! In case after case corruption or ineptness has found innocent people guilty of murder and allowed the real predator to roam free. So many of the incarcerated are mentally ill, nonviolent drug offenders or the innocent; very few should be in prison!

We all agree drug abuse is a problem! Reformers say there is a better way to handle it. Treatment of drug abuse saves people and money. The statistics reveal that racism is epidemic in the drug war. African, Hispanic and other minority Americans are needed to work for reform!
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After someone has served their time, they should not have to admit to a nonviolent felony drug conviction on work applications. Maybe make that illegal to ask just like race, age and religious questions. How much do we owe in reparations to all nonviolent drug offenders?

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