This is in response to Erin Schwartzs Feb. 9 column titled Drug war has turned into race, class conflict.
Ethnic cleansing is criticized around the world - from Adolf Hitler to Slobodan Milosevic - but it is practiced daily with the Drug Enforcement Administrations drug war. In the October 1999 edition of High Times, Jello Biafra says the DEAs drug war is ethnic cleansing, American style.
If you doubt this, you should ask yourself why white drug users well outnumber nonwhite drug users, but a majority of those dying or doing time for nonviolent drug crimes are people of color.
Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the party line of prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison and military industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the drug treatment industry, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA and the politicians themselves cant live without the budget justification, not to mention the invisible profits, bribery, corruption and forfeiture benefits that prohibition affords them.
The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are supposed to be inalienable according to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Myron Von Hollingsworth
Fort Worth, Texas resident