[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 78 (Tuesday, June 16, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1133-E1134]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   THE U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY PLAN TO FIGHT DRUGS VERSUS LEGALIZATION

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENJAMIN A. GILMAN

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 16, 1998

  Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, the U.N. General Assembly recently took up 
the problem of international drug production and trade as it moved 
forward with an emerging consensus that all of the nations of the globe 
must fight this scourge together, and stop the finger pointing.
  The U.N. proposal that emerged was an ambitious yet doable plan to 
eliminate the production of cocaine and heroin in 10 years, although 
regrettably the means to finance this important proposal were not 
found.
  In Monday's New York Times, columnist A.M. Rosenthal points out 
another battle in the war on drugs, the effort of many who favor 
``legalization'' to discredit the U.N. anti-drug efforts and to 
camouflage their own worldwide cause to foster legalization by the use 
of nice sounding phrases like ``harm reduction.''
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that Mr. Rosenthal's informative column be 
reprinted herein. It points out the nature of this legalization 
campaign which reflects a sense of failure, lack of political will, and 
submission to the evils of illicit drugs that few Americans, or others 
around the globe support, or would ever subject their children and 
future generations to under the guise of such a misdirected solution.

                [From the New York Times, June 12, 1998]

                            (A.M. Rosenthal)

                          Pointing the Finger

       The three-day meeting on fighting drugs was one of the more 
     useful United Nations conferences in decades. It was well led 
     by Pino Arlacchi, the Italian Mafia-buster, drew chiefs of 
     state and narcotics specialists from every part of the world, 
     and wound up with a plan to eliminate the growing of illegal 
     heroin and cocaine in 10 years--certainly difficult but 
     certainly doable.
       So, months before the opening Monday, a campaign to attack 
     the conference was planned. It was worked out by Americans 
     who devote their careers and foundation grants not to 
     struggling against narcotics but legalizing them under one 
     camouflage or another.
       Before the first gavel, they were ready with advertisements 
     writing off the conference, had rounded up American and 
     European signatures denouncing the war against drugs as a 
     failure, and had mobilized their network of web sites.
       They convinced one or two convincible journalists that 
     people opposed to the anti-drug effort had been banned from 
     talking at meetings of specialists and organizations. That's 
     strange, because at the very first forum I attended there 
     were as many legalizers as drug fighters making statements 
     and asking questions.
       The propaganda was professionally crafted. Hundreds of 
     well-known people and wannabes signed an opening-day two-page

[[Page E1134]]

     advertisement in The Times. It had no proposals except for a 
     ``dialogue,'' which already has gone on a half-century.
       The word ``legalization'' was not used. Legalizers and 
     their financial quartermasters know Americans are 87 percent 
     against legalization. So now they use camouflage phrases like 
     ``harm reduction''--permitting drug abuse without penalty, 
     the first step toward de facto legalization.
       One signer told me that she did indeed favor legalization 
     but that in such campaigns you just don't use words that will 
     upset the public.
       I have more respect for her, somewhat, than for prominent 
     ad-signers who deny drug legalization is the goal. And for 
     signers who, God help us, do not even know the real goal, 
     here's a statement by Dr. Ethan Nadelmann, now George Soros' 
     chief narcotics specialist and field commander, in 1993 when 
     he still spoke, unforked, about legalization:
       ``It's nice to think that in another 5 or 10 years . . . 
     the right to possess and consume drugs may be as powerfully 
     and as widely understood as the other rights of Americans 
     are.'' Plain enough?
       The conference is finished, legalizers are not. Hours after 
     publication of this column, masses of denunciatory E-mail 
     letters to the editor will arrive at The Times. Judging by 
     the past, the web-site chiefs will announce gleefully that 
     virtually all the letters The Times printed supported them, 
     and how much that publicity would have cost if they had to 
     pay for it. Anti-drug letters will arrive too late.
       Now, I have a problem. Knowing that Americans are so 
     against legalization and the multiplication of addition, 
     crime and destroyed souls it will create, I ask myself why I 
     write about legalizers at all. They live by publicity, which 
     can mean more millions from Mr. Soros and a few other 
     backers.
       But the legalization minority includes many intellectuals, 
     academics, journalists and others with access to lecture 
     rooms, print and TV. So consistently do they spread their 
     falsehood that the drug war has failed that even some 
     Americans who want to fight drugs believe there's no use 
     trying. America still suffers agonizingly from illegal drugs, 
     but as President Clinton told the U.N., overall U.S. drug use 
     has dropped 49 percent since 1979, cocaine use has dropped 70 
     percent since 1985, crime usually related to drugs has 
     decreased five years in a row.
       Yet the anti-drug movement has never rallied to tell 
     Americans about the legalizers, identities and techniques. 
     Washington and the U.N., including Mr. Arlacci, have even 
     softened their language--such as not using the phrase ``drug 
     war'' anymore.
       Washington's big new anti-drug ad campaign will be useful, 
     but not very, unless it not only urges parents to talk to 
     children, but parents to talk to other parents, about the 
     legalizers, in or out of camouflage.
       Surely it is time for the President to dissect America's 
     legalizers and publicly point the finger at them. If he is 
     too delicate, or politically fearful, the rest of us will 
     have to do the job of denying them acceptability or cover; 
     it's worth the space.

     

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