THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF "NARCO-TERROR"

Are you scared yet?

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft wants you to stop worrying about your
privacy and civil liberties. Since fear of terrorism doesn't seem to be a
strong enough incentive, he may be ready to play the drug card.

Ashcroft is touring the country giving presentations to private groups,
including some law enforcement groups. The public is not welcome. Many
news reports suggest that Ashcroft is simply interested in mustering
support for the controversial PATRIOT Act, which several local governments
have officially criticized. Some other reports indicate he's pushing new
legislation that surpasses the PATRIOT Act - the VICTORY Act.

An apparent draft of the VICTORY Act -
http://www.libertythink.com/VICTORYAct.pdf - starts off this way:

"A Bill to combat narco-terrorism, to dismantle narco-terrorist criminal
enterprises, to disrupt narco-terrorist financing and money laundering
schemes, to enact national drug sentencing reform, to prevent drug
trafficking to children to deter drug-related violence, to provide law
enforcement with the tools needed to win the war against narco-terrorists
and major drug traffickers, and for other purposes."

The rest of bill is just as troubling. As presented, the bill drags the
Office of Homeland Security into the drug war, giving it the power to seize
assets of narco-terrorists.

According to the draft, accused narco-terrorists don't have to know that
any of their work was related to terror in order to be prosecuted under the
act.

The language in the draft goes way beyond drugs, alarming civil
libertarians - see http://www.talkleft.com/archives/003998.html - and
privacy advocates - see http://nccprivacy.org/handv/030815villain.htm

And everyone should be scared, according to an ACLU lawyer quoted in an ABC
News report on the VICTORY Act: "Absolutely nothing would prevent the
attorney general from using these subpoenas to obtain the records of people
who have no connection to terrorism, drug trafficking or crime of any sort."

The idea of narco-terror has been widely publicized through a series of
propaganda ads, which, mercifully, have ceased to run. Those ads were
allegedly meant to help drug users to confront the ugly realities of their
habits. I doubt the ads worked at all on that level, but I think they were
actually geared to provoke fresh disgust for drugs and drug users.

We must ask the real reason for the VICTORY Act. Surely current federal
drug laws aren't so weak that they don't apply equally well to drug
kingpins who have a connection with terror. Naturally, when this bill is
officially introduced, supporters will pledge not to abuse it.

I hope, however, the feds show more restraint than prosecutors in North
Carolina, which has its own state terror laws. Common meth cooks without
broader connections are being indicted as terrorists -
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n1070/a03.html

The drug war itself causes terror - look at the violence associated with
prohibited drugs in any major city, or even in more rural places, like
Kanawha County, W. Virginia, where a series of sniper killings has been
linked to the illegal drug trade -
http://www.herald-dispatch.com/2003/August/21/LNspot.htm

It's not about the drugs - are any snipers settling scores in the alcohol
or tobacco trade? It's about economics.

Formalizing the link between illegal drugs and terror protects us from neither.