WE HEARD federal Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey speak. He said:
There are 800,000 police in the United States. This year, $33 billion is
being spent on the drug war in the U.S. There are 1.8 million people in
jail in the United States.
Our son is one of those POWs. Only $3 billion is being spent on treatment,
and 3.6 million people are addicted.
The most important thing, McCaffrey said three times, is that drugs affect
the workplace and the family. In other words, drugs affect profits.
That is the ruling class bottom line. That's what the drug war is all
about, control, which means more profits. The employers and ruling class
are making big bucks.
Why? Drug testing at work. It divides at work, and in my union. In this
country, employers do not have religion any more, as they did the past 200
years, to keep us in line. So their new game plan is the drug war. The pot
smokers on my job are the ones who speak up about safety or whatever, and
are very rebellious. The ruling class does not like that. Testing is a way
to get people in line.
There are other ways in the past that the ruling class used drugs to
attack workers, such as when the first drug laws were passed in San
Francisco in 1875. It was an attack on Chinese workers who were building
the railroad. Then there is the Harrison Act of 1914. It was another racist
attack on blacks and Mexicans to keep down wages. Lower wages meant more
profits.
Yes, the drug war is a attack on people who work. The drug war is class
war. What do you think?
Gina Sasso
Michael Delacour
Boilermaktes Union #549
Berkeley