The Emperor Wears No Clothes

by Jack Herer

In Conclusion: Truth or Consequences of Prohibition

When DuPont tells you that they bring “Better Living through Chemistry,” they don’t tell you that it’s only for 100 years, then the entire planet dies for their profit.

England and Holland have learned to treat their substance abusers as human beings – keeping them supplied with enough affordable medicants so they don’t disrupt the activities of others. Such policies allow them to lead otherwise productive and normal lives. These policies are now firmly established, effective and popular in those countries. In the mid-1990s, Switzerland began its own experiments in localized tolerance of public drug use.

When the Swiss government tried, in 1997, to re-criminalize cannabis with a ballot initiative, it lost by 79% of the vote!

So, why should other-wise peaceful hemp/marijuana growers and users be labeled and persecuted as lifetime criminals while 35% of all robberies and burglaries are committed by heroin and alcohol addicts, 40 to 55% of murders, rapes and highway fatalities are alcohol related* and hero-in is more available in jail than on the streets. Yet cannabis users statistically have the same or lower incidents of crime and violence as the non-cannabis-using population as a whole.

*FBI Statistics, 2005.

In fact, aside from cannabis usage, take the mob and the dealers out of heroin and other drugs and you reduce as much as 80% of non-alcohol related crime. As a direct example, throughout the “Roaring Twenties” era of alcohol prohibition, the murder rate rose consistently then dropped every year for the next 10 years following prohibition’s 1933 repeal.*

*FBI Statistics.

Let’s find another way to deal with drug usage or be prepared for continued exponential erosion of our freedoms, including the rights of self expression, public debate and a free press, including books and songs.

Accept the fact that virtually all drug-related crime ends if you treat addicts and users instead of removing them from society. Help them, educate and encourage them to be financially productive.

In 2006, the top priority of the U. S. government, the DEA and most of the Republican Party is to try to enact legislation that will automatically take away 100% of all citizens’ rights to privacy and freedom from unwarranted search – as if the drug war were a true state of emergency – in order to further their fascistic, police and prison-state agenda.