Are they really 'concerned' about drugs?

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Drug addiction is no laughing matter in the United States. Thousands of lives have been destroyed and families ruined because of their use. Drugs are not new. Poor and minority communities have been plagued for years by drug users and drug dealers.

For the most part, drugs have been foisted on the Black community by white drug cartels raking in massive profits with the aid and protection of the police department of every large city.

The joke in Harlem is that any child could point out the corner pusher-but policemen could never find them. Usually just before election time there would be a major "drug" and "bookie" bust. Incumbent politicians, up for reelection, would "suddenly discover" that New York City was awash with bookies taking bets and drug pushers pushing drugs.

For weeks before voting time, headlines would scream about the latest arrest of the local bookie or drug pusher. As soon as the election was over, that was the last you heard about pushers or bookies until the next election campaign was upon us.

A guy named Jack My experience was a personal one. I worked as a waitress in a luncheonette on 86th Street in Brooklyn for a number of years. The local "bookie" was a nice old guy, probably in his 70s, named Jack. He hung around the restaurant most of the day, occupying a corner counter seat, waiting for bettors to come in. He didn't have long to wait.

On one side of the restaurant was a police station and on the other side was a fire house. The perfect place for a bookie to hang his hat! Jack had plenty of customers, from the fire chief to the police chief and all their underlings, plus the local merchants.

I worked there for a months before I learned that was a bookie. I found out when he would sometimes borrow my order book, write in it, and then go to the phone.

My boss said that he was writing down bets in my book. That didn't bother me as long as a horse wasn't named BLT with Mayo. But Jack didn't complain when I told him to get his own few Jack book from the boss. I was afraid the cops would come in and take a look at my order book. They never did, of course.

Every election time, Jack would disappear for a few weeks. Then he would reappear after the election, saying that he had gone to the country for a vacation.

When Jack died, he had one of the biggest funerals in Brooklyn. The chief of police was the major speaker at his funeral. But the rest of us missed him too. He was not only a nice guy, he was also a good tipper.

A sinister new "war"

This so-called "war on drugs" engineered by Reagan and his "war dogs" is far more serious DRUG • USE IS BAD...

PLEASE STOP!

NANKY than the oldtime wars against bookies. This "war" is sinister and fraught with danger to the people of this country.

Although Reagan is given credit for this "war," the Democrats have jumped in with both feet. In fact the two crooked parties of capitalism are vying with each other to see which of them has the toughest drug policy. All of the legal policies are aimed not at the big drug pushers and dealers, but at the helpless victims of drugs—the users.

California Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, who is running for the U.S. Senate against Senator Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), has just come up with his own plan to fight drugs. He proposes diverting $1 billion from Star Wars to the "war on drugs" and cutting off foreign aid to governments found by the CIA to be involved in drug trafficking.

That's like telling the foxes to check the chicken house for chicken killers.

McCarthy also calls for "transferring" assets seized in drug arrests to so-called rehabilitation programs and mandatory drug education in the schools. He also calls for the death penalty for drug-related murders, increased wire-tapping, and random testing of people in transportation jobs -such as pilots, railroad workers, and truck drivers.

Are they "concerned?"

All of this would sound sincere if anyone in the government, either Democrat or Republican, had shown even the slightest interest in our health or welfare. The record of both parties gives the lie to their alleged concern for the "people."

For instance, Congressman Fortney H. Stark revealed that in the last 15 months, the Air Force has spent $3.3 billion patrolling for drug smugglers and has come up with a grand total of eight drug dealers! How much housing and healthcare could have been provided with $3.3 billion?

Stark also reported that 90 percent of the people who come forward voluntarily for drug treatment are turned away because of lack of space, resources, and lack of personnel.

"Concern" for our health is contradicted by the politicians' outrageous refusal to stop or even slow down pollution of our environment with chemical and nuclear wastes. According to the Radioactive Waste Campaign, a public interest group in New York City, radioactive pollution is of crisis proportions at all 16 of the Energy Department's weapons laboratories.

Plutonium, one of the most carcinogenic materials known, has been dispersed into the air or water at weapons stations near Dayton, Ohio; Santa Fe, N.M.; and Denver, Colo.

A two-year study by nine researchers concluded that there is "a pattern of gross mismanagement by the department, which is allowing radioactivity to leak out of the sites through soil, water, and air—in many cases intentionally."

Besides runaway pollution, the nation's healthcare is a disaster for the majority of our people and even worse for the poor. The AIDS epidemic remains unchecked and continues to spread because the federal government has failed to provide the funds for a massive research effort to find an effective treatment, means of prevention, or cure.

Meanwhile, infant mortality among Black children is rising. The gap between white infant mortality and Black infant mortality has widened from 64 percent to 98 percent since 1950. Infant mortality for all races in the United States is one of the highest in the major industrial countries.

The truth is that the so-called "drug war" will become, under this economic system, a "war against the poor" and a "war against the user." It will leave the contras and other "lovers of democracy" free to purchase and distribute their poison to the poor around the world.