There is one 'drug war' we can win

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GOLD $35920 AZT$8,000 There are two "wars" concerning drugs going on today in the United States. One is the phony drug war of President Bush and his Democratic and Republican cronies in Congress. This war will prove just about as destructive as the U.S. war against Vietnam and as ineffective as Lyndon Johnson's "war" on poverty. Both of those wars left millions of innocent victims in their wake.

Johnson's war on poverty was designed to stop the rebellion of Blacks who were fighting for their civil rights so that U.S. capitalism could be free to carry out its war against the people of Vietnam. U.S. capitalists didn't think they could win a war some 3000 miles away and a war in its own cities against Black people at the same time.

Bush's war on drugs is designed to whack down the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is not designed to stop the profits from drugsthe only way to stop pushers from hooking the hopelessly impoverished.

In fact, the U.S. government was indicted in public for being part of the international drug-pushing cartel. This was revealed during the Iran-Contra hearings.

Puppet governments throughout Latin America are being supplied with billions of dollars in American armaments in the name of fighting drug war-lords. Most of this military equipment will end up being used against workers and peasants who are fighting for justice and economic freedom from giant agribusinesses. Most of these outfits are owned by U.S. corporations.

Aimed against the poor In the United States, the Senate has just agreed to a budget of $9.4 billion dollars to fight the so-called war on drugs. Part of this $9.4 billion will be gotten by cutting some of the social-service programs the scourge of AIDS. We could take that $9.4 billion being proposed for more cops and prisons in a losing anti-drug war, put it into the fight against AIDS, and actually win.

"AZT Should Be Free" is the slogan being used to pressure the government to do something about the high cost of AZI, the only drug 66 л •HealthW=: HealthWask, soper Mers -Spence For a couple of days last month, George Bush played Johnny Appleseed. In a tour of several Western states, the president planted some seedlings. Smiles and handshakes were dutifully recorded for the evening news. "Plant a tree, you'll feel better," was the message.

More than his predecessors in the Sell the GOLD AND SILVER AND BUY AZT! that has proven effective against this always-fatal disease.

AZI, or azidothymidine, is manufactured by the Burroughs Wellcome company. The cost per patient for AZT ranges from $3600 to $6000 per year. When you consider that other medications and treatments are required along with AZT, SILVER $5100 the cost becomes an overwhelming burden on those who are infected with ARC or AIDS.

When threatened with a boycott, the Burroughs Wellcome profiteers reduced the cost of its drug by 20 percent—a piddling reduction in the over-priced drug. Burroughs claims that since it was clever enough to develop AZT, it should be allowed to pig-out on profits.

Mr. T.E. Haigler Jr., president of Burroughs Wellcome Co., claimed in a letter to The New York Times on Sept. 16 that AZT was essentially discovered and developed at Burroughs without any substantive role being played by the government.

Several doctors answered T.E. Haigler on Sept. 28 in The New York Times. They reported: The first synthesis of AZT was done by Dr. Jerome Horowitz at the Michigan Cancer Foundation in 1964PLA using government grants. The first demonstration of an effect against animal retroviruses was done by Wolfram Ostertag at the Max Planck Institute in 1974—using government funds.

The National Cancer Institute, working with staff at Duke University, developed all of the major tests with AZT on human patients. In fact, Burroughs refused to work with either live AIDS virus or with AIDS patients!

The doctors continued: "We believe that the development of this drug in a record two years, start to finish, would have been impossible without substantive commitment of government scientists and government technology."

As of March 1989, over 18,152 people in the state of California had ARC or AIDS. In the United States, as of July 31, 1989, over 99,839 people were diagnosed as having ARC or AIDS.

Up until the present time, there have been nearly 1800 cases of children under 12 with AIDS who were reported to the Federal Center for Disease Control. About 800 of those children have died. The others are waiting for AZT, but Burroughs will not produce it in children's doses even though it has been proven effective for them.

Those who are infected with AIDS or ARC do not have the time or the money to wait until profitbloated drug company owners transform themselves into human beings. Bush should take those National Guardsmen he is using to fight the drug war and march them to the Burroughs Wellcome Company to take the plant over. Then it should be nationalized in the interest of those who need help the most, those who are least able to wait and have the most to losetheir lives.

els of cutting will eventually rob whole regions of their tree cover. People who work in the lumber industry will have to look elsewhere for jobs. On the other hand, sound forestry practices, such as selective cutting, will preserve jobs.

"Every forest-products multinational company in the Northwest

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By ylvia Weinstein