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Urge: Naked World
Moonies rally against "free sex"
Waving signs declaring, "One man, one wife," students take to the streets of Seoul to promote chastity.
By Hank Hyena
[02/22/00]

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Why does porn have to be so dumb?
Porn and mainstream media abandon plot for "gonzo" reality.
By Virginia Vitzthum
[02/22/00]

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Brit's-eye view
The specter of American gender extremism is making ripples across the Atlantic.
By Cathy Young
[02/19/00]

Urge: Naked World
Buff cut
Hairstylists at a Moscow salon shampoo and trim in nothing but their high heels.
By Hank Hyena
[02/18/00]

Spiritual intelligence
An interview with Danah Zohar and Dr. Ian Marshall, authors of "SQ: Connecting With Our Spiritual Intelligence."
By David Bowman
[02/18/00]

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One would expect such a risky venture to spark some debate. It hasn't. Few members of Congress have raised questions about the new aid package. The press has greeted it with a yawn. And the presidential candidates have all but ignored it.

On the campaign trail, the overwhelming concern regarding drugs has been who used what when. And no one can qualify for the label drug-free. George W. Bush drank heavily until he was 40, when he found Jesus, and he continues to be dogged by rumors of cocaine use. John McCain's wife, Cindy, was once addicted to prescription drugs and was even caught trying to steal some. Bill Bradley has acknowledged experimenting with marijuana as a youth, and Al Gore has admitted to even more.

This is progress of a sort. Eight years ago, Bill Clinton felt compelled to maintain that he didn't inhale. Now we've learned that Gore was nearly a pothead. And it hasn't damaged his political prospects. Actually, the fact that he served capably as vice president for eight years would seem to show that smoking marijuana does not necessarily fry the brain.

Yet anyone looking for a reasoned discussion of marijuana on the campaign would be disappointed. Asked about marijuana last October, for instance, McCain, citing "scientific evidence," said that "the moment it enters your body, it does damage" and "can become addictive." McCain also embraced the view that marijuana is a "gateway drug" leading inexorably to harder stuff, despite the fact that more than 50 million Americans have tried it without moving on to heroin or cocaine. This darling of the liberal media supports tougher penalties for selling drugs (including the death penalty for drug kingpins), increased funding for border interdiction and restricted availability of methadone. In short, McCain would clearly intensify the drug war. Bush has had less to say on the matter, but it's apparent from his record as the governor of Texas that he supports severe penalties for even minor drug offenses.

The Democrats have struck a more moderate note. Bradley has come out against mandatory sentences for first-time, nonviolent drug offenders, and Gore has criticized the federal statutes that punish crack offenses far more severely than they do those for powdered cocaine. Bradley has said he would spend more money on drug treatment and Gore has expressed support for more after-school programs.

Beyond that, though, the candidates have been mute. The unrelenting violations of civil liberties in the name of drug enforcement, the noxious spread of intrusive drug-testing programs, the government's continuing refusal to fund needle exchanges -- on all these crucial matters, silence has resounded. Over the last 10 years, the federal government has spent more than $150 billion to fight drugs, yet no one seems to care what we've gotten for our investment.

A closer look would reveal it's not much. In the name of fighting drugs, the United States has dispatched troops to Bolivia, built a paramilitary base in Peru, eradicated crops in Colombia, sent AWACS spy planes over the Caribbean, installed X-ray machines along the Mexican border, erected an electronic curtain around South Florida and invaded Panama. It has dismantled the Medellín and Cali cartels, the two great Colombian cocaine syndicates said to control the flow of drugs into the United States. Despite it all, the cocaine market is glutted as always, and heroin is readily available at record high rates of purity. And, while the number of casual drug users has decreased, the number of hardcore, addicted users hasn't. In the face of such futility, the Clinton administration, led by drug czar Barry McCaffrey, is set to embark on the most ambitious, and dangerous, operation in the history of U.S. drug enforcement. And no one's issued a peep.

Next page | On drugs, the reign of terror prevails