Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,alt.drugs,alt.activism
From: [k--oy--n] at [mondrian.CSUFresno.EDU] (Kelly Oboylan)
Subject: Drug Czar on C-SPAN
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1993 19:17:35 GMT

Last night I saw Dr. Lee Brown, the Director of the US National
Drug Control Policy Office, as he addressed the National
Institute of Justice Conference on Community Policing.

Dr. Brown gave a speech regarding the crime situation
in America.  He talked about the rise in violence and 
the difference between that rich and the poor vis-a-vis
crime and he spoke to the need of employment and investment
in the inner city.

He then began to speak on the connection between crime and
drug use.  He gave examples of projected situations with
regard to poverty, crime and drug use.  He stated that he 
beleived that the decline in casual drug use has ended and 
cited statistics showing that high-schoolers don't think 
that drugs are as bad as they are made out to be.

He then laid out some of the dangers of drug use:

Billions of dollars exluded from taxation.
Hard core drug use results in crime, both to
finance the use and to protect turf.
Unprecedented rates of incarceration.

And then he said this:

What we have been doing is not working.
We have to change.

Some have suggested legalization, but they are wrong.
Legalization is the moral equivilant of genocide.
Legalization will hurt most the ones we need to help - the poor.

Then he said what his ideas were:
1. Improve the economy.
2. Reduce violence by increasing the certainty, not the serverity
of punishment.
3. Increase the use of Community Policing.
4. Expand prevention and treatment programs.

In other words, same old stuff.

What I thought was most ironic was that he ended his speech by
quoting from Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Less Traveled"

He said we are at a fork in the road and now is the time to
try the way we haven't gone before, the road less traveled. 
His program, however, was nothing but the same thing
we ahve seen for years.

All he had to say about the true way less traveled
 - legalization- was that it was wrong.  Why, Dr. Brown?
Just because you say so? I'm sorry, that's is not good enough
for me.