Despite the prevalence in the troubled parent industry of people professing various faiths, I remain convinced that there is such a thing as the Good Christian that I thought I knew when I was younger. (knew some bad ones too in those days, but I could swear I could easily tell the difference!) Once in awhile, I find evidence to support my vague, fractured and distant memory. I don't know a lot of Mormons, or a whole lot about them, outside of the ones involved in torturing children for fun and profit. But I assume there are some. I just wish they'd step up and make some noise once in awhile! (Hint! Hint!!)
Ginger
Respected former Bakersfield TV Anchorman
Condemns Drug War at NORML 420 Concert
Hi all, The following speech was given by Don Clark, a long time and well
respected television news anchorman here in Bakersfield, California. Don
Clark is currently the Interim Director of Marketing/Public Information at
Bakersfield College. On April 20, 2005 the Conservative, Christian
Republican, after working In the media for over 35 years and being familiar
with censorship and propaganda by a media that did not want to cover the
idea that the Drug War was wrong spoke to an energetic crowd at the 420
NORML benefit Concert featuring five local bands. The highly respected Don
Clark Spoke about his reasoning for speaking out now at an event sponsored
by NORML activists in Bakersfield. We in Bakersfield are proud that Don
Clark chose to make his views public on this very important issue to we
marijuana activists in Bakersfield.
Thanks, Doug McAfee, president Bakersfield NORML NORML RALLY
BAKERSFIELD CALIFORNIA Wednesday April 20 2005
=========================================================
Remarks By Don Clark CITIZEN
Did I misunderstand? Is this not a meeting of Rotary?
I hope you will take it as a compliment that I have written out what I want
to say here tonight. When a subject is this serious and my time is this
short, I like to write out what I say because I want every word to count and
I want to say exactly what I mean.
There is one question that needs to be answered here tonight about my brief
appearance here. That question is: What is a guy like me doing at an event
like this?
What is a conservative Republican, evangelical Christian, former mainline
television anchorman, member of Rotary, non-trendy, not-hip, totally square,
suit-and-tie guy doing at an event to promote the normalization of the
medical uses of Marijuana?
What is a man who seldom uses even legal drugs doing at an event that many
will choose to construe as a back-door effort to legitimize an illegal drug?
The fact is. My Christian friends won't understand it. My conservative
friends may well be outraged by it. My personal friends may be confused and
troubled about it. My current employer could be embarrassed by it. The media
would likely jump at the chance to make a big deal of it.
In short, there is absolutely no upside for me to be here tonight. My brief
presence and my short remarks hold the risk of great personal and
professional damage to me and to a reputation I have worked very hard to
build and to maintain over many years. And yet my friend Damien will tell
you when he approached me with the invitation to be part of this event, I
immediately said "Yes, count me in."
Why would I do something that brash?
Let me tell you why.
FIRST, as a Christian, as a stumbling follower of Jesus, I am deeply
committed to living my life in the light of truth. I believe societies and
nations can function effectively only when they function in the light of
truth. What I know from my research into the subject of the medical uses of
marijuana is that what the American government has fed the American people
for decades on this issue is not the truth. It is a long pack of lies. It
is not impartial scientific fact. It is prejudiced propaganda. It is not
honest information. It is hyped-up disinformation. It is not designed to
protect us. It is designed to prevent us from making intelligent decisions
about a health care alternative that runs counter to the enormous profits of
powerful interests that are able to exert undue influence on what our
government does and does not do, on what it approves and what it
disapproves, and on who it rewards and who it punishes.
As a follower of Jesus, I also share my Lord's strong aversion to and
repeated denunciation of all forms of hypocrisy, especially the hypocrisy of
those in power. Our government's opposition to medical marijuana is riddled
with the most blatant forms of official hypocrisy. Our government, eagerly
and without hesitation or debate, legitimizes, legalizes, licenses,
regulates, taxes, and reaps massive revenues from the manufacture, the
purchase, and the recreational use by the American people of a host of
substances and concoctions that pharmacologically and scientifically and
medically are far more hazardous to health than marijuana and that result in
billions of dollars spent every year on death and damages and chronic
diseases. Yet that same federal government treats as criminals those who
peacefully, quietly, and unobtrusively use marijuana only for medical
purposes, busting down their doors, hauling them off to jails, taking away
their children, dragging them into the courts, imposing on them costly
fines, and even confining them behind bars. That, in my judgment, is not
only hypocrisy at its worst, it is an absolutely outrageous abuse of The
Power of The State against its own citizenry.
Furthermore, I am here to tell you tonight that, in my judgment, the
so-called War on Drugs is one of the most massive government hypocrisies of
the modern era. The strategy, the tactics, and the weapons used by our
government to wage the "War on Drugs," are, in my opinion, far worse than
the drugs themselves. The Drug War, as waged by successive administrations
of our government, both Democrat and Republican, is in my opinion a greater
threat to our national security, a great danger to our national interests,
and a greater menace to our peace, our safety, and our liberties as
freedom-loving American citizens than the drugs themselves will ever be. My
35 years in the field of professional journalism and my opportunities to
observe and to study this issue at close range have convinced me that this
"War" is an absolute failure on the streets and an utter fraud at the
highest levels of power.
Kern County's former sheriff, Carl Sparks, is a man who, like me, hates
drugs. But he is also a man honest enough to tell you, if you ask him, that
all that is accomplished by the highly publicized drug busts that are
trumpeted in the media as "major setbacks" to the drug trade do nothing more
than temporarily drive up the price of the drugs on the black market,
providing even greater incentives for those who make illegal drugs and
rendering even greater profits for those who push them.
Furthermore, I have studied closely the many accounts of some of this
nation's top drug agents who have had the courage to write books telling the
American people that every time they were able to penetrate high enough up
the ladder of the drug trade to get close to the true top of this trade,
they were consistently stopped in their tracks by hidden forces and high
powers above them---taken off the case, transferred to other locations,
shifted to meaningless duties, promoted to some unrelated position, or
pensioned off, shoved out the door, and otherwise rendered totally helpless,
harmless, and ineffective.
I am here to tell you that the incredible profits of the drug trade have
corrupted or compromised every kind of army that has ever been formed to
fight that trade. The prohibition of drugs, like the prohibition of
alcohol, has done nothing to stem or to stop the flow of drugs. What it has
done is to empower and enrich the most evil criminal cartels and terrorist
organizations this planet has ever seen. The overlords, the kingpins, the
terrorists, the secret profiteers of that trade can pay key officials far
more in bribes with drug money than we the people can pay in legitimate
wages and benefits with our tax money. The drug cartels have more money at
their disposal than the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They
can move their money faster and seize financial opportunities quicker. In
many areas of the world where the mob once simply preyed on the economy or
where they were once only parasites on the economy, they now are the
economy, buying out and taking over whole industries. It is no contest. In
this war, as it is now being fought, we lose. America loses. Freedom loses.
To those who say all we need to do is get tougher and throw more money and
more agents at this problem, I simply point you to the American prison
system that already has high walls, barbed-wire, electrified fences, armed
guards, search lights, surveillance cameras, silent alarms, security
screening, bars, cells, and lockdowns. Yet inside those prisons, you can
get virtually any drug that's on the market. If we cannot keep illegal
drugs out of our tightly guarded prisons, by what possible stretch of
tortured logic do we think we can keep them out of our open and free
society?
The hard fact is, we Americans---all of us, conservatives, liberals,
Democrats, Republicans, Independents---must undertake the hard work of
rethinking and restructuring our entire approach to drugs in this culture.
We must find the ways to eliminate the profit motive for making drugs or
selling them. If we do not eliminate the profit motive from illegal drugs,
we can turn this nation into a police state in the War on Drugs and we still
will not be able to stop them.
Finally, as a conservative, I believe in the will of the people as expressed
at the ballot box. The people of California have gone to the ballot box on
this issue. By a decisive margin, the people of California have said to the
world:
"We approve of the medical uses of marijuana. We reject the federal
government's unreasonable actions against those uses. We oppose the federal
government's unreasoning persecution and prosecution of our fellow citizens
who, to relieve personal suffering, resort to those medical uses. We the
people have claimed this limited use of this restricted substance as an area
of our personal liberty."
That is what "We the People of California" have said.
And tonight, I ask our government, I challenge our government, I defy our
government to give us anything resembling a satisfactory answer as to why
they are asking our brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers and sons
and daughters and friends and classmates and colleagues to uproot their
lives and take up arms and go to a far away place to fight a war to give
another people the right to make democratic choices while that same
government denies to the people of California the right to exercise a
democratic choice we have already made.
I commend you here tonight for the battle you are fighting in the real war
that must be fought, not on drugs, but about drugs.
Forwarded by:
Mikki Norris
Being a street cop, witnessing the tragedy firsthand, I've become
convinced that drug prohibition -- not drugs themselves -- are driving the HIV epidemic and the systemic crime that has swamped our criminal justice systems.
--Vancouver Police Const. Gil Puder
