OPINION: Letter to the Editor: America: The world”s largest drug dealer?
In a recent Letter to the Editor, Nelson Strasser argues for the legalization of marijuana. Some of his thoughts have merit. However, his argument is specious when he states, “this is not hyperbole” in accusing the United States of being the “largest drug dealer in the history of the world”
Strasser bases his argument on a book by John Cooley called Unholy Wars. Unfortunately, Strasser is a little cavalier with the facts. I have not read Cooley”s book but I have read the book”s Preface and his References. Based on that, I seriously doubt Cooley refers to the United States as the world”s largest drug dealer. Both Cooley and I, in my book The Poppies of Mohammed, used many of the same references in our separate research. The focus of Cooley”s book appears to be terrorism, our covert operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia and what he believes to be our policy errors. Foreign policy is an inexact science.
In part, Mr. Strasser wrote: “?the U. S. government in pursuit of the war against the Contras and the wars in the Middle-East, facilitated and organized the flow of drugs to help finance and conduct those efforts.
As a result, heroine (sic) and other drugs thrive in Russia, Europe and the United States.” These assertions are not entirely true. First, our support was for the Contras, not a war against them. It involved a complicated failed plan by the Reagan Administration to trade arms and money, but not drugs, to aid the Contras. Second, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, we saw an opportunity to turn that into the Soviet Union”s Viet Nam. The CIA, working through Pakistan”s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), funded arms to the warlords and fighters (Mujahideen).
Afghanistan provides 97 percent of the world”s supply of heroin according to the United Nations Office of Crime and Drugs. Our DEA concurs. Heroin has been, and is, a primary source of funding for al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Pakistani ISI is complicit in that trade. Right or wrong, it would be na?ve to believe that the CIA did not “look the other way” during the Afghan”s war against the Soviets.
The Soviet (Red) Army had the same problem with troop heroin addiction as we had with marijuana in Viet Nam. With the easy access to Afghan heroin, not as a result of U. S. actions, Russia has one of the highest heroin addiction rates in the world.
Most of the drugs, cocaine, heroin, etc. that come into the United States come from Mexico, Central and South America. Does anyone seriously believe the United States government is in partnership with the cartels?
Peter MacRae
Lakeport
