"not arresting growers, but supervising quality control"

[Otto]

THE WAR AT HOME
by Gore Vidal
"Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in
order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to
arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on. (...) The media
constantly deplore the drug culture and, variously, blame foreign countries
like Colombia for obeying that Iron law of supply and demand to which we
have, as a notion and as a nation, sworn eternal allegiance."
http://www.geocities.com/yossarian70038/PIANOSA9/War_At_Home.html

----- Original Message -----
From: Bandwraith at aol.com
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2003 2:16 PM
Subject: Re: "not arresting growers, but supervising quality control"

The opening sensitizes me to the fact that the marriage of
colonialism and capitalism have become cloaked. They can
no longer be pursued so nakedly as they once were. Is the
world more civilized or just more dishonest? The means of
production and distribution of opium, except for "legitimate
medicinal uses" have fallen into the black market. This is
a complex issue, or perhaps, an issue  of complexity. For
example, the illegality of drug trade is as necessary for the
huge bureauracracy- and its budgetary concerns- devoted to
its eradication, as it is to the Drug Lords and the need to keep
prices high. They are co-dependents on criminalization.

respectfully