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From United States Senator Tom Harkin - Monday, June 25, 2007

June 25, 2007
Reverend Carl Olsen
Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church
130 E. Aurora Avenue
Des Moines, IA 50313
Dear Reverend Olsen:
Thank you for contacting me. I hope you will pardon my delay in responding to you.
I appreciate your continuing interest in the War on Drugs. You raised some thought provoking points. You raised several important points in your letter. Please be assured that I will continue to study this important issue and will keep your views in mind as it is debated in the Senate.
Again, thanks for sharing your views with me. Please don't hesitate to let me know how you feel on any issue that concerns you.
Sincerely,
Tom Harkin
United States Senator
TH/ 
Please do not reply to this email. To contact me, please log on to my website at http://harkin.senate.gov.
— Monday June 25, 2007

May 15, 2007

Tom Harkin
United States Senator
731 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-1501
Fax: 1-202-224-9369

Dear Senator Harkin:

I received your letter of April 25 suggesting that we are winning the War on Drugs in spite of the fact it has been going on now for over 35 years with no end in sight.  Your letter sounds as if victory is just around the corner.  Where have I heard that before?

As the War on Iraq is about oil and the War on Terror is about erosion of civil liberties, the War on Drugs is about protecting huge profits from the sale of toxic, legal prescription drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.  Al Capone would be proud of you.

Attached is a quote from the biography of Al Capone by Laurence Bergreen (ISBN 0-684-82447-7), pages 130-131, bearing a striking similarity to the current-day situation.  Bootleg whiskey was dangerous stuff and Prohibition was the cause of it.

The War on Drugs is also about protecting the huge profits made by the Drug Cartels in South America and the Middle East, as well as Organized Crime here in the United States.

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

-- George Santayana

Sincerely,

Reverend Carl Olsen
Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church
130 E Aurora Avenue
Des Moines, Iowa 50313-3654
515-288-5798
carl-olsen [at] mchsi.com

Cost of Booze
(Bergreen, Capone, pp130 31)

The Gennas easily overcame the restrictions of Prohibition by acquiring government authorization to produce "industrial alcohol." Permission in hand, the Gennas became "alky-cookers," that is, they paid impoverished Sicilian families in Chicago's Little Italy to brew whiskey at home in small copper stills, easily moved to avoid detection. The Sicilian families had been accustomed to brewing at home in Sicily, and it was natural for them to continue to do so in the United States. The Gennas paid their Sicilian home brewers the astonishing amount of $15 a day, and all they had to do in return was to mind the still and siphon off the residue. Meanwhile, the Gennas' fee for the homemade whiskey quickly became a necessary supplement to each household's meager income. Each week the Gennas gathered the results of the week's alky-cooking, which they stored in a giant warehouse located at 1022 Taylor Street, only four blocks from the Maxwell Street police station. This proved to be a convenient arrangement for the police and the Gennas alike, and the sight of cops entering and exiting the warehouse as they collected their bribes became so common that people in the neighborhood referred to the warehouse as "the police station." The arrangement was so profitable that police from distant districts came by to collect bribes -- until the Maxwell Street police gave the Gennas a list of their men, the only cops to pay off.

It was dreadful stuff, the Gennas' homemade brew. It stank, it was raw, and it was dangerous. Brewed quickly, on the cheap, the Gennas' whiskey teemed with toxins. Real whiskey acquires its golden hue from the wooden casks in which it is slowly and patiently aged. But the Gennas had no time for the careful distillation of whiskey; instead, they colored it with caramel, or coal tar, and flavored it with fusel oil, a noxious by-product of fermentation normally removed from whiskey lest it cause severe mental disturbance or even insanity. These chemicals were not the only hazards to the health of the consumer. Confiscating a hundred casks of the home brew, the police discovered dead rats in the whole lot.

Nor were the Gennas the only ones selling home brew. Alky-cooking was ubiquitous in Prohibition-era Chicago; the streets of Little Italy reeked with the sickeningly sweet vapors of homemade booze. The phenomenon was repeated all over Chicago, all over the country, in fact. Good liquor, manufactured by traditional distilleries, was scarce and extremely expensive; in its place cheaply made substitutes flooded speakeasies, poisoning drinkers. As Prohibition wore on, Americans forgot what real liquor was like, how it tasted, the subtle ways it affected the mind and body. Instead they became familiar with the far more potent effects of bootleg booze. If any type of alcohol deserved to be prohibited, it was this poisoned fruit of Prohibition. The Gennas put their homemade poision in a bottle labeled brandy or whiskey, or bourbon, and this disguised it was extremely profitable. Three dollars a barrel: half the price of O'Banion's [imported] high-class whiskey. Each still produced as much as 350 gallons of high-proof poison a week with ingredients costing less than a dollar a gallon. The Gennas grossed over $300,000 a month, of which $7,000 went toward payoffs to the police, who also had the opportunity to purchase the alcohol, wholesale, if they wished.

From United States Senator Tom Harkin - Wednesday, April 25, 2007

April 25, 2007
Reverend Carl Olsen
Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church
130 E. Aurora Avenue
Des Moines, IA 50313
Dear Reverend Olsen:
Thank you for contacting me. I hope you will pardon my delay in responding to you.
I do not believe the answer in solving this country's problem of drug abuse and the violence associated with drug trafficking is to make drugs legal. I have seen too much of the ill effects of these illegal drugs on our nation's young people, as well as this country's law enforcement officers, to believe the solution is to make these drugs more readily available by legalizing them.
Marijuana is often the drug singled out for legalization. However, marijuana is not the recreational drug that many believe it to be. In a study completed by the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the number of marijuana related emergencies has nearly reached the level of cocaine related emergencies. As this statistic indicates, marijuana use often has fatal consequences.
I was deeply troubled when I learned of another recent study which found that nearly one-third of all eighth graders had tried marijuana. As the father of two daughters, it greatly disturbs me that children are exposed to drugs at such a young age. I am concerned that legalization of this drug will only increase the number of children who gain access to its harmful effects.
The victims of the drug war are many - the small child whose parents are so addicted to illegal drugs that they sell everything including perhaps their own children to obtain a fix; the innocent bystander killed during the crime spree of a drugged-out individual shooting randomly with an Uzi on a public street; the police officer's family which must now learn to cope with the loss of their loved one as a result of a violent drug bust gone awry. These are the people I think of when I say that drugs pose the number one threat to the security of this nation.
In addition to helping to double federal funds for Iowa's anti-drug programs, I am an active supporter of the Smoother Sailing Programs in the Des Moines public schools. This program is designed to help children cope with the violence, confusion and trauma associated with the abuse of drugs in our society.
Legalizing drugs is equivalent to declaring surrender in the war on drugs. However we may differ in tactics, I am hopeful that we can work together to fight drugs in our communities and to make Iowa drug free.
Again, I apologize for my delay in getting back to you. Please keep in touch and continue to keep me informed of your views and concerns.
Sincerely,
Tom Harkin
United States Senator
TH/mck 
— Wednesday April 25, 2007

Looking for a project?

At the 2006 Iowa Democratic State Convention, several resolutions on marijuana were passed and included in the State Platform. We'd like to know what Democrats think about marijuana and drug policy. Ask a Democrat to prepare a position paper on marijuana and/or drug policy and send it to us.

http://www.iowademocrats.org/ht/action/GetDocumentAction/id/234773

IOWA DEMOCRATS
2006 STATE CONVENTION PLATFORM REPORT

AGRICULTURAL, ENERGY, ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
STATE AGRICULTURAL POLICY
196 - We support, Permitting the cultivation of industrial hemp

GOVERNMENT & LAW
CORRECTIONS
505 - We support, Decriminalizing marijuana
508 - We oppose, The Drug Tax Stamp

GOVERNMENT & LAW
LAW
618 - We support, Treating substance abuse as a public health issue instead of a criminal issue

HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
RESEARCH/ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
728 - We support, Medical use of marijuana

Democrats are now in control of the Iowa Senate, the Iowa House of Representative, and the Governor's Office.  It's critical that you write them before the new  Legislative Session begins in January and before the new Governor takes office.  They only get busier as time passes.  Send a copy of any response you get to:

Iowa NORML
Post Office Box 4091
Des Moines, Iowa 50333

116914
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