Source: Village Voice (NY)
Copyright: 2000 VV Publishing Corporation
Contact: editor@villagevoice.com <mailto:editor@villagevoice.com>
Address: 36 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003
<http://www.villagevoice.com/>
Author: Russ Kick

WASHINGTON 451   This is how the burning begins. Down in Washington, D.C.,
the censors gather into a pile the books and Web sites they hate, grab a
gallon of gas, and strike a match. But they call this bonfire a bill, a
piece of legislation, which is legal and tidy. It's happening now with S.R.
486 -- remember that number -- which has already passed the Senate with
unanimous support. The bill sits in the House, awaiting the same blessing.
If it becomes law, the publishers of a large number of pro-drug Web sites
and books could wind up in jail, or out of business.   Drug war reformers
suspect they are the true targets, and this week they're stepping up
lobbying efforts against S.R. 486. Angry e-mails are on their way to
Washington, and several sites devoted to trashing the bill have been
launched. But the protests may be in vain.   "We want to make it difficult
for people to produce illegal substances," explains Chris Cannon, the House
sponsor of the Senate version introduced by Dianne Feinstein and Orrin
Hatch. "We are hoping to have hearings in March, and pass the bill this
year, sooner rather than later."   It should not be overly difficult. The
Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act, as it's called, contains several
politically attractive clauses that portend its passage into law. Drug
warriors love the additional narcocops it sends to the front, and the way it
stiffens sentences for methamphetamine distributors and cooks. But while
these are standard measures in the war on drugs, zero tolerance for pro-drug
data expands the battlefield from deeds to words.   The bill makes it
illegal "to teach or demonstrate the manufacture of a controlled substance,
or to distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in
part, the manufacture or use of a controlled substance" if a prosecutor can
prove the info figured in a crime.   That's a mandate as big and broad as
Montana sky. It covers information about safe dosage levels of illegal
drugs, which combinations pose dangers, and which do not. It covers
explanations about how to use marijuana to fight nausea and glaucoma. It
covers tip sheets on how to harvest opium from poppies, identify psilocybin
mushrooms in the wild, or extract codeine from Tylenol 3. In short, anything
that could possibly be "intended" to encourage drug use.   Not only that,
but under the bill, advertising any information that could lead to the sale
of drug paraphernalia counts as a felony. So if you post the address of a
head shop to a newsgroup, or the e-mail address of someone who makes bongs
as a hobby, it's a crime punishable by three years in jail, even though head
shops themselves remain legal.   There's a strong possibility that the law
will shut down an entire class of drug advocacy. Already, publishers and
activists are preparing to pull in their wares, or go overseas. Mark Greer,
the executive director of Drug Sense, a nonprofit dedicated to accurate drug
policy information, fears his archive of 30,000 clippings regarding drug
policy could be the target of a federal suit brought by a D.A. on a scalp
hunt to prove the new law works.   "Given the vague and inclusive
interpretation of federal conspiracy laws, almost any information about
criminalized drugs and any dissent against existing drug laws could be
construed by federal enforcers as furthering drug crimes," says Greer. "Any
anti drug war Web site would be shut down directly, or indirectly because
Internet service providers, fearing prosecution, would refuse to host such
sites." Greer is preparing for this eventuality by exploring steps to move
his site offshore.   But even if he relocates to a cyberdomain beyond
America's jurisdiction, anyone linking to his site from within the States
could be punished under the proposed law. "The main thrust of this law is
toward the Internet," explains Marv Johnson, an ACLU attorney specializing
in the legislation. The Internet's free flow of information "has Congress
running scared." And when it comes to drug paraphernalia, Congress is
running far ahead of the First Amendment. Under this bill, even linking to a
paraphernalia site is illegal.   But in the final analysis, it's less the
prosecutions than the censoring effect this law will have that worries civil
libertarians. "It's clearly going to chill publishing," says Johnson, and
he's not exaggerating.   The American Booksellers Foundation for Free
Expression believes bookstores will be forced to withdraw certain drug
titles, according to its president, Chris Finan.   Over at Ronin Publishing,
one of the leading publishers of drug titles, tension is in the air. "Will
the police storm into my house?" asks Beverly Potter, the company's
president. She fears the law will criminalize every aspect of the book
industry that deals with drug literature. "Every printer, every truck driver
delivering these books will be a criminal."   "If it passes, we would
probably pull all of our drug books, since I am unwilling to spend several
hundred thousand dollars that I don't have to prove that my 'intent'
satisfies Big Brother," says Mike Hoy, president of the radical publishing
house Loompanics Unlimited. "This bill is the single most un-American thing
I have ever seen."   Perhaps. But under the Clinton administration, it's as
American as apple pie. Last August, Clinton set the precedent for the
methamphetamine act by signing a law (also Feinstein's handiwork) making it
a felony to disseminate instructions for making bombs, destructive devices,
or weapons of mass destruction. And while that move came in response to the
Oklahoma City bombing, its effects are still being felt. Paladin Press no
longer publishes any material involving explosives recipes, and Loompanics
doesn't sell books exclusively about explosives. On the Internet, where
bomb-making instructions were once abundant, there is now a void.   If this
drug bill passes, the most immediate and concrete impact will be on the two
dozen or so sites which currently sell drug paraphernalia, from bongs to
paper -- and the countless places that link to them. These sites will become
illegal, even though brick and mortar head shops will still be able to
operate within the letter of the law.   The deeper question, of course, is
whether S.R. 486 violates the First Amendment. Representative Chris Cannon,
the House sponsor, is unconcerned. "We have worked a lot with the attorneys
at the Department of Justice; we have been pretty thorough there," he says,
adding, "We don't even expect a court challenge."   That may come as news to
the ACLU, but Cannon's confidence is based on strange but safe legal ground,
territory already strewn with the bones of another Paladin project: Hit Man,
a murder how-to book. After a killer-for-hire allegedly acted on the book's
step-by-step instructions, the victims' families sued Paladin. The courts
allowed the lawsuit to go forward, and Paladin settled for a reported $5
million. The ruling that the lawsuit could proceed is being cited by the
Louisiana Court of Appeals in the legal action against Oliver Stone over
Natural Born Killers, which allegedly incited two 18-year-olds to go on a
violent crime spree. And it sets a precedent for holding publishers
accountable that could make this bill legit in the eyes of the courts.
>From the ACLU's perspective, Johnson thinks that "in theory" prosecutors
would have a hard time proving "intent." In a case, they would have to prove
that a publisher knew beforehand that some reader would find in a book the
motivation for a crime. Nevertheless, the results of the Hit Man case are
troubling, he says, and the future of this area of law is still
undetermined.   If the Meth Act becomes law, Johnson says the ACLU's likely
course of action will not be to challenge the bill immediately, but rather
to save its attack until someone is prosecuted, and then defend that person.
Any volunteers?