The American Inquisition got another one last month. Singer Dionne Warwick,
who was found with nearly a dozen marijuana cigarettes at the Miami airport
recently, had her charges dropped in return for promising to undergo "drug
treatment" and to make anti-drug public-service announcements.

Let's not dwell on the fact that a poor kid found with a few joints in a
bad neighborhood isn't offered the same deal Warwick got. The two- tier
system of punishment for drug offenses is old news. Just look what happens
when the child of a senator is caught with contraband.

Rather, let's look at what Warwick's case says about the "war on drugs" per
se, which is not a war on drugs at all, but a war on people. This
modern-day Inquisition is designed to hunt down drug heretics. Ultimately,
its victims are punished not just for what they do but also for what they
think. And what they think are forbidden thoughts about drugs.

Instead of believing, say, that a glass of wine is OK, but a joint is bad,
they may think that a joint is not much different from a glass of wine. We
can't have people thinking that. That's why Warwick was offered the deal.
As a celebrity, she is more valuable as a convert than as a convict.

That the Inquisition is aimed at thoughts can be readily seen in the terms
of her deal. To avoid trial she had to promise to attend "drug treatment."
What happened there? She certainly was not being treated in the sense that
a physician would treat her for a stomach ulcer or high blood pressure.

This "treatment" consisted of talk by her and by psychiatrists,
psychologists or other mental-health personnel. What did they say? The
experts probably told her lies about marijuana that are only slightly more
sophisticated than those told in the government's old propaganda film
"Reefer Madness." No one in the room believed them.

Nationwide, the taxpayers pay hundreds of millions of dollars to finance
this inflated nonsense that goes by the name "treatment." Most of the
people there are trying to stay out of jail.

Then there are those public-service announcements. Here is where Warwick
will do public penance by recanting her heresy. She will probably tell kids
not to use illegal drugs. How convincing will that be?

Until recently, she apparently saw nothing wrong with using marijuana. She
"got religion" just after criminal charges were filed against her and then
dropped. A coincidence? If not, why should anyone believe anything she says
about drugs? It is certainly more likely that she'll deliver her anti-drug
message only because she could go to jail if she refuses. When someone has
that strong a personal interest in making a statement that conflicts with
her own previous conduct, we are entitled to skepticism, if not outright
incredulity.

Does the government think we are so dumb that we will take Warwick's
public-service announcements seriously? Yes it does. It is striking how
much of what the government does is comprehensible once you realize that it
thinks most Americans are idiots.

While Warwick will avoid prison in return for her re-education and public
recantation, others are not so fortunate. The prison statistics are a
scandal. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1999 more
than half (57 percent) of federal prisoners were drug offenders. That's
more than 68,000 people. In 1997, state prisons held 251,200 drug
offenders, about 20 percent of state prison inmates. A disproportionate
number of those prisoners are black.

Americans are losing their liberty for having unapproved ideas - and acting
on them peacefully - about what substances they should be free to ingest.
That is unworthy of a self-described free society.
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