Feb-Mar-97

THE DRUG BUSINESS:

GARY Webb's article is true, but it is very conservative with the facts about the CIA, the Contras, and crack-cocaine in America.

After Gary's story hit the newsstand, for the first time in our history the three major newspapers in America collaborated against this article. They came out totally denying there was any involvement between the CIA and Contras and crack-cocaine. It makes one consider why they did this and what it was that they wanted to hide.
The L.A. Times sat through my trial and did not print anything said by Blandon concerning his role in selling drugs for the Contras, even after he stated, "The Contras were controlled by the CIA!" Blandon went on to testify that Enrique Bermudez, who was a personal friend of Ronald Reagan, told him that "The ends justify the means." I took this to mean: "So what if they sold drugs in every city in the United States! So what if 60 million people in the United states get addicted to drugs! So what if 1.6 million of those people are now locked up in prison! So what if they take these guns that we are selling them and have gang fights! We [Blandon/Bermudez] "have to get our country straightened out." After hearing this, I had one of the worst days I can recall. The very people that I was selling drugs for were willing to symbolically destroy our country just as long as they helped their own country. They had no concern about the American people and what the drugs would cause to all of us.

There is plenty of information proving that the government is totally involved with this supply and distribution of drugs to all classes of Americans. Check out the Kerry Report and other research projects. The Contras were invented by the CIA, controlled by the CIA, and furnished whatever they needed by the CIA. Russia and Cuba gave the Sandinistas $7 billion a year. Do you think the U.S. gave the Contras zero? Think about what they had to do in order to feed, clothe, and arm the Contras? Get real! $7 billion against zero? No way! The CIA used what they have always used-a money-making, drug-dealing enterprise, and they made more then Russia and Cuba combined gave the Sandinistas. The biggest cash cow in the world is drugs. This is a scheme by and through the American government. Period.

As for the War on Drugs, it is a big trap for the poor and undesirables. People who are poor are constantly looking for ways to get out of their social-economic situation, and the news media and Hollywood glamorize what the drug business can do for them The drug business does not care how much money or knowledge you have, what color or race you are, or what creed or religion or sex-it is an equal opportunity employer-for example myself. As long as kilos cost $15,000 to $20,000, someone will sell them, and as long as someone sells them, someone will be using the product. You must take the profit out of this business.

Isn't it amazing that this country has spent $140 billion on the War on Drugs? The last time I was released from prison I could not even get a loan for $1,500 and I had the collateral to put up for it. What happened to the old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? If the government would take this incredible amount of money and put it to work assisting the people, there would be no crime nor prisons. Stop this waste of human lives and human rights. Prison is not the answer to this madness.

The news media too often shows what the world looks like from the standpoint of policy makers in Washington, from the interplay of lobbyists, legislators and regulators, from conservative think tanks, from executive board rooms of corporations, and from the floor of stock exchanges. That is a long way from the reality of most of our citizens, where millions sleep in doorways, where most children can no longer expect to live in households with one income or own a house or go to a university, where the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer, where sports stars make more money than the President while our schools and libraries deteriorate, and air and water grow increasingly unhealthy, and 100 million people have no health coverage, and millions of children in hopeless neighborhoods with hopeless schools and hopeless prospects for jobs are killing themselves with drugs- drugs that are imported from countries we favor! I think that our government has fallen off the track somewhere. We now have one of the worst educational systems in the world, while on the other hand we have the biggest prison industry in the world.

This country is still full of vitality, and millions are willing to work for policies that will improve their lives. But the ideas for these policies must enter into our national discussion. The people must be granted the power that the constitution guarantees-by the people for the people. Money is power and drugs can control people and their lives. The CIA knows this and uses this against the public. We must get rid of the CIA and any other agency involved with bringing drugs into the U.S.

-RICK D. ROSS, #05550-045, 9th Fl MCC/ 808 Union St., San Diego, CA 92101

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