Columnist and publisher Joe Farah, a conservative who has always been
sympathetic to Libertarians on economic issues, has come out
foursquare against the drug war. I'm not sure, but this may be his
first direct declaration against the folly of drug repression. The
following column is quite good.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_btl/20000208_xcbtl_end_drug_w.shtml

JOE FARAH
BETWEEN THE LINES (column)

==End the drug war==

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"Hey, Daddy, there's a bunch of guys outside with machine guns."

How would you like to hear that from your 9-year-old son some fine
morning? That's what Clyde Highbarger heard in his Cave Junction,
Oregon home 8 a.m. Jan. 27 from his boy, Christopher.

Then came the knock on the door.

"Police. Search warrant. Open the door."

For the next five and a half hours, the Highbarger family experienced
what all too many innocent Americans have begun to experience
lately -- state-directed police terror.

Highbarger and his wife, Ruth, were handcuffed by dozens of federal,
state and local police wearing combat-style uniforms, helmets and
visors. The Highbargers' four children -- Christopher, 9, Laurel, 14,
Robin, 7 and Madeline, 2, were forced to stand in the chill morning
air, some still in their night clothes.

Mrs. Highbarger, holding Madeline, who is nursing, was ordered out of
bed at gunpoint and told to keep her hands up. The toddler wore a thin
nightgown. The mother wore a long shirt and underwear. As Mrs.
Highbarger headed for the front door, baby in her arms, an officer
aimed a semiautomatic handgun.

"I'll thank you to not point your gun at my daughter's room," she
said.

"I'm just doing my job," said the officer.

Yeah, just doing my job. Where have we heard that before?

You know, sometimes, to understand what's happening in our country,
you have to get away from the TV talk shows and the network newscasts
and turn your attention to your local weekly newspaper where police
stories still rule.

What happened to the Highbargers' last month is not unlike what has
happened to hundreds of other innocent families throughout the country
in recent years. The cops came looking for drugs. They didn't find
any.

Who knows why they came? Maybe they got an anonymous tip. Maybe the
drug informants they employ provided bogus information to protect
their friends. Maybe, God forbid, the drug search was just an excuse
by cops to intimidate and harass what they described as
"anti-government" people.

The Highbargers are home-schooling Quakers. But the cops, while on
their fruitless search for contraband, let them know they did not
appreciate some of the literature they discovered in the house. There
were videotapes on shooting techniques and magazines about
self-reliance.

One of the cops asked Highbarger why, if he was anti-government, he
just didn't "come out shooting." Maybe the FBI, Drug Enforcement
Administration and other agencies dispatched to this dangerous detail
would have liked that.

Mrs. Highbarger, on the other hand, simply explained: "First, we're
not anti-government; and second, we're not stupid."

The harassment of the Highbargers was part of a larger series of drug
raids that took place in southern Oregon last month. About 140
officers from the FBI, DEA, IRS, U.S. Attorney's Office, National
Guard, ATF and lots of local cops took part in serving 20 search
warrants for psilocybin manufacturing plants. It was part of a
three-year investigation, requiring thousands of man-hours, at
who-knows-how-much cost.

The results? The searches produced 10 mushroom growing sites, two
spore labs, one marijuana patch, some peyote plants, 14 pounds of
dried psilocybin mushrooms, several firearms and approximately $10,000
in cash.

Wow! Big deal. I have to ask myself if such a haul is worth pointing
one gun at one baby's head? I don't think so. I think our government
is out of control. And the so-called "drug war" has provided the
excuse -- the rationalization for invoking terror on an untold number
of innocent people, depriving them of their rights, invading their
homes and spending a fortune of taxpayer dollars to do it.

This has got to end -- now.

Recently, WorldNetDaily told you the story of Donald Scott, the
Southern California man who lost his life at the hands of cowboys like
this. The Highbargers consider themselves fortunate to have escaped
this raid with their lives. Many victims of this kind of government
terror have not been so lucky.

Enough is enough. The government is merely empowering the drug lords
with its phony "war." America is losing its civil liberties in the
name of law and order. It's time to call off the dogs, get the federal
troops out of our communities and send them packing -- disarmed --
back to Washington where they belong.

I declare the drug war over.

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A daily radio broadcast adaptation of Joseph Farah's commentaries can
be heard at KTKZ in Sacramento and the Internet portal OnePlace.com
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