Newsgroups: alt.drugs
Subject: 60 Minutes.....talks about WoD
Date: 30 Mar 1993 01:44:42 -0600

Anyone else watch 60 minutes on Sunday?   They did about a 15 minute
episode on WoD.   They prefaced the whole thing by saying that the
Reagan/Bush WoD is a huge waste of taxpayer money and also that it
is actually not even working.   60 minutes also stated that the U.S.
has spent over 100 billion on it's drug war and that more people are
addicted to them than ever before.

But the show mainly tried to show how the WoD is having a very negative
effect on society at large....even to those people who choose not to
do drugs.   They started first with a retired farm couple who had black
clad police officers knocking on their door screaming at them to open
up.   The people were very confused as they had never been involved with
the drug scene.   The old lady tried to call 911 to verify if the masked
men at the door were legit...but before she got to the phone their door
was bashed in and the couple was manhandled...handcuffed..and seperated
as the group of men in masks ransacked their home looking for the stuff.
The police also broke down the door of an out-building on the peoples
land.    Nothing was found anywhere on their property.    The 60
minutes news team interviewed the red-faced sheriff.....and asked why
this couple had their house ransacked when all they had against them
was the word of an informant (who happens to be a convicted criminal.)
The sheriff ho-hummed around saying he thought the guy was reliable.
60 minutes told the cop he was lucky the innocent couple wasn't armed,
because a very big tragedy could have happened.   The sheriff acknow-
loged that fact...but didn't say what he would do to prevent such a
tragedy from occuring again.

The couple was still shaken up from the incident...and the old man
was brought to tears when asked to recall some of the details.

60 Minutes then told the story of another man, an exec. at a Fortune
500 company.    Again with the word of an informant the police obtained
a search warrant for his home and waited til he was asleep.   They
broke his door down...without knocking..or identifying themselves.
The man woke up to the sound of what he assumed was burglars and grabbed
his pistol and went to his bedroom door and out in the hall.    When
he opened it the police threw a "distraction" bomb at him.....he still
didn't know who the people were...so he fired his gun at the police...
who then returned fire and struck the man in the torso with two rounds.
The man was hospitalized....and said that even at the hospital...doctors
and nurses would talk about him like he was a drug dealer involved in
a shoot-out with police.   The man is still paralyzed on one side of
his body.    The police never found any drugs in his house and never
connected him in any way to illegal drug use or trafficing.   He is
in the process of a law suit now that seeks unspecified damages.

The police eventually charged their "informant" with 32 counts of
something like obstruction of justice....and placed all the blame on
their informant.

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   When are the people of America going to wake up and realize that
the War on Drugs is killing us?    Its a big waste of money and its
destroying the lives of innocent people.    I was enraged when I
heard these stories on tv.....but I was very enlightened by the fact
that 60 minutes...the most watched weekly tv news show...told its
viewers that the WoD was/is a huge mistake.

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