TABLE I

COMPARATIVE ESTIMATES OF CRIME COSTS

Trends The trends in drug related crime are instructive. These trends underline the lesson that police and prisons don't work very well to control organized crime. At the same time that the number of people sent to prison for drug dealing increased, the length of term increased, the costs of prisons tripled:

*Drug related murders increased from 351 in '82 to 751 in '86. In 1988, such murders have doubled since 1986.

*Cocaine imports increased from 60 to 120 tons

*heroin imports increased from 4 to 6 tons

*only marijuana imports dropped... as production increased in Hawaii, California, Florida, Iowa, and Nebraska.

Comparisons Organized crime is as well established in the USA as it is anywhere in the world. It is part of the underground economy in all capitalist countries. Italy, Sicily, Turkey and France has had serious problems with organized crime.

In the 3rd World, drug traffic, prostitution, contract theft and protection surpass the 1st World; with the possible exception of the USA since the USA is the richest market for most kinds of drugs. Columbia, Peru, Mexico, Hong Kong and Thailand as well as the Philippine Islands have active clans of organized criminals.

Organized crime is fragmented in the 2nd World of socialist development. Countries which used to have serious problems with prostitution, drugs and gambling moved quickly to eradicate them after the revolution. Havana used to be popular with American tourists for its sex shows, readily available drugs and homosexual prostitution. The Castro regime eliminated most street crime including organized crime.

An underground economy in scarce goods continues to thrive in the socialist countries with some prostitution. In the USSR, party leaders have been on the take from the managers of state enterprises for years. The Brezhnev administration was especially corrupt in both economic and political terms. Those who set up private workshops using state-owned materials were forced to share their illegal profits with strong armed thugs. Organized crime is especially active in Kiev, Lvov, Odessa, Donetsk, and Dnepropetrovsk (Soviet Life: Mar., 1989)

The Reach of Organized Crime. Most organized crime involves a small, self-contained group which confines its operations to a city, a state or a region. There is little evidence of a tightly organized national syndicate of Sicilian families called the Mafia which controls the production and distribution of illegal goods and services according to Thomas Snelling, an economist of crime.

Gordon Hawkins, a criminologist, says that organized crime is found in every city. A variety of groups participate in organized crime. They live in uneasy peace with one another and with the police but they are more like the medieval Italian city-states than the federal government.

New Jersey, Florida, Nevada, New York City and parts of other states are dominated by organized crime with or without the cooperation of police and politicians; judges and jailers. It appears that most of what exists in the way of national and international crime organizations are the remnants of Mafia families.

Succession Theory The domination of organized crime by Mafia figures is now being replaced by Chinese, Vietnamese, Jamaican, and Central American emigrants with contacts back home. This is called succession theory.

As an excluded minority, the Irish ran illegal gin mills, brothels, and the protection rackets in New England. As they came to find a place in the larger society, they were replace by Italians and Sicilians.

As the Italians and Sicilian generations were absorbed into mainstream America, excluded Black minorities found they could use such economic activity as a means to gain economic if not social status. This, Joe Feagin, at the University of Texas, Austin, and others call succession theory.

It is worth noting that those who are at the bottom of the job market have a choice...they can take menial jobs and minimum wage, they can become supplicants to the welfare system, they can compete with established small business in a neighborhood or...they can sell their bodies to the establishment. Or they can become lumpenproletariat by parasitizing on society.

Today, migrants from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Southeast Asia and Central America find a highly profitable activity available to them is to sell drugs, sex, pornography and gaming to yuppies and pre-yuppies.

In his critique of succession theory, Peter Lupsha of the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque pointed out that minority members of organized crime stay in it even after they become affluent and after most of the ethnic hostility has faded. He points out that,

In a society that has always had a place for lawlessness, sharp practice, easy money, a disdain for suckers, and an idolatry of mammon and lucre, organized crime is as American as McDonald's.

Organized crime does provided an opportunity structure for minorities when jobs in other sectors of the economy are reserved for white, anglo-saxon males...and organized crime is, indeed, part of the American plan. Organized crime, as you shall see, is the underground cousin of capitalism.

However, crime should not be associated primarily with excluded minorities...white Anglo-saxon males are deeply involved in a wide variety of crime including organized crime. That they are not concentrated in organized crime emphasizes the fact that WASPs have a lot of other mobility channels while minorities have few in comparison.

Keep in mind that some 15 or 20 Mafia families still dominate organized crime in the USA even if other minority groups are getting organized enough to challenge their monopoly in selected cities of America.

Keep in mind that many of the customers of organized crime are quite respectable middle, majority Americans. They buy the pornography, many illegal drugs, gamble and hire arsonists.

Middle Americans sell, bank, serve, and host organized crime figures. They take the bribes, do the legal and political favors and benefit from the ethnocentricism which concentrates minorities in the economic underground of America.

The Mafia As with the KKK in Ireland, the Mafia began as a group offering rebellion and resistance to feudal relations in Sicily. The Bourbon state tried to weaken the power of land-holding aristocracy and strengthen the power of the central state in Italy. Peasant leaders arose to resist the privileges of the aristocracy and to protect peasant villages from taxes in kind or in service to the feudal lord. Mafia members were underground; had the support of the peasantry; punished those who cooperated with the invader and often redistributed stolen goods within the family system and that of the compadre...childhood friends.

What started out as partially theoretical rebellion and resistance to alienated economic relations in Sicily turned into predatory economics in the New World.

Home for Mafia Families There are some 25 Cosa Nostra (our thing) families which dominate illegal gambling, loansharking, and much of the drug trade in those cities. Each city is a base for regional distribution of such services. It is part of the underlife of America. The list below comes from the FBI, from Tony Valachi and Jimmy Fratianno; the later two well placed informants. Each city has at least one family:

--Buffalo --Chicago --Boston

--Cleveland --Detroit --Los Angeles

--New York (5!) --New Orleans --Philadelphia

--San Francisco --Tampa --San Jose

--Denver-Pueblo --Dallas (?) --Kansas City, Mo.

--Pittston, Pa. --Steubenville --Tucson

--Rockford, Ill --Madison --Elizabeth-Newark

You might wonder how such crime organizations can survive side by side with McDonald's, Arby's, Taco Bell, Walmart, Bell Telephone and Walgreen's. Bribery, secrecy, coercion, and well paid lawyers are important.

Mass demand, ethnic divisions and racism, poverty, disemployment, and the quest for the false solidarity of drugs and sex all converge to institute organized crime as firmly as McDonald's. If the market liberals get their way, McDonald's may add such supplies to its menu.

Mafia Activity Informants say the 25 or so mafia families spread across the country dominate but do not monopolize organized crime. A typical mafia family with 1000 or so members in New York City have interests in both legal and illegal businesses:

Organized Crime Activity Legitimate Activity

--Gambling --Banking

-sports bookmaking --Insurance

-numbers and policy --Interstate trucking

-casino gambling --heavy construction

--Narcotics --real estate holdings

--Loan Sharking hotels, offices --Labor racketeering buildings, malls.

--Extortion --cable television

--Pornography --brokerages and more

--restaurant chains

--Phonograph records

--Theatre, T.V. and movie production

--Magazine & book publishing

--Hospital chains &

funeral homes

Total take = $500,000,000 to $1,500,000,000 (yearly)

The important thing to notice in these figures is that the legitimate business of organized crime is about 3 times larger than its illegal business. This makes it easy for organized crime to hide its illegal income; easy to appear as solid citizens; hard to prosecute and very important to a community with high unemployment.

There are several lines of production monopolized by crime. These include all the goods and activities which, in more sacred societies, are used for solidarity purposes rather than for privatized euphoria and pleasure.

You can begin to look at the commodification of sacred supplies by looking at the commodification of human sexuality.

PORNOGRAPHY   The word pornography means, literally, the writing (graphos) of prostitutes (pornos). Pornography is part of the ancient ceremonies of solidarity in which males of an age group or an occupational group visit a temple to create themselves as part of the realm of the sacred. Food, alcohol, song, stories, and sex are used in combination to obliterate hostilities, animosities, conflicts and troubles between males.

From England to Germany to Persia and Burma, pornography was used as erotic supplement to other solidarity supplies. The temple prostitutes in Rome and Greece served male solidarities; soldiers, business persons and workers. The sculptures on the temples at Khajuraho in Northern India are visited by thousands of tourists each year. The ruins of Pompeii include erotic art. Erotic art is found in Mayan, Incan and Aztec culture.

Erotic art... as a solidarity supply...is used in Japan and China to establish the pair bond. Newly married couples are given 'pillow books' to teach them how to give each other pleasure.

But the traditional meaning of erotic art is far different from the modern Western meaning. It is important to distinguish between pornography and erotic literature if you are to use human rights and human obligations as a standard for judgement. Pornography today is endorses violence and submissiveness of women and children to satisfied alienated power of males. Erotic literature usually endorses mutuality while it celebrates sensuality.

Definition We will define pornography as:

*the presentation of the sexual parts of a person as the sum of the person...or

*as the exploitation of the sexuality of one person by another in a unequal power relation...or

*the use of sexuality to pervert cherished social relationships.

The social psychological point to remember is that the existence of a power relationship degrades the integrity of the individual.

The sociological point to consider is that pornography presents social relationships which are very likely to be subverted by sexual activity.

Parts Most pornography focuses upon the genitals and other sexual parts of the body. The whole person as a social self does not exist in such action.

Erotic literature, on the other hand, emphasizes the giving of pleasure to a whole human being...to a person with the status of a person in the sociological sense as opposed to being seen and used as a nonperson.

Erotic literature and erotic cinema can be enabling and ennobling of human sexuality to the extent that whole persons are shown in mutually affirming concern and in the varieties of sexual love. Erotic literature which offers young people instruction and approval of their sexuality affirms an important human right. The same is true when erotica offers older persons change, renewal, delight and surprise in their shared sexuality.

Pornography tends to put sexuality in an ugly light...one in which human sexuality is profaned, that is to say, reduced to physical action rather than social interaction; erotic art tends to show sexuality in the service of those sacred social relationships of a society.

Power Almost all pornography shows women serving the sexual appetite of men. Women are beneath, below or under males. Women kneel and men stand. Women are passive and men active.

Women are often shown being beaten, whipped, spanked, urinated upon, used by animals, raped, bound, gagged, chained, blindfolded, and otherwise abused.  Women are shown to perform to entertain men. This unification of power, sex, and degradation resonates with the logics of power stratification in a patriarchal system. It has no other sociological sense or reason.

Pornography tends to reinforce the stratification of social power in gender relations while erotic literature tends to emphasize mutuality of action. In erotic literature, the point is to give sexual pleasure to a whole person and to share in that pleasure.

Perversion Pornography locates human sexuality within cherished social relationships in which such sexual activity subverts the relationship.

Hard core bookstores are filled with incest stories: father-daughter; uncle-niece, brother-sister; son-mother; father-son. This form of sexuality is defined, rightly, as corrupt since it subverts the necessary trust relationship between those parented and those doing parenting.

Pornography is known by its perversion of cherished social relations: erotic literature by its celebration of such relations though the sharing of human sexuality.

For organized crime, the highest profits are in the mass marketing of pornography given video cassette technology. The custom retailing of commodity sex would not be as profitable. It is the impersonal distribution of sex in pornography and prostitution alike which maximizes profit.

The mass production of pornography and commodity sex degrades the human condition. Whenever one is reduced to a passive spectator of another's sexual activity, in that moment one denies one's own sexuality. From the point of view of socialist humanism, one should invest desire in living persons rather than in dead literature.

Profits of Pornography Pornography is a fairly big business taking in between $2 and $5 billion dollars a year (Graham, 1981). Most of the wholesale production and distribution of pornographic films is said to be run by crime organizations rather than by individual entrepreneurs.

Most retail outlets are owned by small companies. A typical owner might have six to 20 shops scattered around a region. They are the local retailers for the porno wholesalers. The wholesalers are said to be part of the various crime syndicates which run organized crime in the USA.

There is a mom and pop electronic porno industry that is thriving. Bill and Mary Jones (not their real names) are among the thousands of cottage industries which offer dial-a-porn services. Bill writes the five minute sexual scenarios and Mary delivers them along with heavy breathing (Newsweek: 23 Mar., 1987: 40).

Newsweek estimates that half of the 900/960 phone numbers are oriented to sexually explicit material. The Joneses take in up to $1750.00 per month but it is the telephone company that takes in the lion's share...45 cents out of the 50 cent per minute charge.

Cory Eisner, a New York expert says that a dial-a-porn company can receive up to 100,000 calls a day and make up to $5000 per day.

In March, 1988, AT&T stopped paying dial-a-porn companies their part of the profits from phone calls. That stopped 90% of the porn traffic on AT&T but other phone companies continue to service the industry.

NOTE: this section was written before the internet developed. I have no estimate on the revenues of internet pornography.  I am told it is the most active part of the internet and that there are more than 200,000 Websites for pornography. The characteristics of pornography obtain for what little I've seen...parts, perversion and power.

ORIGINS OF PROSTITUTION Prostitution probably arose out of the temple prostitution in India, Burma, China, and Japan. It derives as well from the practice of widowed women teaching young men the skills of love. Small gifts were expected from the young men. Armies often permitted women to follow along to service the men. The women were given food or gifts with which to support themselves. Wealthy men often kept second wives as concubines or mistresses. These women were given resources upon which to live.

But none of this is prostitution as we know it; a degrading, commodity market in which people with money purchase sexual services from people without any social standing at all between the parties.

The saying that prostitution is the oldest profession is based upon a faulty understanding of the use of sex in the temple. In Tantric Hinduism, the Tantric must worship the goddess of bliss daily. In so doing, as noted above, the male unites with the Holy via the person of the female. The female does take gifts, does provide sexual services and is not, can not, be considered part of a social pair. She is respected for her role in helping the male reach a sacred state. This devotional sex is interpreted by modern capitalist understandings of commodity sex. A better way to understand temple prostitution is as a pathway to the gods.

To say that the commodity prostitution we see today is the world's oldest profession is thus greatly mis-leading and greatly self-serving to those who degrade both people and sexuality.   It ignores the sacred and social components of sexual services in the temple.   It ignores the gift giving of the client in non-religious settings.

The commodification of sex is hostile to the human enterprize in that such sale demeans the relationship between those who engage in commodity sex. Sex can be bought and sold but human intimacy cannot. Commodification of sex subverts human intimacy between the buyer and seller.

The prostitute is demeaned in that he or she must perform sexual acts with a stranger based upon the stranger's preference in the matter. When one is the object of another's will, for a time one become a mere instrument rather than a moral human being.

From a sociological view, the market freedom justifying commodity sex dissolves the social bonds which sex helps develop. Again, most societies use sex as a solidarity device. For most of human history, when one wishes to express one's sexuality, one must express it within an approved social relationship.

Again there is a political economy behind both the religious and the commodity use of female sexuality. In agricultural societies with male inheritance, surplus girls were given or sold to the temple. In capitalist societies with a population surplus to the capitalist class, young women and young men alike prostitute themselves to the alienated sexuality of those who view sex as a market commodity.

PROSTITUTION AND ORGANIZED CRIME Organized crime used to get a large part of its income from houses of prostitution owned by their members. With the passage of the Mann 'White Slavery' act prohibiting the transport of women across state borders for 'immoral' purpose, prostitution became smaller business run by independent pimps.

The more open sexuality of the 60's and 70's further reduced the profits from organized prostitution. Greater employment opportunities for women in the postwar era gave women an alternative way to reunite production and distribution when left alone or cast adrift from the family unit.

Organized crime remains in the business of catering to the alienated sexuality of men. It continues to run massage parlors which are fronts for prostitution. It is the primary source of pornographic materials and live sex shows.

Organized crime uses banks and other legitimate business as a way to launder payments for sex and porno-supplies. Charge cards are billed to restaurants or to other stores owned by organized crime instead of sexual charges in order to hide such charges from disapproving wives or bosses and from the Internal Revenue Service.

GAMBLING Gambling is probably an outgrowth of the use of bones and stones for divination. The Gesar epic is known in Tibet, China, Turkey, and Mongolia. It is over a thousand years old. One of its main themes is Mo, or divination with dice, prayer beads, or sacred rope knots. It is still practiced among exiled Tibetan monks.

In the Korean game of Yut, four sticks are thrown to determine the fortune of individuals and families. Yut was played on the last and first day of the lunar year. It is now played year round.

The Chinese play several card and bone games for bet which developed out of the quest for sure and certain knowledge about how events would turn out.

The throwing of darts, archery, racing or wrestling for bet as well as the running of horses for prize grew out of military training. Football and the betting there grew out of the practice of kicking the head of an enemy between two encampments. The games of war in the Norse countries have been played for centuries as part of the preparation for predatory economics.

In Gotland and in Scotland, the caber is tossed for prize. Park is a game in which teams of seven take territory from each other. Varpa, or playing stones, came from the throwing of limestone rocks at invaders.

Track events are little more than preparations for a race for loot or safety. Runners in Peru, Greece and Wales were used for military communications...and prizes given for good news.

Playing cards is forbidden in some societies since their use began as a way of knowledge to the future. This way of knowledge violates the ways of knowledge in many other religions. Religions usually teach that the future is known only to God. For people to turn to other sources for such knowledge presumes disbelief at least and pretensions of godlike capacity at worse. Priestly functionaries repressed such knowledge systems as an offense to their God.

The use of Tarot cards for divination of the future outside of the established religious understandings began in the 13th century. Tarot cards embodied pictographs of legends and myths going back thousands of years. The cards derived from the book of Thoth, an ancient Egyptian god. They embodied the mystic knowledge of time and how the cycle of seasons came and went. In Greek mythology, Thoth was given the name Hermes, from which hermeneutical knowledge derived.

Sjoo and Mor, in their work on matriarchy (1987), argues that mystical ways to knowledge were defined as evil or superstition and male gods began to replace the female gods. The male world, dominated by logic thought and concerns with control, repressed the feminine ways of knowledge by canon law and later, by common law and then by statutory law. Feminine ways of knowing were said to be unnatural and therefore the work of the devil. Women who used these ways were labeled witches and burned at the stake.

Along with palmistry, astrology, phrenology and alchemy, playing cards was defined as an evil, corrupt, sinful or blasphemous way of knowing. People who used them challenged the male priesthood, and must be punished.

GAMBLING AND THE HOLY Senior males and females, entrusted with the task of determining the will of the gods with regard to an ill person or the fate of an entire society during a time of famine, flood or drought, cast stones, studied entrails, read tea leavings or turned cards in the effort to learn the will of the gods. In patriarchal societies, if anyone is to know the Will of the Gods, it must be a male.

As with most such castings, readings, and turnings, chance played a great part. The transition of such into games of chance as a solution to problems of male solidarity is an easy and natural one. Males would cast bones or stones or sticks to determine who was favored of God. When a gambler is lucky, there is the feeling that one is in perfect connection with the forces of nature...one feels that one can't lose.

Gambling by women, children, slaves, workers, and foreigners was defined as corrupt and repressed by law and custom when these persons were, sociologically, nonpersons.  Patriarchy provides rational for such rules of exclusion.

Gambling for non-religious, therefore nonsocial reasons was, and is, defined as sinful. Gambling for personal pleasure...e.g., standing alone for hours in front of a slot machine carried no social, hence religious meaning therefore was repressed as immoral and illegal.

The limited risk of friendly bets on poker or sports outcome all create ecstatic body states which are interpreted by the participants as "good times." The stakes are usually well within the means of the players and the rules are often changed to keep people 'in the game."

Under these circumstances, gaming is a solidarity device and supportive of cherished social relationships.

There is little need, from a human rights point of view for the repression such gaming among friends.

Controlling Gambling   As wage labor emerged to replace feudal and communal relations, Anglo-saxon capitalists in England and in the USA used the power of the state to outlaw many of the leisure time activities of migrant workers. Gambling, drinking, sports events, and night life in general were repressed. Such activities took too much of the meager wages of the worker and led to demands for higher wages. They left too many families destitute and dependent upon the county or city taxes. Capitalists wanted their workers to be fresh and ready at the break of day to work.

Workers, on the other hand, found the gin-mills and red-light districts of Europe and America refuge from alienating work. In company with other males, the workers found a thin and changeable solidarity after long, hard, dangerous hours in the thundering factories and roaring mills of stinking, squalid, polluted cities in Europe and America in the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th described by Dickens, Disraeli, de Tocqueville, Sinclair Lewis and Jo Parker.

The solidarity practices of the foreign migrants were a challenge to the monopoly of White Europeans over the realm of the sacred. For one to commune with the Gods using drugs other than alcohol was defined as sinful. To play cards or to use animal violence to create male solidarity was foreign to the dominant majority. It used the power of the state to prohibit such 'unholy' practices.

GAMBLING AND ORGANIZED CRIME Gambling contributes a large portion to organized crime revenue. The operations usually involve 'numbers' betting and illegal betting on sports events. Athletes are bribed to shave points to increase the probabilities that the bettor loses. Fights and races are fixed in favor of the bookmaker. Casino margins are large enough to guarantee 17% profit or more. Government officials are bribed to increase the casino margins in some states.

Televised sporting events depend in large measure upon the size of the betting audience for network income. If gambling were eliminated, the ratings would shrink, the advertisers would not advertize and the superstars would, once again, be paid in the thousands rather than in the millions.

Those who schedule sports events in Atlantic City and Las Vegas profit more from gambling than from ticket admissions. The Mike Tyson-Michael Spinks boxing match lasted less than a minute in Atlantic City but gamblers lost $40 million at the casinos and left over $100 million in the four days of the event. The take from the 12 Atlantic city casinos: slots, wheels and card games, in the month of June, 1988 was $234.4 million.

All together there are some 67 sports for which organized crime makes a book when they set the odds. Organized crime employees take the bets, pay the winners and pocket the rest. There are about 500 million bets placed each day on games ranging from baseball, basketball, football and hockey to Jai alai, golf, yachting, tennis, greyhound, horse races, track and field events, numbers and even space shot success or failure.

Most of the profits from gambling come, however, from the loans they make to bettors and the high interest rates (squeeze) they charge. Those who have seen the first Rocky movie will recall that Rocky beat up customers who were slow in paying off gambling debts to the bookie.

Organized crime syndicates also work as financiers and fixers for legalized gambling. In Nevada, organized crime is involved in hotel and casino development, land speculation, banking, and prostitution. The employees who serve and entertain are often prevented from working when seen with organized crime figures by the Nevada Gambling Commission, but the ranking officers are immune to policing.

Today the various states are moving into the bookmaking trade in order to solve the fiscal crisis created by disemployment and economic depressions. Many states now offer lotteries, off track betting and other gambling choices to the gambler.

State Monopolies The illegal production of gambling lasted until the fiscal crises of the state. Now the capitalist state has taken over the supply of gaming in order to generate revenue with which to maintain political legitimacy. Many nations monopolize the production of alcohol, tobacco, lotteries, and other products in order to generate funds for social justice programs. The USA is moving in that direction.

But the mass production of gambling is different from the social gaming found among poker pals or bingo games in churches and community centers. Poker, football pools, racing bets and informal contests all are used by small face to face groups, usually male, to transform the profane world of work into the sacred sphere of sociality. Bingo brings a community together in the evening and on the weekend to share in the suspense and in the emotions of chance win or loss.

In those situations, there are cherished social relations to be refreshed and renewed. There is a legitimate use of economic power to shape the behavior of others. There is a redistribution of wealth on the democratic basis of chance rather than upon the structural basis of position.

State Lotteries State lotteries generate large revenues with little capital investment. There are few political costs in such revenues since they are a tax on 'sin.' In 1987, states grossed about $12 billion. Proceeds are used for schools, parks, and other good causes. The ends justify the means.

In legal or illegal lotteries, there are no cherished social relations produced and celebrated. One buys a lottery ticket from an unknown other in a grocery store or on the street and experiences in private the risk of gain or loss.

The suspense generates exhilaration when one wins and chagrin when one loses but the psychogenic experience is privatized. The redeeming quality of shared risk and suspense is absent. If the lottery is to be continued, it must be on other grounds.

Lotteries are often touted on the basis of the public good. The argument is that people will gamble anyway, why not let them gamble to good social purpose and with honest brokers. The proceeds to the state are used for recreational facilities, for educational facilities, for improvement of public parks, and for other good purpose. If that is, indeed the case, then one could have little objection to public lotteries. However, that is not always the case.

Games of Life The sale of lottery tickets is made mostly to Games of Chance people who have marginal discretionary income. They have no chance in any other game while they have some...small...chance in the numbers game or in the lottery.

Those who can least afford the loss of income are those who have the most to gain but, as a class they can only lose. A few individuals will certainly win but poor people as a class will not win...they will be, as a class, poorer. However, people who don't gamble, win. Their taxes are lower and their services continue. Most states take about 40% of the amount spent for tickets. Over half of the states use gambling to increase revenue.

All lotteries and other games of chance found in the marketplace have as a common feature, the subtraction of some percentage off the top for the lottery producer. Gambling is pretheoretical economics for poor people.

In Florida, Gustavo Gonzalez, 20, working in a restaurant at minimum wage bought an armload of tickets on the first day of the lottery. As he frantically scratched away, he said, I'm going to play like a desperate man. Mr. Gonzalez is highly motivated to gamble since his opportunity to make enough money to live in dignity is severely limited.

Governor Romer of Colorado has mentioned two other problems with electronic lottery. He points out that the game Lotto would '...suck $100 million off of main street Colorado...' Half would wind up as huge prizes for the gamblers. Most winners buy real estate but as Governor Romer points out some of those '...millions of dollars won't come back to Delta or Durango or Grand Junction, they'll go to yacht in the Bahamas or a trust fund in a New York City bank, the Governor said (Sunday Times Call, 14 Feb., 1988: 7A).

Romer also pointed out that the computer systems for electronic gambling is large and expensive. Only the chain stores would be able to install them [as a way to lure in customers]. That advantage would tend to eliminate the small, locally owned stores and shops. It would '...put Colorado into partnership with the big stores and put traffic in them at the expense of other Colorado businesses' Romer noted. Michigan gamblers in the state lottery have cause to know that the equipment often breaks down.

In the circumstances found in stratified societies, games of chance wind up as an economic mechanism by which the poor subsidize the richer either in loss from the gamesters or in public facilities used most often by the middle class. There are better ways to raise funds for good causes. Seldom do the owners of casinos or betting establishments need the resources of the poor enough to justify gaming as a means to do so.

RACKETEERING Racketeering is the use of force or threat of force to extract surplus value from small businesses. Sometimes direct payments are demanded. Often the small business is required to subscribe to a high priced beer, liquor, linen or food service. When a mafia family took over a cheese factory in Wisconsin, it required businesses in Chicago to sell its mozzarella cheese. This is a quick way to get a business monopoly.

Protection If direct payments in cash are demanded, the service is called protection. The small business is protected from other threats of other families; from arson, bombings, beatings, maiming and murder. In offering such protection organized crime is, in effect, an insurance company.

Labor Unions. In the United States, there has been a gradual replacement of labor leaders interested in social justice to those interested only in the welfare of the union or...interested primarily in their own financial security.

As Ray Michalowski (1985) points out, federal and state authorities harassed, arrested, persecuted and deported labor leaders on the left. From the infamous Palmer raids of the 20's to the red scare of the 50's during the McCarthy era corrupt labor leaders replaced socialist labor leaders.

Replacement of the leadership of unions with those interested in their own narrow economic welfare was tolerated by business and government alike since they were not likely to cause trouble as long as they got their cut. The history of the Teamsters Union is a history of the use of the power of the state to replace socialist leaders with leaders more friendly to business...Jimmy Hoffa was the first in a line of corrupt teamster officials.

In 1980, the Teamsters Union was the only national union to endorse Ronald Reagan. Jackie Presser, the President, became a senior advisor to Reagan. Until 1988, the Justice Department did nothing to end crime control of the union. With the end of the Reagan years, the department filed a federal racketeering suit in civil court to put a trustee in charge of the union.

U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani said that Presser and 18 other top union officers were connected to six organized crime families. He said that the officers used shootings, bombings, beatings, bribes, and extortion to control the union and to steal millions from 1.7 million members.

Labor leaders such as those who run the Teamsters Union were agreeable to signing sweetheart contracts. These contracts accepted, on behalf of the union workers, low wages, weak pension plans, inadequate health policies and management control over the work process. Workers who protested at union meetings were beaten or expelled from the union.

Some cases Organized crime is in control of a wide variety of unions from the trucking industry to the building contractors.

*The Stop and Shop stores in New Jersey were threatened with a strike by Local 464 of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union unless they bought sausage from the P.Z. Sausage Company. The company was controlled by organized crime.

*A New Jersey Contractor 'saved' 1.3 million in labor costs by paying the leaders of the building trades union for the right to use non union labor.

*Officers of the Iowa Beef Processors paid union leaders in New York City for the right to sell their precut meat there. This agreement costs the workers represented by the union officials substantial job loss.

HIJACKING Truck loads of electronics, cigarettes, furs, meats, and other high profit goods are hijacked on orders put by organized crime groups on the East Coast.

Typically an employee of a trucking firm, for a small bribe, will give information about a trip, a route and the contents of a semi truck load. The leaders of a crime group will discuss the feasibility of disposing of it, the risk, and the free lance hijackers who are to do it. They will commission the hijacking, pay off the subcontractors and sell the goods for half price to contacts in legitimate business.

Estimates vary, but one truck load of cigarettes can bring in $20,000 to 50,000. Those students who have seen "Hollywood Cops" will remember that the movie starts off with a chase scene of a truck full of cigarettes which scatter over the streets of Detroit.

DRUGS AND THE MARKET After the crackdown on small time production and distribution of drugs used by the hippies, aging bohemians, and upper class jet set in the 60's, smart, tough, well organized members of a loosely connected organized crime industry took over the market for drugs. They moved into the market quickly and efficiently.

We must stop the flow of drugs into our country and stop the flow of jobs pouring out of it.

...Jesse Jackson

An Overview Estimates of domestic drug trade run up to 150 billion dollars a year. The illegal drug industry is supposed to be the 3rd largest industry in America (after automobiles and energy). USA Today (Oct. 10, 1988) reports that:

*Drug sales are alleged to be the biggest industry in Florida and one of the more important cash crops in Hawaii, Iowa and in several other states. Pot is the No. 1 cash crop in California and Oregon.

*In 1987, pot growers invaded all 191 National Forests to grow pot on 8,000 to 10,000 plots of land.

*The average street value of pot grown on forest land is about $1 million. At those prices, the market grows to meet demand. And policing is futile.

*More than 24 million of us use illegal drugs regularly.

*Drugs cost employers more than $33 to 80 billion each year in lost productivity, health insurance, stolen funds.

*The Coast Guard seized enough marijuana in 1987 to make 500 million cigarettes.

*Cocaine is the drug most frequently involved in drug arrests. *Over half the drugs taken from youths at one halfway house had the name of Lilly or Upjohn on the capsule. Every year, millions of dollars worth of prescription drugs are hijacked by organized crime to reappear on the street.

*Utah, a Mormon state, repealed the laws against marijuana use when it was discovered that more of the children of Mormons were going to prison than were the children of Chicanos.

*2/3rds of those arrested for drug dealing spend no time in jail.

*the median time served for those sentenced to prison:

State courts = 16 months

Federal courts = 38 months

*One can become an instant millionaire in the USA by selling a 10 pound bag of cocaine. When he was arrested, drug dealer Agapito Lopez had $440,000 cash on hand in his New York apartment.

*Organized crime figures use teenagers to carry and sell since the courts and the police are easier on them than on adults.

** Frog is a 13 year old boy growing up in Los Angeles. He says he makes $200 a week selling crack on the streets.

** Lookout is an entry level job for 10 and 12 year olds. They can earn $100 per day warning adults of police.

** Jeff Woodbury, 20, sold marijuana and coke at age 14. He made up to $200,000 per year. The minimum wage is the average wage for Black teenagers who work in legitimate business.

** Students in Mumford High school and Pershing High school, Detroit, wear gold cables, rolex watches, $150 tennis shoes and designer jeans.

Time Magazine (July 9, 1988) also reported that employment of teenagers by organized crime is reflected in the arrest rates of teenagers for drug dealing:

ARREST RATES IN SELECTED CITIES:  1986 v. 1987

A Plague Upon the Land The Peter Jennings and the ABC television network presented a documentary of the harm done to the USA by the drug trade. The Jennings team reported that illegal drugs were seriously damaging the basic institutions of America. As of April, 1988, the picture for each of the basic institutions is:

*admissions for drug related diseases up 1000% in the past five years.

*death from over dose of drugs up 600%

*babies born to mothers on drugs and then deserted up. A bed shortage in hospital nurseries arising from such unwanted babies.

*30% of new admissions to hospitals related to drugs.

*Aids is spread by sharing of needles to inject drugs. *1 in 10 medical workers abuse drugs. Doctors are the occupational group at highest risk to such abuse.

*More than half of teenage suicides are drug-related.

*105 students arrested in a Kentucky school for drug sales and use

*3 teenagers shoot an undercover police officer in a Texas high school when discovered selling drugs

*$240,000 used to police drugs in a Pennsylvania school; enough money to hire 8 teachers

*69 police shot during drug arrests in the past 10 years.

*hundreds of drug dealers shot by each other each year: 387 in Los Angeles alone in 1987.

*police and judges are bought by drug money

*40-50% of court dockets filled by drug cases

*1200 teenage gang members were arrested in Los Angeles on the weekend of April 8-9, 1988.

*State prisons overflowing with prisoners on drug related charges

*In New York, 79% of those arrested test positive for drug use. 3/4s of that usage was found to be cocaine. Nation-wide, about 50% of felons use drugs.

A Drug Tour of the USA The production and distribution of drugs is a growth industry in America. The most active centers are port cities and large metropolitan centers serving a hinterland around for 300 to 500 miles:

*Los Angeles is the West Coast import center. From there is redistribute drugs around the West and Midwest. Los Angeles police recorded 47,448 drug busts in 1987. It is the capital of cocaine use. It is the center for the manufacture of PCP.

*San Francisco is the primary source for LSD. It is a major consumer and retailer of potent, low cost 'black tar' heroin.

*Chicago has its supply of heroin brought in by Hispanic residents and visitors. Cocaine sometimes is carried in by some retired elderly coming back from Florida.

*New York is the major heroin import center. It has more heroin addicts than any other city. In 1987, 69,525 peoples were arrested in New York City on drug charges. Chinese gangs dominate the heroin business.

*Washington, D.C., the capital of the free world, has had an epidemic of execution style violence; some 33 drug dealers were killed in market competition there. The use of cocaine has more than tripled from 1984 to 1987. D.C. has the highest over dose rate in the USA. It also has a heavy concentration of PCP users.

*Miami is the leading importer of cocaine. One third of the homicides in Miami in recent years are drug related. The use and distribution of crack accounts for more than half of all drug arrests there.

The Supply Domestic cultivation of pot increased dramatically as the Carter Administration worked to stop imports. Now the marijuana crop is one of the largest farm products in America. The top ten states produce billions of dollars worth of pot:

California $3.1 billion Washington $910 million

Hawaii 1.7 Arkansas 900

Oregon 1.3 Tennessee 870

Kentucky 1.1 Oklahoma 770

N. Carolina 1.0 Georgia 760

Imports In 1986, billions of dollars worth of illegal drugs poured into America from South America, from the far East and from the near East. Authorities in Bangkok, Thailand seized 1.4 tons of heroin bound for the USA on Valentine's day, 1988. It's street value was put at over $2 billion dollars.

The illicit drug trade is so profitable that airline employees, bankers, politicians and businesses not to mention police become involved. Some 42 employees of Pan Am airline conveyed an estimated 1.5 billion dollars worth of cocaine to the states from their suppliers. Whole governments are said to be involved. Columbia, the Bahamas, Mexico, Burma, Thailand and Turkey are major beneficiaries of the trade and are not likely to try too hard to stop it.

Cocaine, heroin, and marijuana are imported to satisfy the alienated needs for solidarity by the 18 million Americans who use marijuana, the 5.8 million who use cocaine and the 500,000 who use heroin. Each day 5000 more people in the USA try cocaine.

Illegal drugs are reported to cost its users $50 to $150 billion a year. The U.S. spends more than $800,000,000 a year in trying to stop the trade (USA Today, 18 Mar., '87).

Our Trade Partners. Seventy five per cent of our cocaine comes from Colombia via private planes, high speed boats. Most enters through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Peru and Bolivia supply the refineries in Columbia.

In Columbia, the half dozen drug billionaires have more power than the government. In a market economy, money is a form of power. Many officials are on their payroll. Drug use in the Northern Hemisphere is increasing as organized crime expands business to the domestic market...with disastrous consequences for the work force.

Heroin is produced mainly in Asia. The major producers are our allies in Thailand, Burma, and Laos. The major exporters are our allies in Turkey, Pakistan, India, Lebanon and Syria. Most is transferred to our allies in Europe, especially France, where it is processed and transshipped to the USA.

Marijuana comes mainly from Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, Belize, and Haiti.

The Political Economy of the Drug Trade: The Latin American countries, together, owe banks in the USA over 336 billion dollars. The poor capitalist countries, together, owe more than $500 billion.

The sources of drug related crimes are, increasingly, a product of international economic relations.

At current interest rates, these countries would pay $1 trillion, 800 billion until the next century without reducing the debt one dollar. They cannot do that. Now, in 1988, the interest exceeds the income from exports. They must return to stone age conditions to pay off the banks.

Many governments permit the drug trade since it is a major source of foreign funds with which to pay off international debt, improve employment and prosperity at home as well as a source of personal profit for white collar functionaries of the state.

The World Bank and the International monetary fund has forced 3rd world governments to cut back on programs of social justice in order to repay the loans. Most poor workers and farmers know that much of their wealth goes to International banks. They know the role that the USA plays in keeping food, health care and education from their children. Sending drugs to the USA is a pretheoretical way to gain revenge but very much in the populist tradition.

Mexico ($100 billion in debt), Venezuela, Argentina ($49.4 billion in debt) Brazil ($114 billion), Chile ($20.5 billion) and Peru ($15.7 billion) are barely able to pay the interest on the loans. There are three major exports which provide the foreign earnings with which to pay the debt. Drugs, foods, and minerals...especially oil.

Saudi Arabia and the USA have driven down the price of oil from $34 a barrel to less than $20. Mexico and Venezuela took loans when the price of oil was high assuming that the price of oil would stay up; now they can't pay back the loans. Columbia exports drugs and coffee to the USA...it can pay back the loans and stimulate the economy. Columbia is one of the few Latin American countries enjoying an economic boom...built on the drug trade.

The Reagan administration refuses to use sanctions for drug trade on the Latin American countries since these countries owe so much to the banks in the USA. They would default on the loans and, arguably, create a financial collapse of the banking industry. Bank of America, Chase Manhattan, 1st Continental and other banks pressure the American government to go slowly since $336 billion in bad debts would bankrupt the entire banking system today.

The USA exports about 15% of its goods and services to Latin America. Loss of those markets would disemploy hundreds of thousands of US workers and create another great depression here.

Our problems with drug consumption are creating huge political and social problems in Latin America. The drug dealers, some politicians and policemen are benefiting greatly; the bankers' loans are safe for the moment but thousands of people are dying and millions of lives disrupted by the drug trade.

Out of the debt crisis and the legitimacy problems of local politicians in the 3rd world comes the reluctance to police and to punish the drug dealers...they bring billions of needed revenue into the country from the USA.

The analysis below will show you how capitalism and alienated politics combine to export economic problems to Jamaica and import drugs and guns to the USA.

EXPORTING PROBLEMS: IMPORTING CRIME The US press has been full of stories about the Jamaican connection to drugs and guns as well as street crime in America.

Bernard Headley of Howard University has studied the Jamaican connection to drugs closely. He says that the drug trade grows out of the political economy of the USA. America exports its employment problems to Jamaica by bringing Bauxite to the USA to process rather than employing Jamaicans to process it. The USA also protected American sugar producers by imposing trade barriers on Jamaican sugar, thereby ruining the largest job market in Jamaica.

The CIA poured money into the campaign of Edward Seaga to help elect him. Seaga has led a government which continues to help multinational corporations in Jamaica make and export profits to the USA while keeping wages and taxes down for the US corporations.

Since 1950, the population of Jamaica has doubled from 1 million to 2 million in 1988. But jobs have not increased as fast as the population. Many of those in the surplus population in Jamaica form a lumpenproletariat who 'scuffle' for a living...they work at low paying part time jobs, they augment their income with burglary, prostitution, gun running, the drug trade and selling physical power to local politicians to create 'safe' seats in Parliament.

When the Carter Administration pressured Mexico to burn and poison marijuana crops in the late 70s, the international drug barons turned to Jamaica for 'fine ganja.' Peasants who had been dispossessed from the land found they could prosper by planting pot in ditches, backyards, and other patches of ground too poor for the agribusiness giants to bother with but suitable for the growth of marijuana.

Drug barons in Jamaica used political connections with the Seaga government to get passports and visas to the USA. When they came they brought their employees ('rude bways') with them. These young tough streetwise men now compete with established drug dealers for markets and for supplies.

The economic policies of multinational corporations; the political policies of the Reagan administration in supporting right wing governments abroad; the disemployment of young men and women in Jamaica, demand for marijuana in the USA all combine to bring produce street thugs in Jamaica and import them to the USA.

Part of the world capitalist system is the underground economic organizations which produce drugs for low wages in 3rd world countries and distribute them in high wage countries...primarily the USA. American corporations dominate local markets, use right wing thugs to control workers and peasants, distort the economy, discourage programs of social justice and corrupt the political process.

Organized crime is the underground cousin of legitimate business. However, the trend is for organized crime to become legitimate. There are several mechanisms at work to solidify the link between underground and legitimate business:

*market liberalism

*Investment and money laundering

*the fiscal crises of the capitalist state

Market Liberalism is the slow incorporation of goods and services into the routine business of capitalism. The logics of capitalism demand a free market for every good or service for which there is demand and profit. Gambling, alcohol, prostitution, and pornography have already been legalized in one or more states in the USA. It is a matter of time before drugs and other forbidden services are made legitimate.

Investment and Money laundering also tie organized crime into the world of legitimate business. Organized crime figures invest their huge, untaxed profits wherever the profits are to be found. With large amounts of money coming in and with laws requiring banks to report deposits of more than $10,000 to the IRS, organized crime figures use banks and business to create the dramaturgical appearance that their income is legitimate.

With so much stolen goods, organized crime needs to own businesses in order to fence them. With so many legitimate businesses, organized crime needs distributors to sell their goods.

Organized crime now owns legitimate banks, cheese companies, garment companies, loan companies, investment firms, real estate companies, flea markets, 'chop shops' (auto repair garages), cleaners, laundries, and trucking companies. In addition, organized crime figures have billions invested in blue chip stocks, in certificates of deposit, in US securities and in foreign companies.

The Fiscal Crisis puts legitimate companies at risk of bankruptcy. Banks, savings and loan companies welcome depositors from any source. Marginal companies are only to happy to find large investors. New companies are hard-pressed to find legitimate sources of financing. Minority companies are always last in line for loans and federal grants. Three out of four new companies go broke the first year or so.

Any sensible policy for the control and eradication of organized crime has to consider the sources of alienation. Any program for the reduction of demand for illegal goods and services has to reduce alienated social relations at work, school, home, and church. Any program for the reduction of supply has to consider the profits of those who market illegal goods and services.

Below you will find a range of ideas about how to cope with organized crime. They range from the idea that drug dealers should be executed to the idea that social justice should be broadened to include those who use and deal in forbidden supplies. The text advocates social justice as the fundamental solution. In the meantime, it is necessary to repress the supply and use of some illegal goods and services.

ON NECESSARY REPRESSION Herbert Marcuse, University of California at San Diego, talked about necessary repression and surplus repression. In brief, he made the argument that some things should be repressed because they detract from the human project.

Let's begin with thinking about the necessity of repression some of the commodities produced and distributed by organized crime in terms of socialism humanism. Later you can look over some current ideas being used to control organized crime.

Repressing Organized Crime Pornography, prostitution, narcotics, gambling, violence, usury, and the fencing of stolen property are the core of organized crime. These are rightly called crime since they are not oriented to the human rights and human obligations which rest as the foundation of social philosophy in this text.

Pornography is rightly called pornography because it entails the privatized use of sexually oriented material for the private purposes of the customer. It degrades the human (and sacred) aspect of the young women and men used for the private pleasure of the solitary consumer. It treats women as body parts rather than as whole humans. It equates sexual activity with power rather than with shared pleasure. It strips sexuality activity of its social character by subverting cherished social relations and essential social processes.

Prostitution is called prostitution rather than making love because there is no mutuality in the creation of a social life world. The prostitute is there for the sexual purposes of the customer...the customer is there for the economic purposes of the prostitute and these two sets of purposes do not derive from the logics of a shared social life world.

Prosocial Use Even when drugs, alcohol, gaming, and sexually explicit material are marketed by organized crime, they are often reappropriated by the persons using them to create solidarity within a social framework well within the circle of supportive and enriching human relations.

For the most part drugs are used within friendship circles and help create the ambience within which enduring friendships oriented to the human project arise. The same is true for the use of the various forms of alcohol.

A young woman or young man, come of age will gather in a circle of friends, toast each other with some form of alcoholic beverage and consolidate social relationships which will pattern behavior, provide sociality, and continue for the life of the participants.

Under the conditions set forth above, it is difficult to interdict the use of those psychogenic substances which help create the ecstatic feelings one may readily interpret as proof demonstrative that a sacred moment has developed.

The use of the same resources, the same activities in other context, can be most destructive of the person and of the social relationship. Alcohol abuse creates severe health problems for many people and many couples find alcohol abuse by one or both to be destructive to the marriage. All this is commonplace and argues for the selective repression of alcohol.

But solidarity is absolutely necessary to social relations and social relations are absolutely necessary to the human project...one cannot be or become a recognizable human being outside of supportive social relationships.

It should be clear that the abuse of a substance by some hardly warrants the exclusion of all from that resource other things considered. It is clear that some forms of drugs have long range effects which should be considered in any public policy on its production and use.

All things considered, the use of solidarity supplies in the pursuit of cherished social relations must continue. The organic solidarity of complex societies is probably not strong enough to elicit prosocial behavior alone. Societies probably need to use mechanical solidarity as well.

Some psychogens may be later found to have deleterious effects not measurable by the primitive research tools of earlier epochs and, perhaps need temporary prohibition and the work of ethical producers to eliminate the harmful effects if possible.

Most of the solidarity supplies, selected and perfected over the course of human history need not be prohibited. Even so, they need to be regulated by some social control process located in self and society. However, decriminalization is popular.

Decriminalization In modern America, there is considerable opinion among market liberals that the sale of pornography, sex, drugs and gambling should be made legal. With each passing generation, the popular support grows for the decriminalization of supplies contained within the realm of the sacred.

There have been many justifications for decriminalizing drugs, pornography, alcohol, tobacco, and other solidarity supplies. They include:

*the free Market argument. People should be left alone to decide what is in their own best interests. The state should not interfere with the free market. This argument uses the morality of the marketplace.

*the cost-benefit argument. There are costs to the body, to the family and to society when people use drugs and other psychogens. These costs should be weighed against the costs of policing and imprisoning drug merchants and drug consumers. This position has all the morality of a cost accountant.

But it is a very powerful argument. Lets take a look at the benefits and the problems of decriminalization. USA Today (May 18, 1988) ran a special editorial page on decriminalization. On the side of those advocating decriminalization, several points were made:

--prices would be lower; the black market would end

--the killings over market rights would end

--the income of youth gangs and organized crime would be much lower

--property crime as a source of drug money would decline

--the costs of policing would decline

--the number of court cases for both use of drugs and for theft to support a drug habit would decline.

--the costs of trials would decline

--the number of people in prison would decline sharply

--the costs of prisons would decline

--the number of people under the control of probation officers would decline

--the costs of watching people would decline

--the amount of illness related to unsafe drugs and unsanitary use would decline

--the costs of taking care of drug related medical problems would decline

All in all, the medical and control costs run to some $60 billion according to a 1983 study cited in USA Today. About $8 billion is spent on policing, trials, prisons, and probation. The other $54 billion is based upon estimates of lost productivity, stolen property and medical costs.

You can see many advantages to decriminalization. The final result might be that adults make informed decisions. They may use or abuse their bodies in spite of being informed that such use is dangerous...and become a public burden.

The opponents make a good case too. They point out that:

--cheaper, more accessible drugs might create more users;

--loss in productivity and medical costs would probably increase, not decrease as more people used more drugs. Costs of drug therapy might increase quickly.

--If private drug companies provided them, the producers would have a profit motive to increase use as tobacco companies try to increase use of tobacco.

--people in certain occupations might endanger other if they were able to use drugs. Airline pilots, military personnel, truck drivers, nuclear reactor operators, teachers and professors.

--People cannot make informed decisions as adults since the drugs are addictive. They have lost the capacity to decide. The chemical compound overrides judgment and wisdom especially for heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine.

--People don't have the right to abuse their bodies because all of us have to bear the social and economic costs of their work and medical problems. Alcohol taxes bring in half of what the public spends to treat alcoholics.

--If drugs are widely available, they will fall into the hands of young children just as do alcoholic beverages now. Teenagers, especially, would be introduced to very addictive drugs.

--if drugs were taxed, the government would have a motive to push drug use to solve the serious fiscal problems of the state...just as it pushes gambling now on state lotteries.

And opponents raise several important questions:

--Should there be an age limit? If so, what age? What about the costs of policing this restriction?

--How would legalization affect insurance costs? Would more poor people be driven out of the market by such increase?

The New Drug Vigilantes The May 9, 1988 issue of US News and World Report noted the growth of citizen groups which put an end to drug trade in their communities without much ceremony and less due process.

These vigilantes simply patrol the streets. The Black Muslims are the most effective and the most dedicated of these groups. They patrol dark corners at night where even police are reluctant to patrol. They tell drug dealers that they are going to "tear their kingdom down."

In one of the highest crime ridden areas of the USA, the Mayfair District of Washington, D.C., the Black Muslims have taken back the streets from the drug underground and from organized crime. The elderly no longer fear to be out at night and children now play on the street. To the residents, the Muslims are heroes.

THE MUSLIMS HAVE DONE MORE IN ONE DAY THAN THE POLICE HAVE DONE IN 22 YEARS.

...Melvin Jones, Mayfair.

Such groups are growing all across the country from New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. to Houston and Oakland. Some of them use direct action. They threaten drug pushers. They have beaten a few. Some houses have been torched after its occupants ignored warnings and police did nothing. In Opa Locka, Florida, the Yahwehs, a Hebrew sect, bought a drug afflicted apartment complex. When two tenants continued drug business as usual, they were found shot to death.

Government Programs. The federal government spends over $1.5 billion annually to police the drug trade. There are several government programs which presently are used:

--easier search and seizure rules

--more arrests of dealers

--faster trials

--more convictions

--longer sentences

--less use of probation or parole

There are three new proposals introduced recently by conservative elements in the Congress. They are:

--Zero Tolerance In this tactic, the Customs and the DEA are confiscating cars, homes, boats, passports, planes and any other personal property used by drug couriers or dealers.

--Military Interdiction Many are calling for the army, navy and marine corps along with the air force to be used in stopping the flow of drugs into the country.

--mandatory testing Many Federal agencies, state agencies and private corporations now require employees to take tests for illegal drugs. There are proposals to expand the drug testing program.

Opponents point out that this practice conflicts with the constitutional requirement that one be presumed innocent and that one be left alone unless there is probable cause for the state to intrude in one's life.

All of these programs add up to more police and more prisons. This policy does not work. The Justice Department reports that, between 1980 and 1987:

*arrests and convicts increased 134%.

*7% more were sent to jail

*average prison stays increased 33% to over 5 years

*the number of people in state and federal prisons increased 73% between 1980 and 1986.

*the costs of running prisons has tripled in the past 10 years to $16 Billion.

*2/3rds of convicts are rearrested...many for worst crimes.

Herb Hoelter, director of the National Center on Institutions and alternates says that the public has been duped:

IF ONE HAD TO DESIGN A SYSTEM TO CREATE CRIME, ONE WOULD DESIGN THE AMERICAN SYSTEM---A TRAINING SCHOOL FOR CRIME.

Nevertheless, the new school of radical realism in criminology led by Jock Young in England accepts that real harm is done by street crime, organized crime, corporate crime and white collar crime. However hostile to capitalism these forms of crime might be, they can not be considered to be helpful to a revolution toward social justice. They must be repressed. Social justice, by itself, is not enough for the rest of this century and may never be enough to protect the human project.

The solution to alienation is to be found in a praxis society...not in the privatized use of alcohol and drugs. There must be a great many structural changes in the lives of men and women in order for the use of psychogens to be limited to the production and celebration of cherished social relationships.

The confinement of alcohol to such sacred occasions within the Jewish tradition is testimony to the solidarity and unity within the Jewish community. The same is true for the use of pornography or alcohol in the Japanese culture. Very few Japanese males become alcoholics and fewer still become rapists although pornography and alcohol are widely available. They are almost always used within the boundaries of cherished social relations.

The social justice found within the Muslim tradition together with the five daily prayers are adequate to produce community...and to eliminate the abuse of alcohol. We can learn much about the sources and solutions to drug abuse, alienated sexuality, usury, gambling and eating by comparing the American way of life with those of other societies.

We must take the lesson. The price that Americans are paying to organized crime is too high a price for the limited gains made from free trade in solidarity supplies or the profits made by legal and illegal drug dealing.

Whatever position you take on the production and use of psychogens, you should consider the very real problems that drugs create among young people and other excluded minorities in America today.