First it was Blacks and cocaine,....
then it was Mexicans and marijuana. Now it’s Muslims and khat. Apparently, the Feds are now going after Northern Africans and Arabs who import and chew khat, a relatively harmless plant that’s grown in the mountains of East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It is mainly consumed (via chewing) in a social context, providing mild euphoric and stimulating effects. It can be addictive, but is much less harmless than cigarettes or alcohol. And yet, it’s now another factor in this country’s fucked-up (excuse my French, but this topic is a hot spot for me) "War on Drugs". Right. Uh-huh. It’s just another excuse for this sorry, white, pasty-assed, fascist cabal we call the Bush administration to throw Muslims into jail under the guise of illegal drug use. Whoever thinks racism isn’t an issue in this country and can’t see that minority groups are continually screwed over by the ever-powerful White Male has his head in the sand.
An excerpt from an article in the Seattle PI:
Charged With a Cultural Tradition
by COLIN MCDONALD
Published: April 17, 2007
Jama Absiya’s wife thought he’d killed someone. Why else would armed federal agents be pounding on their door at 6:30 on a Wednesday morning?
Absiya was just finishing his shift as a taxi driver when his wife, Idil, called one day in July with a warning about what awaited him at home. A half-dozen men flashing Drug Enforcement Administration badges were encamped around their town house on Yesler Way. Some agents had circled the block; others checked out the backyard. Neighbors were becoming suspicious.
Absiya, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen, couldn’t think of what he had done to bring the lawmen to his doorstep. He had fled violence in Somalia and in 1993 came to the United States as a teenage refugee. Now he was suddenly in fear again. He went into hiding briefly, until a friend persuaded him to see a lawyer.
When Absiya went to the federal courthouse in Seattle and learned he was a suspect in a major drug case, he was dumbfounded. His reaction: "You got to be kidding."
They weren’t. Absiya said he spent the next three days in a two-person cell on charges of conspiracy to import and distribute khat. The plant produces leaves and shoots that contain cathinone, a stimulant that became a controlled substance under federal drug laws in 1993.
and
But still Absiya questions why the government is so concerned about khat. The accidents he sees while driving his cab aren’t caused by it. No one is sent to the hospital because of a khat overdose. He laughs when he talks about federal authorities wanting to send the people who have pleaded guilty to drug rehab.
"It’s something you do when you sit and talk nicely with your friends for a couple hours," he said.
I read stuff like this and it makes me hate my government. HATE IT.