Bob Newland gave this speech in front of the 1998 South Dakota Libertarian Party's annual convention; July 25 1998

My friends and fellow South Dakotans:

Six years ago, I stood at a dais in Hill City proclaiming my platform for the office of the United States House of Representatives. The Libertarian Party in South Dakota had just been born, partially the product of work put in by pioneers in the state like Spencer Nesson, Emmett Elrod, and Jim Christen, who, in the '70's and '80's, fought a lonely battle from the ramparts of Huron against the intransigence of Secretary of State Alice Kundert and the political establishment in South Dakota.

In 1991, a petition drive funded by the Libertarian Party of the United States gathered 32000 signatures to obtain ballot status for the Libertarian Party of South Dakota. In 1992, Gus Hercules quickly became the philosophical guru of the state party with his incisive demolition of Tom Daschle's homeboy facade in the race for U.S. Senate. I faced the ever-socialist Tim Johnson for the U.S. House.

Gus and I were the first people to run for office in South Dakota under a political party banner other than Republican or Democrat since the last Socialist candidate in 1932.

(aside)---Ever wonder what happened to the Socialist Party in the United States? Well, I'll answer that with another question. What would a Socialist do these days? The Socialist agenda has been absorbed by the Democrat and Republican wings of the Big Government Party.---(back to present)

In 1992, with about 250 registered Libertarians in South Dakota, Gus and I each garnered about 4500 votes -- 1% of the vote.

In 1994, Nathan Barton sacrificed sleep, paycheck, and family time to travel the entire state numerous times campaigning for Governor. With about 500 South Dakotans then registered as Libertarian, Nathan, along with running-mate Brian Liss, received 13000 votes -- about 4-and-a-half percent of the vote. (Incidentally, in order to retain ballot status, the SDLP needs to command at least 2-and-a-half percent of the vote for governor every four years.)

Nathan set a standard for professionalism and principled statements backed up by knowledge which will be tough for anyone to live up to, let alone surpass.

In 1996, Jim Christen ran for Public Utilities Commissioner as the only statewide Libertarian entry, other than Harry Browne for President. While there were only around 600 registered Libertarians in the state, Jim got 15000 votes -- about 6 percent -- in a race which was decided by fewer than a thousand votes. Christen took that victory from Republican Roy Letellier and handed it to Democrat Pam Nelson. While we don't think that's a particular triumph, that feat put the Libertarian Party on the mental map of every Republican or Democrat seeking office this year in ANY fairly close race.

Something to keep in mind is the fact that the Libertarian Party of the United States came into existence in 1972 because the Republican Party had abandoned virtually ALL of its stated principles.

These six years of history make the Libertarian presence in the gubernatorial contest this year of particular significance. If we can continue the trend of gaining vote share, and Bernie Hunhoff will make an entry into this campaign, the Libertarian vote share could again affect the balance of power.

Sooner or later, if the Libertarian candidates continue to pull 8, 10, 15 percent out of the middle of three-way races, the left and right wings of the Big Government Party will have to start appealing to Libertarian voters. That's what we want, isn't it? It's what I want. I'd rather be free than be governor. If government begins to attend to its constitutional affairs, and begins leaving peaceful honest people to govern their own lives, I don't care what business and social clubs its elected officials put above their names on the ballots.

My friends, we Libertarians believe in personal responsibility and accountability. As Dr. Laura puts it -- "Be nice to people, and when you screw up, MAKE IT RIGHT." For thirty years--the length of time I can claim to be even vaguely politically aware--I've watched government assume to itself responsibility for the goverment of OUR lives at a terrifying rate. Government, however, assumes no accountability. When a politician or a bureaucrat screws up, if anybody makes it right, it's us.

When we screwed up in Vietnam, no one's heads rolled in Washington. However, 58000 young American men and women of my generation died. A million more are trying today to get the VA to live up to promises it made when we sent them to a country they never heard of to kill people they didn't know. It's difficult to top that, but Robert McNamara--Secretary of Defense during the late '60's--did. He published a book, on which I assume he made some money, in which he admits that the Johnson administration purposefully lied to us about what they were doing in Vietnam.

Since then, the United States has screwed up consistently in its overseas adventures. We paid for it with our lives and our money in Iran, in Lebanon, in Grenada (for God's sake!), in Iraq, in Panama, in Somalia, and in Bosnia. Not one head rolled in Washington as a result of these blunders. Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton have even had the arrogance to look at these defeats of policy and call them victories.

So, when folks suggest that Libertarians simply mistrust government, I submit that government has worked hard to earn our mistrust. If the bastards would quit lying to us, maybe we could start to trust them.

I've been advised to temper my language and to emphasize issues different from those I have emphasized. Well, compared to how I would like to characterize the folks who radiate government edicts from Washington and Pierre, I AM tempering my language. As for issues, I'm going with what I see as the issues.

In South Dakota, taxes are the issue. "Taxes" raises two subordinate -- or supporting -- issues, depending on how one looks at them. Those issues are federal encroachment on state's rights, and personal liberty. Here's how I shall continue to address them.

First: local and state taxation---

Governments are instituted to guarantee folks' rights -- particularly the right to do business with each other, or with themselves. All legitimate government functions--armies, police and fire-protection forces, the courts, and maybe roads and bridges--all LEGITIMATE government functions are instituted to promote and protect the free market. Government has no other function than to provide some protection against force, fraud, and criminal negligence, and to provide punishment for transgressions of these crimes.

Therefore, we--the South Dakota Libertarian Party--hold that the only tax which approaches fairness is a tax on the action in the free market. We believe that a simple tax on exchanges of value in the marketplace--a simple, low-rate sales tax, if you will--of between one and two percent, will satisfy all the needs of government in this state.

We hold that property tax is immoral on its face. Property tax makes a mockery of the concept of private property. We would abolish it.

We hold that an income tax is immoral on its face, providing a penalty for success. We would abolish it.

We hold that any tax which is not clearly visible to us, the payers, the end users of the goods or services, is immoral on its face. We would abolish all such taxes.

We will ask the people of South Dakota to endorse our Just One Tax plan with their votes in November. No other political organization in South Dakota has proposed a comprehensive reform of the confusing morass of intertwining and overlapping taxes in this state. No one has refuted the validity of our plan. They have simply ignored it. Why? Well, mostly, I believe, it's because it came from the minds of people who have the audacity to believe that you and I can better govern our own lives than can the 105 senators and representatives we send to the legislature every year, a great number of whom seem to have problems managing their own lives.

Second: federal encroachment on personal liberty and state's rights--

Two centuries ago, the United States of America was founded on the premise of several sovereign states bound by a few common principles and a mutual defense agreement. Beyond those principles--the principles which held that liberty is God-given, and that the defense of oneself from tyranny is a God-given right--the sovereign states were left to govern within their borders based on challenges presented mostly by their location and topography.

Before the ink was dry on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the federal government began violating the principles upon which it was founded. Today, it is routine for the feds to simply bypass state governments and attempt to micromanage each of our lives. Each incidence of such action is tantamount to treason, in my mind. And it's expensive, therefore it takes TAX money. There's that word again.

As governor, I shall engage in a campaign to make the federal government justify any action it takes against citizens of South Dakota. This will be particularly true of the Internal Revenue Service, which has NO authority to take any aggressive action. In spite of repeated national exposure of its arrogance, criminality and cynicism, the IRS has consistently waged a campaign of terror against us, the people. I shall attempt to end this reign of terror in South Dakota.

And third, I shall end the insane, immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, counterproductive, and phony so-called war on drugs.

This is the issue which makes even folks who agree with my position squirm in their seats when someone who disagrees brings it up. I'll use the rest of my time here--and my campaign for governor--to make advocation of the Libertarian position on prohibition easier for those so inclined.

Over a century ago, James Fenimore Cooper observed that Americans, so resolutely devoted to the spirit of individualism, were free to pursue their own paths--as long as they ended up with the same point of view.

Much that is old about us still endures. Many Americans long for a simple and singular design of our nation's moral compass. Some, like Bill Bennett, Newt Gingrich, Tom Daschle, John Thune and Tim Johnson, believe they hold it in their hands. Even Bill Janklow--can you stand it?--waves the flag of morality sometimes.

Americans in large part view drug use as a symbol of moral degradation and a smudge on our national character, rather than as a centuries-old practice of a minority of people in nearly every culture. This view is the formidable enemy we face when attempting to promote reason, compassion, individual liberty, and sanity.

On April 2, at a forum in Pierre, the first time I was ever in a room with Bill Janklow and Bernie Hunhoff, the first time I ever met the governor, I outlined the Libertarian platform briefly. Janklow, speaking after I did, ended his talk by pointing at me and saying, "I've never met that guy over there, but I'll tell you this, anybody who advocates giving drugs to young people is absolutely nuts. We may be losing the war on drugs, but I'm gonna fight it with missionary zeal."

With those few words, the governor of South Dakota encapsulated virtually everything that's wrong with him and the positions of both wings of the Big Government Party on most issues, particularly the drug war. He diminished me personally--"that guy over there". He lied implicitly about my position--"giving drugs to young people". He attacked me--"absolutely nuts"--thus dismissing the value of ANY position I might take on ANYTHING. Finally, he declared himself a moral arbiter in his position on the issue, while declaring a fight to the death to defend a position no longer tenable.

In the 1840's, in South Carolina, if you advocated sanity in the face of the insanity of slavery, you were labelled a "nigger-lover", and you were lynched. In the 1930's, in much of Europe, if you advocated sanity in the face of Hitler's insanity, you were labelled a "Jew-lover", and you were lynched. In the 1940's, in this nation, if you advocated sanity in the face of the insanity of seizing the property of and imprisoning our citizens of Japanese heritage, you were labelled a "gook-lover" and you were lynched. In the 1970's--and still, to some extent--in this state, if you advocated a saner approach to what is our nation's greatest disgrace, the plight of American Indians, you were labelled an "Indian-lover" by Janklow and his ilk, and you stood some chance of being lynched.

Today, in this nation, if you advocate sanity in the face of what is clearly an insane policy of prohibiting some drugs while regulating, taxing and selling far more harmful drugs, you're often labelled a "druggie", and you stand some chance of being lynched. Joycelyn Elders was fired from her job as Surgeon-General because she simply suggested we ought to discuss re-legalization of some prohibited substances. There are various bills floating around Congress which would rescind the 501-c-3 tax-exempt status of some organizations, because they advocate re-legalization. I've seen proposals which would apply the RICO act to "conspirators" who discuss re-legalization. That presents the spectre of a couple of guys denigrating the drug laws--while smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol--being charged with sedition. That kind of thought is our enemy. Its best friend is the lack of imagination inherent in the souls of most career politicians.

On the other hand, our greatest ally is an honest appraisal of the the results of nearly one hundred years of ever-tightening movements to prohibit the very existence of various mind-altering substances.

Here, then, are ten accomplishments of the war on drugs. War was declared around 1968.

Accomplishment #1. The War on Drugs has made heroin, cocaine, and hemp more available to more people than they were before war was declared.

Most reports say that these drugs are now readily available almost everywhere in this nation. Give a reasonably street-wise person two days and a couple hundred dollars, and put him or her in any town in South Dakota with a bar, and he or she will be able to buy a useable quantity of at least one of these drugs. Probably all three.

Accomplishment #2. The War on Drugs has created more users than before war was declared.

Every survey suggests that more people have used drugs within various recent time frames than the survey before.

Accomplishment #3. The War on Drugs has steadily lowered the age at which people first experiment with drugs.

Surveys suggest that the average age of first use has steadily dropped since 1968. With further success, kids will be rolling joints as a class exercise in HeadStart. The founder of the DARE (Drug Awareness Resistance Education), a federally-funded program, has asked that the program be suspended. Surveys find that drug use among children who have been through the DARE program is higher than among those who have not.

Accomplishment #4. The War on Drugs has created jobs.

Naturally, when 1,200,000 of the current 2,000,000 people in state and federal prisons are there for the crime of having either possessed or sold a prohibited substance, and not for having actually committed a crime, jobs at all levels of law enforcement and incarceration flourish. Unfortunately, governments extract the money to build prisons and hire cops and guards from those of us who are allowed to go about our business.

The federal drug war budget now exceeds $13 billion per year. In thirty years the government admits to having thrown $500 billion at drug enforcement. The actual cost in lost resources exceeds a trillion $.

In a perverse sense, the drug war is a price-support program for drug dealers, since the price of illegal drugs on the street is about 90% driven by the risk factor. And every time a dealer is arrested, that's a job opening for someone else, often someone more vicious.

Accomplishment #5. The War on Drugs has interfered with the relationships between patients and their doctors.

This is especially true of patients with chronic pain. The most effective pain relievers are derivatives of the opium plant or their synthetic equivalents. However, the Drug Enforcement Administration has a zero-tolerance policy towards addiction, even among those who are going to die shortly anyway.

Horror stories are legion in this vein, but I've never seen one to top this. A Virginia doctor named William Hurwitz wrote Joe Klimek, and several other amputees, a series of prescriptions for opiates. Joe Klimek was in a car wreck on a winter night. Pinned in his car all night, his legs froze, resulting in a series of amputations which left him only a torso, arms and head. His nerve endings, however, told him constantly that his legs were still being sawed off. He said the agony was excrutiating and Hurwitz believed him. However, Virginia narcotics agents are trained to see through this clever ruse. They know that amputees fake their symptoms to feed their drug habits. In fact, the Virginia state police manual warns, "Physicians should be alert for 'professional patients' showing up in wheelchairs missing various limbs." Hurwitz lost his license to practice medicine.

Nationwide, doctors are refusing to treat chronic pain patients with medicine which would allow them to lead more normal lives.

We're all familiar now with the ballot initiatives which passed in 1996 in Arizona and California, allowing physicians to prescribe hemp in California for certain chronic conditions and any drug they saw fit in Arizona. We're familiar, too, with the contortions still being writhed by the federal government over these votes. Some of us were grimly amused by the Clinton administration's claim that Arizona and California voters were duped by the testimonials of thousands of patients and their doctors that these substances relieved their symptoms. The DEA is still threatening dire consequences for any doctor so bold as to accept the validity of the law.

Accomplishment #6. The War on Drugs has stripped back the covers of personal and financial privacy from the lives of peaceful honest people.

If any of us deposits or withdraws an amount in excess of $9999 into or from a financial institution, we must certify where we got it or what we're gonna do with it. If we deposit or withdraw amounts equalling $10,000, but in increments, over the course of a few days, the DEA might accuse us of "structuring", and either prosecute us for evading the reporting requirements, or simply sic the IRS on us.

Accomplishment #7. The War on Drugs has virtually erased the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution.

Cops routinely search people for drugs, often when they have done nothing to warrant a search except look like a good candidate in the eyes of the cop. When the cop finds nothing, the suspect is let go with a warning not to look so suspicious. When the cop finds drugs, he then makes up a reason consistent with the local court's interpretation of the Constitution to satisfy the "reasonable search" language.

Asset forfeiture has risen in popularity. Using laws designed to stop smuggling during the War of 1812, police seize property on the arcane premise that the property has committed a crime. Since property has no civil rights, due process is not a factor.

In many jurisdictions, all that's needed is a tip like this: Your neighbor calls the cops and says you're dealing drugs out of your house. A SWAT team arrives at 3 a.m., kicks down your door, handcuffs you and your kids at shotgun point, and trashes your house. Whether or not they find drugs, they still might kick you out into the street and seize your house. It's then up to you to prove you never dealt drugs out of your house. Before you have time to do that, though, the police agency may sell your house and split the proceeds with your neighbor.

In Florida, notably, and in other states, certain police agencies, not wanting to deal with the messiness of real property, simply take cash off people they stop and search on the highways. After some folks got irate about that deal, the cops started offering to take only some of the cash if the people signed waivers agreeing not to complain.

Asset forfeiture under questionable circumstances occurs several tens of thousands of times per year. 80 percent of the folks who forfeit their property are never charged with a crime. I guess to the law enforcement officers and agents involved, there is a difference between such action and that of armed muggers in dark alleys.

Police agencies in South Dakota divvy up the loot among themselves, the state, and informants.

Accomplishment #8. The War on Drugs promotes massive corruption at all levels of law enforcement and government.

Three groups of people in Mexico and South America--the decision-making cartels totalling less than ten men--control budgets derived from coca, heroin and/or hemp which add up to more money than the entire United States Department of Defense budget. About 60% of that money--a $Billion a week or so--is estimated to be spent in bribes. Almost no one is immune to such temptation. It's as simple as this: a border customs agent can earn $5000 for choosing one truck in a three-truck convoy to inspect, the one with an otherwise insignificant mark on a tire. The other two trucks are given a pass. Thousands of trucks cross the border every day. Hundreds of customs agents choose, based on training, intuition, and certain other factors--like bribes--which trucks to inspect.

If you're a cop and you burst into a room on good suspicion only to see its occupant disappearing through the window and there are several hundred thousand dollars on a table along with a bag or two of white powder, and you know that what you're doing is pissing in the wind as far as the drug trade goes, would you pocket some or all of the cash? Do you know anyone who might?

Oliver North's diaries refer to "kilos" and "hundreds of kilos" several times in conjunction with trips to Central and South America while he was in the employ of Ronald "Just Say No" Reagan.

Accomplishment #9. The War on Drugs promotes violence.

In 1918, at the inception of alcohol prohibition, there were 7 homicides per 100,000 people in this country. The graph rises in a steep climb to its peak in 1933 at 10 per 100,000. The graph falls off as steeply for the next ten years, and levels out at 5.5 homicides per hundred thousand population until 1965, the year marijuana was featured in cover stories on Time and Newsweek, and law enforcement started getting real excited about drugs. The '50's really were good times, at least insofar as violent crime went.

By 1973 the rate was back up to 10 homicides per hundred thousand. However, in real numbers, 10 per hundred thousand in 1975 is twice as many actual murders as 10 per hundred thousand in 1933. There are twice as many people in this country now. Incidentally, one can interchange the graph lines of the increase in the drug war budget with the increase in homicide rates.

Incidentally, this massive warfare on the streets of our cities is fueling the anti-gun movement as well, resulting in such atrocities as the Brady Bill, the Feinstein ban on weapons with a military appearance, and the Lautenburg Act.

Accomplishment #10. The War on Drugs has destabilized and/or toppled most of the governments in the Western Hemisphere.

With a combination of financial carrot-and-stick and military and police intervention, the United States has caused immense financial and personal misery south of our border with Mexico. During the '70's, '80's, and '90's, tens of thousands of innocent people were caught in the crossfire and terrorist bombings in South America, particularly in Colombia, all victims of the drug war. As I speak, U.S. aircraft are raining defoliants and herbicides on valleys in South America, unconcerned about the innocent people who are absorbing it. A daily dose of Agent Orange, anyone?

Having given you just a small sample of what Bill Bennett, Bill Clinton, Barry McCaffrey, Tom Daschle, Tim Johnson, and John Thune, along with Bill Janklow and a host of other peanut-brains, are so proud of, I have a question:

Can anyone give me an example of a single beneficial accomplishment of the War on Drugs?

I shall ask that question of Bill Janklow and Bernie Hunhoff at every opportunity during this campaign.

So, how would __I__ have it? What's the solution?

Well, ANY lessening of enforcement of these counterproductive laws, or lessening of punishment for their violation, would have immediate dramatic effects on the problems caused buy these laws. There are a variety of models in the world--in England, Switzerland, and Holland to name a few, which have accomplished favorable results.

However, even an immediate cessation of ANY enforcement of ANY law concerning sale of possession of any pschoactive substance--a solution not even I think is possible, and which would be, for most people, unacceptable at present--would result in an immediate drop-off in all crimes against people and property. The prices of drugs, primarily driven by the risk of draconian prison sentences, would drop through the floor. Indigent addicts would have to steal only a fraction of their current number of VCR's to finance their habits.

Children and adolescents would have less, not more, access to drugs, since the profits to their suppliers would be gone. Since any adult who wants drugs can get them now, I can't imagine that use would increase. And since use, particularly of cocaine and hemp, is partially driven by the outlaw mystique, we'd be taking away that lure.

My friends and fellow South Dakotans, there are two ways to go. We can promote a lessening of government strictures on our liberty, or we can promote totalitarianism. With one tack we can reduce corruption; with the other we can increase it. With the first tack, we will reduce the incidence of folks' living unhealthy lives; with the second tack, we promote addiction and terror. The very survival of our republic depends on our prevailing with our message of reason and sanity.

Then--and only then--can we begin again to fulfill the promise of relative prosperity, contentment and lack of strife we know we can achieve if we adhere to the admonitions of the founding fathers.

The facts are there for anyone to see. And I say without reservation that anyone who wants to continue fighting the existence of by-products of plants god placed on earth for our use--missionary zeal or not--is absolutely nuts.

Closing now, I want to thank those who urged me to run for governor and who subsequently supported me when I embarassed myself, them and the Party by indulging in--and getting caught at--my own addictions last winter. In some respects, the guv and I have more in common than either of us would like to admit. There is a difference though. While Bill Janklow consistently violated state law by smoking drugs in the state capitol for four years, even charging you taxpayers for a ventilation system to boot, he was not held accountable. I was.

Friends, I'll be a good governor. Thank you for your time and attention.