Bags Five

Tuesday, March 27, 1973

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

Tuesday, March 27, 1973 THE MICHIGAN DAILY

I




Junk
yard

I

THE AMERICAN H E R O I N
EMPIRE: PROFIT, AND POLI-,
TICS, by Richard Kunnes, M.D.
Dodd, Mead and Co., 215 pp.,
$5.95.
By MICHAEL CASTLEMAN
F I N I S H E D reading The
American Heroin Empire two
weeks ago, but it freaked me
out so much I couldn't bring my-
self to write the review. For the
last 6-8 months, as horrors like
the ITT Affair, the Wheat Scan-
dal, and most importantly Water-
place as the daily weather report,
I have become slowly convinced
that we live our day-to-day lives
on the tip of the Iceberg. It's
all so ironic: we're bombarded
with information as never before.
The mass media churn out news
at a feverish pace, creating the
feeling that we know more than
ever before. But the truth is:
we don't know . . . The Ameri-
can Heroin Empire has further
convinced me that the Iceberg
is growing while its tip is shrink-
ing, that the truth is far worse
than our wildest paranoia. Rick
Kunnes, the Big U's radical psy-
chiatrist has produced a book
as powerful as it is terrifying.
The book is the most complete
analysis of the heroin plague yet
to appear in print. Other books
have appeared recently which
deal with some particular facet
of the heroin business, for in-
stance Alfred McCoy's Politics
of Heroin in Southeast Asia, the
definitive work on the CIA's
role in financing opium growing
and heroinitransportation in
Southeast Asia. It was released
last fall with a great deal of
hoopla since it was the first book
that the CIA ever tried (openly)
to suppress in its 26 year his-
tory. Kunnes' book incorporates
this information and other recent
discoveries about heroin traffic-
king in what I believe is the first
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attempt to deal with all aspects
of the problem. The book is an
excellent a n d comprehensive
overview, amply documented and
cogently presented.
HEROIN IS now coming into
the U.S. from every direction,
although the bulk arrives from
Southeast Asia. But the fact is
that smack is being smuggled in
at every border, and every-
where it is out of control. The
CIA is definitely an important
link on the heroin supply chain,
but it is simply one of a number
of competing organizations with
its needle in the mainline. Com-
menting on the traffic coming in
across the Mexican border via
Panama, for instance, a Justice
D e p a r t m e n t official stated,
"They're developing their own
air force. Some pilots use DC-3's
which can carry 40,000 pounds of
drugs." Kunnes continues: "This
is a particularly ominous sign
since the entire U.S. heroin
market consumes less than 70,000
pounds per year. Obviously, with
more than a few pilots and
planes available it has become
ridiculously simple to accumu-
late vast reserves of heroin. In
fact, heroin reserves are becom-
ing so great that the Ford Foun-
dation has reported that the
street cost of heroin is actually
decreasing in some places as
supply exceeds demand."
To fight the heroin plague and
its sister disease, rising crime
rates, police departments all over
the country are loading up on
all kinds of new electronic,
post-Vietnam automated battle-
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field technology. Surveillance is
becoming our way of life. Paul
Baran, an engineer with the
RAND Corporation, warned that
by permitting the unrestricted
adoption of sophisticated tech-
nology by the police, "we could
easily end up with the most ef-
fective oppressive police state
ever created." But still, the cops
are not stopping the heroin traf-
fic; in fact, it is on the rise.
Isn't it odd, people across the
country are beginning to wonder,
that any 10-year-old kid in the
inner city knows who is selling
smack but the police never
seem to know, even with all
t h e i r sophisticated equipment.
This question could easily be di-
rected at our own local police
departments, b o t h c i t y and
county. Every s u m m e r the
amount of hard rugs in Ann Ar-
bor skyrockets, and most inter-
ested street people can score at
will. . . . Where are the police
and why aren't they doing any-
thing about Jit?
j"UNNES IS the first writer on
the subject to provide a docu-
mented overview of the extent of
police corruption and collusion
with heroin merchants. And, for
the skeptical, most of the docu-
mentation comes from the tran-
script of the Knapp Commission
Report dealing with police cor-
ruption in New York, and the
New York Times. Here are some
samples: "the picture of cor-
ruption (is) so systematized
(that) it has become for many
officers almost a way of life."
One cop "pleaded with the Knapp
Commission to fix 'responsibility
inside and outside the Police De-
partment all the way up and
down the chain of police, politi-
cal and judicial command" (em-
phasis in original). Recently, in
Chicago, two top police officials
were demoted in rank for deal-
ings with other cops who were
linked to heroin pushing. One of
them was "the commander of
the Department's Anti-Corruption
Unit" (emphasis in original).
And, bringing it all back home,
the situation is the same in the
Motor City: "Dr. Wayne Holling-
er is a private physician running
a methadone program for 750 ex-
junkies. One of Hollinger's pati-
ents reported that she had been
visited by three plainclothes po-
licemen who forced their way in-
to her apartment and asked her
to go out and sell the methadone
tablets she had been given by
Dr. Hollinger. 'They told me,' she
said, 'that they had to get Dr.
Hollinger, because he was screw-
ing everything up'." The police
use heroin for pacification. In the
sumer of 1970, complaints by
homeowners of drug dealing in
Detroit's Balduck Park precipi-
tated three nights of youth-police
rioting and a large number of

arrests. The drugs on sale in the
park included primarily weed
and psychedelics. After the riots,
things became eerily quiet. Just
as many kids congregated in the
park, and just as much dope was
sold with no interference from
the police. However, the post-riot
drugs were downs and smack.
Local youths reported that hero-
in prices dropped after the riot-
ing to the point where smack was
cheaper than marijuana.
THERE IS an astute analysis
of the politics of heroin paci-
fication in his chapter called
"Junk and Genocide: Ghetto
Counter-insurgency." The mes-
sage is: when you have an un-
ruly population which must be
controlled for the present power
structure to survive, get as many
people as possible addicted to
junk. It keeps them distracted
from larger pressing social prob-
lems, while it increases the
crime rate, which in turn' in-
creases popular demand for a
"better trained and equipped"
and more repressive police force
like STRESS in Detroit. "Histor-
ically it is well to remember that
destructive drugs are a tradition-
al tool of American policy, for
deliberate cultural genocide. For
example, the Opium Wars which
opened the Orient to U.S. imper-
ialism ended in an American vic-
tory with America's requiring
China to legalize the opium
trade' (emphasis in original). A
similar tactic was employed
against the American Indian, on-
ly the drug was alcohol.
Kunnes also presents the best
analysis to date of the failure of
the medical and legal profes-
sions to deal at all effectively
with the junk plague, and an an-
alysis of the heroin problem in
the U.S. armed forces. In every
chapter the new information pre-
sented leads to the ghastly con-
clusion that the heroin problem
is extraordinarily complex, and
that all the popular solutions,
e.g. methadone, education, more
police, are either useless or else
aggravate the situation. Kunnes
believes that any efforts to elim-
inate junk in the context of pre-
sent power relations is doomed to
failure, since the very organiza-
tions which we would call upon
to deal with the problem profit
from it.
"Heroin addiction is ultimately
a political and economic prob-
lem, created by and controlled
for wealthy criminals with politi-
cal connections, political officials
with corporate and criminal con-
nections, and corporate officials
controlling the priorities of our
society. Heroin manufacture, dis-
tribution and usage occur in a
well defined political context. Un-
til that political context is chang-
ed, heroin and its concomitant
diseases and death, crime and
corruption, will remain part of
our daily lives."

PORTRAITS FROM NORTH
AMERICAN INDIAN LIFE, by
Edward S. Curtis, with Introduc-
tions by A. D. Colemai and T. C.
McLuhan. Outerbridge & Lazard,
Inc., 176 pages, $25.
IN A SACRED MANNER WE
LIVE, by Edward S. Curtis, with
an Introduction and Commentary
by Don D. Fowler. Barre Pub-
lishers, 162 pages, $15.
By ED SUROVELL
Daily Books Editor
EDWARD S. Curtis spent the
better part of twenty-five
years at the beginning of this
century photographing the In-
dians of western North America,
or at least what remained of
them. The best of his thousands
of photographs were incorporated
into an enormous undertaking, a
twenty volume set of books en-
titled The North American In-
dian. Rather the work was en-
tombed, for The North American
Indian was printed in an edition
of only 500 sets, at a price of
over $3,000; a set today sells for
$80,000. Thus his work remained
out of reach of the general pub-
lic.
Curtis was influenced in his
choice of subject matter in great
part by the "nostalgic and ro-
mantic interest on the part of a
public fascinated by the West and
the Indians in it," as Don t'ow-
ler points out in his introduction
to In a Sacred Manner We Live,
a romanticism clearly reflected
in his photographs. Curtis was
not above either the prejudices
" of his day or imposing upon his
subjects some of what he want-
ed to see-occasionally the sub-
jects were posed with wigs Cur-
tis provided, to make up for the
fact that some of the older hair
styles simply were no longer to
be found, and other props were
occasionally provided. Some
tribes he found to be charming,
some noble, some lazy, and he
often chose his subjects accord-
ingly.
Yet the overall result is extra-
ordinarily impressive.
IT WASN'T until thirty-five
years after the last of Cur-
tis' twenty volumes was publish-
ed that interest was revived in
his work, with the rebirth of in-
terest - perhaps that same ro-
mantic interest of half a century
ago - in the American Indian.
Following an exhibition of the
Curtis photographs at the Pier-
pont Morgan Library in New
York (it was Morgan who spon-
sored the great bulk of the or-
iginal work), two selections of
the plates were published in
large format editions, the al-
ready - mentioned In a Sacred
Manner We Live and Portraits
from North American Indian
Life, with introductions by A. D.
Coleman and T.C. McLuhan. The
Coleman and McLuhan edition is
the larger of the two, and also
the more informative. Given the
price differential, however, both
books are significant additions to
the photographic history of the
Indian.

A romantic. view
of a bitter end


The Ann Arbor
*Gay. Liberation Front
ENDORSES the following candidates
in the April 2, 1973 city election
MAYOR-Benita Kaimowitz
H RP
1st WARD-Andrei Joseph
HRP
2nd WARD-Frank Shoichet
HRP
4th WARD-Phil Carroll
HRP

_ _ _ __

When you enroll in Air Force ROTC
you can get more than a chance at
a scholarship and a chance at
free flying lessons...
You
get a taxnfree
monthly
personal


1

Have some time on

your hands?

The University of Michigan
School of Music Presents
Debussy's Exquisite Masterpiece
PELLEAS AND MELISANDE
opera in English
Josef Blatt, conductor
Ralph Herbert, stage director
April 13, 14, 15 & 16, 8:00 p.m.

Today's writer .,. .
Michael Castleman is a recent
graduate of the University and
is on the staff of the Project
Community.



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