4/17/97
For release on Thurs., April 17, 1997
WASHINGTON, April 17 - The Drug Policy Foundation today opens its World Wide Web site.
The inaugural version of the site contains extensive information about DPF's mission and programs, news about its 11th international conference in October, recent editions of The Drug Policy Letter, and chat rooms and forums.
"The site addresses basic drug policy reform issues and how DPF represents those ideas," DPF President Arnold Trebach said. "The Web has a wealth of drug policy information on it, and DPF hopes to amplify that knowledge as well as contribute ideas from the foundation's 10-year history."
The site's address is advertised in two DPF ads that appear in the May edition of Wired magazine. This is the third set of DPF ads to appear in space donated by Wired this year.
"DPF is especially proud to have Wired's support," Trebach said. "Wired is shining a light on one of the darkest areas of the American dialogue. Wired's role in the information revolution will ensure that cruel policies like the drug war, which thrive in the dark, cannot survive unexamined."
DPF's site can also be reached at www.drugpolicy.org.
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This site is launched in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, whose 254th birthday was Sunday, because 1) he would have been a strong proponent of the Internet as a part of the marketplace of ideas, and 2) he rejected federal attempts at drug control before such policies became fashionable. Writing in Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Jefferson observed:
Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food. Government is just as fallible, too, when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. ... Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
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