All:

Simply FYI:

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/printer_010908HA.shtml

Peace.

To G.Anderson:

I’m not advocating that it should be legal to drive a vehicle on PCP, I’m not even necessarily saying that anyone should have access to PCP. The difference between someone driving on PCP and driving drunk, to me, is nil. But alcohol itself isn’t illegal.

I guess my main point is that our drug policy is a little arbitrary and absurd. As far as the studies are concerned, at least for marijuana, it is significantly less harmful than alcohol in the long term, and physically non-addictive. It’s just ignorant to have a drug like alcohol, which has fewer medicinal benefits as well, legally attainable where marijuana is a real criminal offense often with ridiculous mandatory sentence guidelines.

A fundamental concept that the founders tried to instill in American government was to protect the rights of the few from the tyranny of the many. Every time our government tells a cancer patient who wants to smoke a joint to feel good enough to eat a sandwich, “no”, I bet Franklin turns over in his grave.

The War on Drugs will end after the CIA is abolished.

Why on earth would they destroy their main source of revenue? We’ve got heroin flowing in from Afganistan and 4 tons of cocaine crashing in Mexico. Good stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oszATUJ4IRE

Simply FYI (i.e., no agenda intended here):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/us/09meth.html?pagew anted=print

Peace.

“I’m a little muddled.”

And while we are blocking receptors in the brain and chemically castrating productive people, The doc’s can put a chip in your head to track you, Kind of a human On-Star - Sounds a little like the
“Boyz from Brazil” doesn’t it ? Dont worry, The U.S. Gov. has had NO problem injecting people- Mostly soldiers with all sorts of concoctions. I’m sure glad you dont work for FEMA, or do you? and thank goodness Adolf Hitler never succeeded with any of these same ideas.

Yes, I would agree that some people are able to be productive while on drugs. In fact it’s probably true that some people are more productive on drugs, than sober.

Maybe one person out of a hundred or a thousand, can fly a 747 while peaking on LSD, and maybe their a much better flyer that way. Should we legalize drugs just for that person. Or do we make it illegal to protect ourselves from the other 99 who can’t.

That’s something we like in our society, “productive people”, however sometimes their families suffer, from the production.

The Nazi’s also gave their soldiers methamphetamine, they included it in their rations, they believed it turned their soldiers into “supermen”, and encouraged it’s use.

Our countries job is to protect the innoscent, sometimes that means us, from people who drive on the freeway while high on PCP.

Sometimes that interferes with our “fun”, but until vaccines become perfected for all drugs we may have to live with it.

in a way your points are valid in illustrating how ignorance and irresponsibility can have horrible consequences.

Alcohol and tobacco use are just as dangerous as many, and in the case of marijuana more so, than many other substances classified as illegal by our government. How many lives have been destroyed by these government controlled and condoned drugs? Why should they be any different?

I see no logical argument for the position of alcohol and tobacco other than the fact that they have been traditionally consumed by a larger segment of the populace, including the elite, and are very profitable. There certainly is no good moralistic argument for them.

As far as your implicit opinion that drug users are not productive, or waste away all their time getting high: my father was a marijuana smoker for most of his life, and dabbled with consciousness altering drugs in his younger days. He also was managing editor of three different major west-coast newspapers, an award winning journalist, and 20-year college professor.

Some drugs, like meth and crack, I would agree are nothing but poisons. Others, however, are tools. Military pilots have historically made use of pharmaceutical amphetamines. Marijuana has been used very successfully in treating many cancer symptoms and in the relief of glaucoma. Studies have even been conducted that have found that use of psychotropic drugs increase can increase a person’s capacity for empathy and spirituality, and alleviate certain hard to treat mental illnesses.

But people, specifically the government, don’t want to acknowledge these things. Maybe out of ignorance or propaganda saturation. I don’t know the answer. All I know for sure is that many of these substances have enhanced peoples’ lives as well, and I think that it’s wrong for someone to live in fear of government reprisal for RESPONSIBLY doing anything that will only potentially cause harm to one’s self.

I would like those who believe that the war on drugs is a failure to spend some time at a Medical Placement unit, where babies have tracheotomies, so that they can breath because their mother spent her pregnancy in a crack house.

Or visit, teenaged children, blind deaf and dumb in diapers, rolling on the floor of their foster home, because of their mom’s drug use. Before they condem the war of drugs as a failure, or tell me it’s a victimless crime.

Mabye we should legalize drugs, for all those who wish to waste their lives getting high, as long as they agree never to have children. Maybe they could be implanted with birth control. Then maybe the rest of us could go about making a productive world, free from robberies - commited for drugs, drunk drivers killing us an our children,or billions of dollars spent on a drug war. In that way in a generation or two there probably wouldn’t be any drug users.

Or maybe when vacinations are available for drugs, we could require all school children to be vacinated against them, much like we vacinate against polio now. I hear there’s a vacine in final trials for nicotene now, and one on the way for cocaine.

Or baring that, at some point it will be able to block all the receptor sites in the brain to prevent getting high. Then maybe the rest of us could live in peace.

The connection between drugs and U.S. military activities is closer than you think.

Back when I was a bad boy (in a former life...almost literally), I engaged in the use of various illegal substances, and hung out with many dealers.  And my dealer friends could always predict when new drugs would arrive by watching where the U.S. military was active.

For example, when the U.S. was in Lebanon, lots of Lebanese hash came flooding in; when we supported the mahujadeen in Afghanistan, lots of Afghani hash came flooding in; when we were protecting the Thai government, lots of Thai stick arrived; when we first began raiding South American drug dealers, lots of Peruvian, Colombian and Chilean cocaine arrived.  And so on.

The reason is simple.  Some of the “freedom fighters” we supported did not have enough cash to pay for weapons, etc.  So they traded drugs, which were then dumped on the U.S. market by U.S. military and political types who had lined their pockets nicely with the profits.

This flooding of the market had two effects.  On the one hand, it helped to keep the masses “drugged” and thus (hopefully) less politically active.  On the other hand, it self-fulfillingly provided the very impetus for the continued “war” on drugs.

MMC puts it in a nutshell when he points out that “That’s part of the beauty of calling solutions to ongoing social problems a ‘war on.’ It can be never ending and we can’t give up, it’s a war.”

What we REALLY need is a war on “wars.”

Peace.

Like the war in Iraq, the so-called war on drugs is a total waste of money and effort. Politicians are too afraid of appearing weak before the electorate to simply tell the truth about its failure. Just like the Iraqi war, they would rather waste the lives and resources than to support the war’s end.

Actually, all you can do is wonder.

Agreed, and i don’t necessarily believe that marijuana use is down.  Most companies test on entry, which means that an employee only has to pass the whiz quiz once...and then try not get hurt on the job.

Plus, all drug testing is not created equal.  The more accurate the test, the more expensive.  I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that if a specimen is not suspicious when given, it sometimes doesn’t even go to the lab.

And finally, there are a lot of white collar people smoking grass.  Last time i checked, there is no drug testing of restaurant owners and lawyers, etc.

I once got treated to a “substance abuse in the workplace” seminar at a job, where the hired consultant actually helped us figure out how many beers we could have at lunch without getting in trouble...right after he told us that if we smoked a joint last week, we’d be more likely to kill ourselves with the machinery.

Let’s just say he wasn’t too happy to be confronted with contradictory studies from Europe, me blowing holes in his argument, or the minor insurrection that my outspokenness ignited. (I knew full well that at least half of my shift-mates smoked pot regularly.) In fact, i was accused by the HR person of “ruining” the seminar.  Its the little things that make me proud.

The only reason marijuana use is down is because of work place drug testing.  This ridiculous practice is highly ineffective in weeding out serious drug usage since coke and meth leave the system quickly and marijuana stays for up to 30 days. 
Prohibition does not work.  Until our culture loses our Puritan attitude toward feel good substances, we will never have an effective program to treat harmful drug use.

P.T. - You know that you don’t need to wonder.....
and I liked the use of the “military TYPE activities”
how true, how true.

I wonder how much money made by U.S. allies associated with drugs is going to pay for military-type activities and how much is simply going into people’s pockets.

Not only has the U.S. “supported” (Financed) conflicts around the world with drug profits - Just look at the majority of large city police departments, They constantly funnel their confiscated
drugs into useable revenue for the “war on drugs” !
I cannot understand how naive so many Americans can be to think our leaders truly want to abolish the drug trade…
They simply cant stand that they aren’t reaping all the beny’s from the worlds second largest money maker.

By jackpine savage, January 8 at 8:39 am #
(23 comments total)

“Too bad our liberal/progressive/change candidates for president seem to have no intention of changing drug policy…”

Yeah, go figure.

There is one facet of the issue that this article left out: often, the right and the left hand of government have different agendas.  An excellent book on the subject is “Whiteout” (Cockburn & St. Clair).  It goes into the grimy details of the CIA and its penchant for getting into bed with drug producers/traffickers.  That they would do so makes perfect sense.  It is a good revenue stream that doesn’t need to be accounted for.  What we end up with is (again) pouring money into both sides of the battle.

The gist of the other comments i intended to make have already been made by Expat, so i’ll leave it at that.

My only addition to the “marijuana isn’t that bad” line of thought is that not a single law need be changed to ease marijuana out of the war on drugs.  Police departments and prosecutors could simply stop enforcing the laws.  By non-enforcement they would still have the ability to prosecute if someone is found with cash, blow, guns, and pot.

Too bad our liberal/progressive/change candidates for president seem to have no intention of changing drug policy…

The U.S. government itself gets involved in the drug trade.  Heroin helped facilitate covert war in Southeast Asia and cocaine did in Central America.

The so called “war on drugs” was (and is) little more than “hype” promoted by politicians who needed a good “sound bite” as a response to what was known to be a serious threat to the underpinnings of our society. Of course, business and political interests recognized the opportunity to make and funnel money to things like black ops programs that are essentially criminal.
Drugs are not the fundamental problem; they are the overall result of the erosion of hope of a personally fulfilling life. The “War on Drugs” is like a war on the victims of drugs. I am not minimizing the need for an aggressively severe response for making and trafficking drugs; I am promoting the approach of eliminating conditions and policies that cause people to want to escape the demeaning and ugly realities of what is for some, everyday life. I am not naïve nor, do I think this will eliminate the illegal use of drugs but it is an approach that addresses conditions that allow drugs to be an alternative to living a life of little hope and even less faith in the future. Just imprisoning drug users in prisons that only turn out more criminals is not the answer. My main point is that until we address the cause for illegal drug use, we cannot hope to stop it.

I had the privilege of working with Dr. Charles Spray at his street clinic “Outside – In” in the 70’s in Portland, Oregon.  Interestingly, that was a time when the police were human and I/we had many fine encounters with them assisting us with “freak-out” drug interventions.  Unfortunately, a time long past.  He pioneered a program for getting highschoolers on a summer heroin binge off of the drug for the coming school year; no criminal record.  Follow up showed the efficacy of his program.  He got into major trouble for his efforts.  He did the same for returning vets (Nam) at the Vancouver Vet Hospital.  He lost his medical license for that.  To my point; while this article is a great read for history, it does not show us a way to a successful solution.
The Dutch have modeled the best drug control program in the history of this problem.  As one instance; they reduced the average age of heroin addicts from their mid to lower 20’s to over 40 years old.  That was more than ten years ago.  We have known of this for more than 20 years, but we refuse to give up our hypocritical, Victorian bullshit.  Stop the demand and you stop the market Oh yeah, pot is not serious, so get over it!  We certainly have more serious problems than that:  So just legalize drugs and gain a modicum of control and get on with the important things like impeaching our war criminal president!  Get a goddamn life!

I think part of the difficulty in calling off the drug war is the Puritan streak in American culture.  Another problem is American rulers’ reluctance to admit defeat.  They see it as demonstrating their weakness to the masses.  It is easier to continue pursuing wars, even if they are lost:  Vietnam, Iraq, drugs, etc.

And employment is at stake.  In California the prison guards oppose less severe drug laws because it could cost them jobs.