The Drug War

[SimonPhoenix]

The drug war is a farce. So why does it continue? Some on here would point to the pharm companies and blame them. Fat chance. Stop blaming corporate America. If marijuana was legalized then Bayer and Pfizer would have the greatest shit in town at the lowest price. Coca-Cola used to be very Cokealicious. Bayer used to sell heroin in bottles. Look in your own backyards -look at your fat, well-fed piggies in the state prison workers and police unions. These pigs feeding at the trough are the reasons why we have such draconian drug laws in some states. Even my own state of NY, which has decriminalized pot, still has draconian laws when it comes to other drugs. And look at the federal government- the DEA, home of the federal piggies. And now they have shows about the DEA on tv-glamorizing their work and touting the agency as necessary to combat our drug problem.

Look at all the piggies I've listed above-the prison guards, the local/state cops, and the federal DEA ones. They all have a vested interest in keeping marijuana AND other drugs illegal. If all drugs were legalized, prison rolls would drop by up to 45%. And a chunk of that money could go to drug education and drug rehab for the more serious drugs that people get addicted to.

If all drugs were legalized tomorrow at the state and federal level, and all people in state and federal prison serving time for non-violent drug crimes were pardoned, it would be a day that I would celebrate for the rest of my life. I'd still leave the kingpins and violent drug dealers behind bars, however, because these scumbag thug-life gangstass would go right back to the inner city never having paid penance for getting children addicted to unadulterated smack and murdering honor students in low-income areas of this country.

All drugs should be legalized. Anyone who disagrees is a supporter of the present fascist, classist, racist system. It's no coincidence that most people serving time in prison for crack cocaine are black. The non-violent ones should be paroled.

[Echo In Light]

1. Every bit the phony "war" on the surface as the hideous WoT (both are REAL wars on innocent people)

[SimonPhoenix]

2. The point is that we have to go after those two entrenched unions

They are very different from other unions that are a part of the AFL-CIO such as the SEIU. The only reason that the law enforcement unions exist is to protect their piggies from ever having to get real jobs. They have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. If we can break those two unions and ensure that officers don't have unionized protection, then bad officers can be fired and we can finally break the super-glue hold that they have on our system, which perpetuates bullshit wars like the Drug War.

[Echo In Light]

6. Watch this 2007 doc! American Drug War: The Last White Hope - War on Drugs

Made by the late social critic/comic Bill Hicks' best friend, writer/director Kevin Booth

http://americandrugwar.com/

[SimonPhoenix]

8. Seen it

Great movie

[Echo In Light]

10. Just getting the link out. I posted in Political Videos long ago & it died w/o any replies

[SimonPhoenix]

11. It should be required viewing for every drug legalization advocate

Imo.

[SimonPhoenix]

9. The CIA should also be listed as pigs

imo.

[leftstreet]

3. K&R

[SimonPhoenix]

4. ty

[Jokinomx]

5. Not all law enforcement is against legalization...

and not all law enforcement personnel are piggies either. The problem is with politicians making these laws and fabricating a war that can't be won. We need to keep the violent people in prisons and off the streets instead of wasting our resources unnecessarily trying to restrict use of a drug or drugs that should be legalized and controlled.

[SimonPhoenix]

7. Jokinomx,

Not all are against it, but easily 80% are. Maybe it's 50/50 for marijuana but for the harder drugs, it's definitely higher. Do you work for a law enforcement agency or a prison?

Sure, blame the politicians, but they're the obvious target. Most people don't think to also put some blame on the law enforcement and prison unions for propagating their bullshit, all so their comparatively uneducated members can continue to enforce our draconian drug laws.

[Jokinomx]

32. I don't disagree

I just got the impression that you made a blanket statement about law enforcement in you original post. To answer your ? if I was an officer.... I am a former State Trooper and I have a brother that has been a guard in a maximum security for over 15 years. The reason I resigned from police work was because of those "piggies" I had to work with. I have seen both sides of the fence, at least a little bit. I was then and still am today for full legalization of drugs with strict controls on how they are distributed. If we can take the profit from the "pushers" we could effectively drop usage and along with treatment centers and education help those that need it. Although we could never eliminate drug use... we could diminish it's use as has been the case in the Netherlands where even though most drugs are legal... the use has not increased...but actually decreased from pre-prohibition days.

but... then again... what do those European's know.... right.

:toast:

[Flaneur]

15. Funny, every time I go to a legislative hearing on pot legalization...

...there's a whole room full of uniformed police brass there to oppose it. Every goddamned time. Their old "we don't make the law, we just enforce it" schtick is very, very tired.

[Romulox]

12. If the Drug War was called off tomorrow, they'd just have to invent ANOTHER form of Jim Crow.

That's what the Drug War is ultimately about: an excuse to use the weight of the police state on brown citizens. The racists (and their "moderate" enablers) will never give that up. For any reason.

[SimonPhoenix]

13. Not fully sure I agree with that entirely, although some of the outcomes sure are racist

Even so, any basis for supporting drug legalization is fine with me.

Your post wasn't entirely clear, however. Are you saying that you support drug legalization? Or are you saying that you oppose it because the statists would simply replace it with another, perhaps more severe form of Jim Crow?

[Romulox]

17. I oppose the Drug War without qualification.

However, I'm not optimistic for the reasons I outlined.

And I think you're being naive if you think only the outcomes in the Drug War are racist. The entire motivation for the prohibition of drugs is racist (and admittedly profit-driven/opportunistic as well.) That's before we even mention selective prosecution and the disparity in sentencing between rock and powder cocaine, e.g.

[SimonPhoenix]

20. Incorrect

I said I didn't fully agree with your statement, not that I believed it to be false.

But I do mostly agree with it. Look at my original post:

"anyone who disagrees is a supporter of the present fascist, classist, racist system."

I was simply saying that some of the outcomes are racist. Obviously I believe that some of the motivations for the prohibition are racist. I'm familiar with the propaganda pushed by the drug warriors on this issue. I don't agree that the ENTIRE motivation for the drug war is racism, however. Racism is one motivator-I also believe that classism and a general belief in the wisdom government control are additional motivators. There are other motivators that I mentioned in my original post-law enforcement and prison guard unions. You don't think that these guys have a vested interest in keeping drugs illegal? Shit, most black and latino police officers that I've met support prohibition as well. It's not just the white ones. If drugs were legalized, we'd need far less police, both to enforce drug laws but also to enforce laws that are broken with increasing frequency as a direct result of keeping drugs illegal. Petty thefts would decrease significantly because the drop in price would mean that fewer addicts would feel the need to steal to support their habit. Homicides would also drop significantly because ~50% of homicides are drug-related. In some areas over 70% of homicides are drug-related. These decreases in crime would all reduce the need for police officers, and then some of these guys would have to go out and get real jobs.

I don't know what ethnic group you belong to Romulus (my guess would be African-American). I'm a black male in America. I see enough overt bigotry every day without having to impute it to every governmental action in the Drug War. Like I said, some of the motivations are race-related, but some of them are not.

[Romulox]

23. Simon--I have no idea what we have to argue about.

I think we may have a difference in emphasis, but it's senseless to focus on such trivial differences when we agree 100% on the larger point.

And I'm not black. Never been arrested. I clean up good. I fly under the radar. I've been let off by both white and black cops when caught red handed. So my experiences are what they are...

[Tsiyu]

29. Thank you

"some of the motivations are race-related, but some of them are not."


You included "classist" as an adjective also.

The poor kids, the kids of liberals and working class people and disabled people are all fodder for this unjust, one-sided war. It's quite effective. By getting kids to plead to felonies rather than risk mandatory minimum prison sentences, these fat piggie DAs and judges take away all rights of mere kids. No voting, passport, student aid, food stamps, military the list goes on and on. The War on Drugs is a very efficient way to disenfranchise millions. But Americans LOVE it...:shrug:

Not only does "war" falsely imply that both sides are inflicting damage (the fact is, most of those on one side are merely minding their own business, not violent, dishonest or criminal or trying to take away the rights of others; and the other side is using every loophole it can find to fill our private, greedy, scum-sucking Prison Lords' facilities with basically innocent people) but it also allows fat, cruel, corrupt law enforcement - wherever that may exist in America lol - to prey on American citizens in the name of some supposed "noble" crusade.

It's definitely a racist war. It would be cheaper to educate the black males in prison (who outnumber black male college attendees - sickening in 2010 to see our own brand of apartheid right here in the US) than to keep them incarcerated. But if grown men can't go to school, vote, raise children, earn retirement funds or travel, they may as well be the non-persons the piggies want them to be.

But it's also classist, and I thank you for noting that the color of justice is green and usually white.

Thank you for all of your posts on this issue.


:kick:

[Echo In Light]

16. Yes, obviously racist & classist

[mdmc]

14. YES!

[Uncle Joe]

18. Corporations were behind the outlawing of Marijuana and Hemp

as a means to kill competition against their vested interests.

DuPont, Mellon, and Hearst:

Diesel expected that his engine would be powered by vegetable oils (including hemp) and seed oils. At the 1900 World's Fair, Diesel ran his engines on peanut oil. Later, George Schlichten invented a hemp 'decorticating' machine that stood poised to revolutionize paper making. Henry Ford demonstrated that cars can be made of, and run on, hemp. Evidence suggests a special-interest group that included the DuPont petrochemical company, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon (Dupont's major financial backer), and the newspaper man William Randolph Hearst mounted a yellow journalism campaign against hemp. Hearst deliberately confused psychoactive marijuana with industrial hemp, one of humankind's oldest and most useful resources. DuPont and Hearst were heavily invested in timber and petroleum resources, and saw hemp as a threat to their empires. Petroleum companies also knew that petroleum emits noxious, toxic byproducts when incompletely burned, as in an auto engine. Pollution was important to Diesel and he saw his engine as a solution to the inefficient, highly polluting engines of his time. In 1937 DuPont, Mellen and Hearst were able to push a "marijuana" prohibition bill through Congress in less than three months, which destroyed the domestic hemp industry.



http://www.hempcar.org/diesel.shtml

Corporations do and have played a major role in perpetuating the insane war. The for profit prison system is corporate first and correctional second, if they couldn't make a profit, they wouldn't give a rat's ass about the business of imprisoning the American People.

If Marijuana were legalized, growing your own would be preferable to many people versus buying it from Bayer, the same can't be said for aspirin. While Coca Cola had cocaine in it during 1800's they wouldn't be able to put the real thing in their product today even if drugs were legalized.

Organized crime is corporate in it's structure and facade, they just operate out side the law, but they're direct beneficiaries from the War Against the American People's privacy and freedom.

The desire for corporations to dominate government is also a major dynamic working against legalization. Life must be criminalized as a means to disenfranchise and alienate the American People from their government thereby making "We the People's" government weaker and more susceptible to corporation domination. If you become a felon, you lose your right to vote, and will probably drop out of most political activity of any kind, therefor more felonies must be manufactured under the guise of being "tough on crime."

One other point if you sincerely want the War Against some Drugs to end, don't hurt your P.R. marketing chances by en mass labeling of police as "piggies" there are many good ones, they do serve a vital function and in the eyes of most people the police are a necessity for civil society to exist, by referring to them with a blanket statement of being "piggies" you alienate those people and progressive police to your beliefs.


Welcome to D.U. SimonPhoenix.:hi:

[SimonPhoenix]

21. Hemp is a separate issue

"If Marijuana were legalized, growing your own would be preferable to many people versus buying it from Bayer, the same can't be said for aspirin. While Coca Cola had cocaine in it during 1800's they wouldn't be able to put the real thing in their product today even if drugs were legalized."

Other companies could still market it.

"Organized crime is corporate in it's structure and facade, they just operate out side the law, but they're direct beneficiaries from the War Against the American People's privacy and freedom."

Yes, but organized criminal enterprises are distinctly different from legal American corporations.

The desire for corporations to dominate government is also a major dynamic working against legalization. Life must be criminalized as a means to disenfranchise and alienate the American People from their government thereby making "We the People's" government weaker and more susceptible to corporation domination. If you become a felon, you lose your right to vote, and will probably drop out of most political activity of any kind, therefor more felonies must be manufactured under the guise of being "tough on crime."

I think you need a cite for this-what does this have to do with my argument that pharm companies aren't behind the drug war?

One other point if you sincerely want the War Against some Drugs to end, don't hurt your P.R. marketing chances by en mass labeling of police as "piggies" there are many good ones, they do serve a vital function and in the eyes of most people the police are a necessity for civil society to exist, by referring to them with a blanket statement of being "piggies" you alienate those people and progressive police to your beliefs.

I want the war against ALL drugs to end, not just some drugs. I don't care about hurting my PR marketing chances because I'm not a drug activist. I don't currently use any illegal drugs. I'm simply an American who supports drug legalization because I realize that the Drug War is a complete failure.

As for me calling the police "piggies", you're right, they do serve other vital functions:

They also shoot dogs, for example. I wonder if they get bonus points if the dog they shoot is a harmless Labrador Retriever. They sure seem to shoot a lot of those.

I think that progressive police is an oxymoron. Sure, they may exist here and there, but most police are fiscally liberal when it comes to themselves and socially conservative when it comes to everyone. Most of the police I've met detest unions (they blame teachers unions for the destruction of America, but hey the Fraternal Order of Police is just great, they look out for me when I shoot unarmed blacks or sodomize them with broom hangers). I feel that many of the minority police act just as poorly as the white police, perhaps to impress them and to fit in. I live in DC and 4 of the 5 times I've been pulled over for driving while black have been by black police officers.

What vital function do they serve? Thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in Heller, I can now protect my home with a loaded weapon. If anyone breaks into my house and attacks me, I suppose I'll need to call the police to come and pick up the body, but that's about it. 90% of the time the police arrive at a crime scene, the criminal has already left the scene.

[Uncle Joe]

24. I view this sentence in the O.P. as broadening the scope to more than Pharma.

"Stop blaming corporate America."

Corporate America is too blame, the money is the power and mega corporations is where the money is, that's my point if they used their vast resources to lobby for legalization, we would have legalization.

The initial motivation to outlaw Marijuana was as a back-door attack against Hemp and corporate power pushed it.

"My War Against some Drugs" is just a play on words, because there isn't a war against legal ones promoted by Big Pharma and pushed to the American People on the network news every night as being the answer for pretty much everything.

What do you believe American Society would be like if there were no police?

[SimonPhoenix]

31. Incorrect.

I wrote the OP, remember. I know what I meant.

Look two sentences prior to your quote, where I wrote the following:

"Some on here would point to the pharm companies and blame them." Pharm companies are part of corporate America. That was the reason for me using this phrase.

What would American society be like if there were no police? Good question. I predict we'd have fewer dead dogs every year and fewer fatalities in no-knock raids. I also feel that Dunkin Donuts could shutter half of their franchises without losing much, if any revenue (GRAFT).

What do you think would happen?

[jmowreader]

25. Anyone know a few good hippie chemists?

If you want hemp legalized, here;s all you need to do: use our hippie chemists to develop a process for making paper out of hemp that can be done on the current papermaking machinery, a process for making fabric out of hemp that can be done on the current fabric making machinery, and a process for making petroleum out of hemp that won't require a huge amount of new machinery. And then you present it to the big companies that make paper, rayon and petroleum products. If those guys know they can make products from hemp cheaper than they can make them from wood or oil, the business community in this country will demand legalized hemp growing.

[Uncle Joe]

27. I don't know for certain whether Hemp is viable or not, but I don't believe it was given a fair

or logical consideration by any stretch and outlawing it was ridiculous.

I also believe the end result of putting millions of Americans in prison, while having countless families destroyed or greatly disrupted because some greedy, unethical corporatists wanted to monopolize their market is reprehensible.

[jmowreader]

28. There's some things it's definitely viable for

Anything that requires cellulose, for instance. Poplars take 6 years to reach "pulpwood" size. You'll probably get as much cellulose out of a field of hemp over 6 years as you would out of a field of poplar.

[gorfle]

19. Absolutely correct.

The war on drugs is not to the benefit of drug companies. The war on drugs is to the benefit of the Power of the State.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent annually to employ, train, and arm, and equip government employees for the task of drug prohibition. All levels of government are at the trough for this power and money, and they will not want to give up either the power or the money that goes along with drug prohibition.

[Uncle Joe]

26. I disagree, it's to benefit the power of the corporation over the state and ultimately the people.

The War Against Drugs is fought on behalf of the corporate supremacists as a means to hijack "We the People"s government from we the people.

Ronald Reagan pushed his insane war against drugs and he was a corporate supremacist believer to the tenth power, he demonized government's role of overseeing corporate abuse while he simultaneously expanded it to encroach on the American People's personal freedom, power and privacy.

[gorfle]

34. As usual, just follow the money.

Who is currently profiting off of the war on drugs?

Corporations? Well, perhaps the ones selling police and paramilitary equipment to our state and federal government agencies, but not drug corporations.

No, this is a power grab by the state. There are hundreds of billions of dollars of DEA money at stake.

Follow the money and you will see who is motivated.

[jmowreader]

22. I disagree with the "all drugs" assertion

I have no problem with pot and even LSD being legalized--it would be easier to argue that booze and cigarettes should be illegal than that pot should be. But crack, meth and heroin need to remain illegal because I don't think you could make those drugs safe no matter what you do. You can make them using the best scientific principles, sell them in known strengths, sell them through licensed agents at prices affordable to all, and people would still be tearing shit up while they're on them--because meth, crack and heroin are dangerous drugs.

[SimonPhoenix]

30. While those drugs are more dangerous than pot,

the ill effects of the drugs are magnified when they are produced illegally. Would they still always be dangerous if abused? Sure. But if the drugs were legal then people could come out of the woodwork for treatment like they do for AA. And we'd have more regulation of the drugs.

[jmowreader]

33. Please tell me you are not that clueless

People don't just "come out of the woodwork for treatment" of alcoholism. SOMETHING has to motivate them to seek treatment. It's usually one of three things: they get thrown in jail and AA sessions are required to seek parole; they do something--drunk driving, whatever--that requires AA sessions be attended by order of the court; or their spouses tell them, "dry out or get out."

Yes, the ill effects to society are magnified by illegal production. Anyone can see meth labs are a bad thing. Physiologically, though, meth is a nightmare legal or not. It drops your dopamine levels by 50 percent. Dopamine is the hormone that keeps you from being pissed off all the time. Couple the inability to not be pissed off with a drug that intensifies your emotions...are you sure you want that LEGAL? Sheesh!

You also mentioned being able to regulate dangerous drugs. Tweakers, junkies and crackheads won't deal in a legal market for these drugs if it works on any sort of harm-reduction mechanism that reduces their access to their preferred drug. If Tweaker John needs five hits a day and the legal market will cut him off at four, he'll go back to his illegal dealer in a second--which negates the harm-reduction rationale for legalization. Why legalize meth and have clean factory-made meth being sold alongside shit some guy makes in the back seat of his car?

I have given this long and careful thought, and there are illegal drugs that should be illegal. Pot isn't one of them, but meth, crack and heroin ARE.

[Echo In Light]

35. Bump