It's 420 today, an unofficial holiday for marijuana users who will most likely spend today in intoxicating fumes of their drug of choice. I thought rather than take part in this activity I would do something I consider quite a bit more constructive, namely, addressing the so called "war on drugs."
First of all, there is no real "war on drugs," and that point will be evident throughout this piece. There are however many drug laws and there are certain reasons for those laws. Drug laws do not exist to keep the public off of drugs; they are a means of social control and keeping social classes as they are. This tactic has been used throughout history. In Britain's period of prohibition, whiskey remained legal while gin did not. Why? Because whiskey was a drink associated with the wealthy class whereas gin was associated with the lower working class. We see this played out in laws regarding cocaine usage today. One can possess a small amount of crack and get a felony, while it takes ten times the amount of cocaine to reach the same punishment. The motives in this are the same as they were in Britain: to control the working class. The rich use cocaine, the poor use crack.
Some people argue that although some of the laws as of now are unfair, drug laws overall exist in good faith to protect the public from harmful chemicals. This assumption is wrong, the government knows what they are doing is ineffective. Under the Nixon Administration there was a report called the RAND report, which analyzed what the most cost-effective way of dealing with drug abuse in the United States was. In first place, by a considerable margin were treatment, prevention and rehabilitation. In second place was domestic law enforcement, and way behind in third place was foreign intervention. The first is rarely used, the second and third are commonly used. The reason for this is because the government doesn't care about whether or not the public does these drugs, they use the "drug war" as a cover for operations of economic value. For example, the United States continually bombs and poisons cocoa crops in places like Columbia and Bolivia, saying they want to get rid of the cocoa crop because of its effect on the United States. Of course this kills many peasants, destroys their only source of income (cocoa has large legal markets) and results in mass starvation and human rights violations. Then, in the aftermath when all the people are killed and the crop is no longer there, the United States will outsource mining operations to that area, guaranteeing economic benefit.
It is a horribly inhumane activity and a hypocritical one. No one would ever think that Bolivia has the right to bomb South Carolina or Kentucky because of the drug they are growing there, which has proven to kill many more people than cocaine has. Far more people have died in Bolivia from tobacco use than in the United States from cocaine use.
The United States itself has used drugs on occasion for funding wars and slaughter of innocence. They did this in Vietnam with the opium trade. Oliver North (now on Fox News) actually used funds from the Columbian drug cartel to fund Reagan's terrorist activity in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
So, as we can see there is no real drug war. It is an illusion with many different motives. The government does not care about drug abuse. What is needed now is sensible drug policy, much like what has been done for cigarettes. Cigarette use has been reduced by social and government programs aimed at prevention and rehabilitation and for the most part have been fairly successful. We do not need to raid tobacco stores and arrest people for smoking tobacco to prevent it, much like we don't need to raid marijuana farms and arrest kids smoking a joint to prevent its use. Legalizing marijuana has to be part of a larger effort to stop treating drugs as a criminal problem and start treating drugs as a health problem. There is a bill in California that will be voted on in the next year or so that will aim at decriminalizing marijuana. We cannot just sit and wait for this bill to pass or not pass. There is a need for social activism and pressure upon our leaders to make them do the right thing.
There is no real drug war
By chomskybeat - Posted on April 20th, 2009
Seeing the title of this piece, I was originally going to call you "NUTS" as huge amounts of people are going to prison due to the "war on drugs", but I'm glad that I read the rest of the piece. I now see where you are going with this :)
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Check out my blog:
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/arhipgeo86
I'm cynical enough to believe that... but do you have any evidence? I totally agree that legalization, regulation, and treatment are better than this ill-conceived (or if you're right, straight up evil) war on drugs.
The start might seem it's not in English, but it is after a few seconds....
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-war-on-drugs/
http://www.fian.org/cases/letter-campaigns/ecuador-communities-affected-...
- here is a link about fumigation of crops in Columbia and Ecuador. Keep in mind the chemical used is developed by a United States company.
and yeah, the plan is a mess. Amnesty International opposed it in 2000 because the US is training and equipping human rights violators:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=176E15103DA5082480256912005583...
This is madness! We need to quit foolin around in other countries' business and come up with a sensible drug policy.
And while fumigation is also not an effective strategy for waging war against drugs, it is a highly efficient method of clearing populations from areas rich in resources and of eliminating opposition. Fumigation forces peasants to abandon land that then becomes available for multinational speculation. The departments of Putumayo and Bolivar, both primary targets of Plan Colombia's aerial fumigation campaign, have large, and still unexplored, mineral and oil deposits. - Anne Montgomory of the Columbia Journal
At first, I was surprised to see how many people come up with absurd, ridiculous claims of "government conspiracy" and "foul involvement" but after blogging on this site for a while, I suppose that such conspiracy theorizing is just "progressive." First of all, Plan Colombia was carried out under previous Colombian administrations where the government held different policies. Now Uribe has taken Plan Colombia to a new level where previously, coca fields were just fumigated (which worked in destroying illegal coca fields). Now Uribe has SUCCESSFULLY, with the critical aid Plan Colombia provides, has DEFEATED FARC. Now I know liberals don't like the U.S. helping in military victories but it is completely obvious that Plan Colombia has worked in regaining control of the country from barbarian leftist guerillas whose main device of negotaiation was dragging civilians out of their homes and into the jungle where they engaged in brutal bondage and torture. How's that for an Amnesty International Civil Rights Violation?
Then you go on to how the "peasants" are being forcbily removed by the fumigation. Well guess what! Many of them were engaging in the illegal growth of coca and were suppliers and supporters of, until recently, one of the world's most brutal terrorist organizations. Further, Plan Colombia has been criticized for it lack of social programs and for being too militaristic. Thats the whole freakin point! Plan Colmbia has enabled Uribe and the Colombian military to defeat both FARC and the right-wing drug cartel led my Don Mario which murdered over 3,000 people in the last 18 months! Once the government can actually gain control of its own country from brutal terrorists, then it can go to work helping the poor of the region.
And your comment about forced fumigation to gain resources is just baseless. The government only has the interests of Colombia at heart and to be honest with you, the dislocation of FARC-supporting peasants who engage in illegal coca farming is a small price top pay for Colombia to take advantage of its resource.s Imagine the millions of impoverished in Colombia who will be brought out of poverty by the formation of mining operations where none exist now. In fact, many of those "peasants" were employed by mining companies in the region until they were forced to leave by FARC attacks. It would appear that you, like other liberals (although not sure if your a liberal), just hate American success in foreign policy and bringing ending the true oppression by terrorist organizations.
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke
The governments of Colombia and the US are partly to blame for the existence of insurgentes because they enforce nonsensical drug laws. Of course FARC is evil and of course drugs can be dangerous but that doesn't justify our intervention or our drug policy. I think Colombia's political situation is probably too messy to be worth poking our noses into, and as Jack argued below, regulation > prohibition.
Its important to be skeptical of government without buying into conspiracy theory. Lots of clearly biased links have been thrown around, but Wikipedia is usually pretty good for general knowledge about an issue. For instance it mentions the AUC, the right-wing counterpart of FARC:
Wikipedia tells me the AUC has twice as many members as FARC, and there's a "parapolitica" scandal over government support of the AUC. Furthermore:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia_%E2%80%93_United_States_relations
Our country has better things to waste money on. Or are Amnesty International, The UN, and Human Rights Watch some kind of liberal conspiracy?
Good research. I was aware that there was a connection between right-wing paramilitaries and the Colombian government however I was not aware that the paramilitaries had been so strong at one point.
However, I believe that the direction of the Colombian government under Uribe has changed and that is why it has been so much more successful at fighting FARC AND paramilitaries compared to previous administrations. This article, which I detailed also in a post farther down, shows how Uribe and the Colombian military captured Don Mario, the #1 criminal on the drug lord list, who is considered the behind the scenes leader of many of the various right-wing paramilitary groups. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,516583,00.html Therefore, I can see the argument of your blog in light of the "drug-war" in other countries, however I believe that such a drug-war exists and U.S. intervention is justified in the case of Colombia, where a great deal of drug trafficking had previously occured.
And to be honest, I don't think necessarily that Amnesty International, the UN, and Human Rights Watch are part of a liberal conspiracy but I do believe that the information they provide and stories they cover are heavily biased towards left wing politics.
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke
Sounds more like a conspiracy theory to me. Is there hard evidence that the US currently bombs Colombian peasants to destroy their coca crop?
The "War on Drugs" or "Prohibition" or whatever people want to call it is a better alternative to legalization. When it comes to "hard" drugs (I'm not including marijuana, that's a more nuanced case), legalization will not end violence associated with drug usage. I suppose it's fairly easy to see why there is this misconception- people who advocate legalization don't realize (or just conveniently ignore) that there are two types of violence associated with controlled substances: the violence that arises from drug trafficking (like the War on Drugs or gang violence in Mexico) and the violence that arises from the very use of hard drugs.
If, by legalizing hard drugs, you aim to end trafficking violence, then that would probably work to an extent- no more drug raids, gangs, or government enforcement. But the violence associated with the usage of hard drugs will remain. It doesn't matter if a crack addict is buying his drugs from a legal pharmacy or from an illegal street dealer- once he is addicted, he will do anything to get his next fix. He will still sell all of his stuff (and therefore become homeless), rob people, and even kill. There will still be a dangerous black market competing with the legal, regulated drug trade. Legalization fails to stop this type of violence, and never can, because of the addictive nature of hard drugs.
As for marijuana, like I said, it's a different story. Like cigarettes or alcohol, it is not a dangerously addictive drug that regularly destroys lives and drives people to crime. It should be a state's right to choose to legalize it or not.
Just search anything about U.S. destroying drug crops. It was used pretty commonly in the Bush Administration. As for cigarettes not being dangerously addictive...tell that to the people with holes in their necks.
I usually agree with your posts but this one was not very well argued or thought through.
Cigarettes are one of the top killers in the United States. They are indeed dangerously addictive. I have been a non-smoker for 15 years now but it was a horrible struggle to quit. Alcohol can also be very dangerous. I was married to a woman who has absolutely melted her brain with alcohol and I'll be surprised if it does not end up killing her soon. It is a drug that most people can use and enjoy without much harm but which is absolutely fatally destructive to a certain small percentage of the people who use it.
But we tried prohibition with alcohol. It did not work and led to a lot of criminal activity and caused otherwise law abiding people to stop respecting the law. And it did little to prevent the people who destroy themselves with alcohol when it was legal to not destroy themselves with alcohol when it was illegal. It remained readily available. Fortunately we repealed the prohibition.
The problem with your argument about legalizing drugs is that all the ill-effects that you say will accompany legalization are happening NOW because despite the prohibition, just like with alcohol, the drugs are readily available.
The hard drugs cause a certain amount of violence. We are getting that violence NOW. If we were to legalize these drugs we might still get the same violence but we would have the benefit of collecting a LOT of taxes and NOT SPENDING billions of dollars on a wasted, ineffective effort. The drug war gains us nothing and costs us a lot.
Personally, I believe your argument about violence is probably wrong because legalized drugs, even after they were taxed horrendously like cigarettes or alcohol, would be so much CHEAPER then they are in the current black market scenario. They are incredibly cheap to produce. They are only expensive because the government has made them illegal. If the drugs were cheap, many of the people with drug habits would be able to have a functional life working at 7-11 or cleaning hotel rooms or being a divorce lawyer and still support their habit without inflicting crime and violence on their communities. I don't know for sure if that is true because we have not tried it.
But what we have been doing for the last 50 years definately does not work and is costing us hundreds of billions over time. And there has to be something wrong with laws whose biggest proponents are the ones getting rich by breaking them.
Also, you are usually arguing as a conservative. Most conservatives believe that our Constitution should be respected and followed. The alcohol prohibition required a Constitutional Amendment to implement and another Amendment to repeal. What is different between drugs and alcohol and why is a Constitutional Amendment not required for the prohibition? You are arguing for an unconstitutional activity by the government. And what business is it of the government's what a person chooses to put in their body. Obviously tens of millions of people want to use these substances. What's wrong with freedom?
I agree the War on Drugs is not working, but I don't think that means we should toss it out entirely. That would be like throwing away a perfectly good car just because the alternator stopped working. Drug laws and enforcement need to be revamped (and that could include relaxing enforcement), but not repealed.
I'll address your last comments first, since they're easiest to clarify. I believe in liberty, but as JS Mill puts it, liberty has one condition: that you don't infringe upon another's. Now, perhaps I'm guilty of that when I say I'd prefer to deprive others of using drugs. But when cheap drugs flood my community, and my neighbors and family become addicted, I'd call that an affront to my own liberty also. Then what? Either way we have it, somebody's liberty is being repressed in favor of someone else's preferences. I'm not sure there's a compromise to be found, either.
It is true that alcohol and cigarettes are destructive, but I don't think they can be compared to harder drugs. While they'll all kill you in the end, I'm sure 5 years of heroin use (if you're still around by then) will make you worse off than 5 years of drinking or smoking. Now, if I want to be consistent with the way I approach drug law, does that mean I advocate extending prohibition? I've considered it, but as you pointed out, history suggests it's not a good idea.
Your best counterpoint, in my opinion, was that the inherently violent side effects of addictive drug usage exist regardless of their legal status. My only response to this would be that I assume (I can't claim to know, just as you admitted you can't) the legalization of hard drugs would encourage more people to try them, and thus increase the violence inherent in hard drug usage so much that it would "cancel out" the violence we would prevent from ending the War on Drugs.
When it comes to saving money by relaxing drug enforcement and taxing drugs, we would also lose a lot of cash in the medical and insurance industries- no one can argue that these drugs aren't good for you. Once again, it becomes an issue of what cancels out what- would the money saved by ending drug enforcement simply be lost in health and insurance industries? I guess we can't really know for sure.
I feel that cheaper drugs would increase the inherent violence associated with hard drug usage by increasing their availability. On this issue, though, we're operating on completely different premises, neither of which can be wholly discredited.
Your perfectly good car has been a lemon since day one. The war on drugs has never worked and no amount of tinkering with it is going to change that. Prohibition creates an incredibly profitable market and then hands that profitable market over to criminals. Unless you are willing to start brutally exterminating drug sellers and drug buyers (Chairmen Mao in China used this approach with some good effect), you are not going to overcome the enormous government created profit incentive which makes criminals rich. There are too many families who have loved ones that have been caught up in drugs where the public will never stand for the Chairman Mao approach. The alternative is our current hugely expensive failed approach that will never be anything but a hugely expensive failure. And the drugs will continue to be readily available just like they are now after 50 years of your failed approach.
For most kids in school it is easier to get illegal drugs then it is to get alcohol. The lesson here is that regulation works and that prohibition does not and cannot.
You failed to address the unconstitutional nature of the drug prohibition. Why did prohibition against alcohol require a constitutional amendment but prohibition against marijuana, cocain and opium, which were all known and legal substances when the country was founded and for the next couple of hundred years, did not require an amendment? A good conservative should want the Constitution followed.
And incidently cocaine and opium are pretty hard drugs that caused some but fairly minimal problems for society back when they were legal. They did not become a significant problem for society until after they were criminalized. It is a joke to consider marijuana a hard drug and it has caused far less deaths than either cigarettes or alcohol. In the case of marijuana, just like with alcohol, the prohibition has clearly been far more destructive to society then the drug itself.
Crack, which is your example of a "dangerous" more heavy drug, is made from Cocaine, extracted from Coca leaves, which when in their natural form, are no more addictive than coffee beans. People in South America put one or two coca leaves in a hot cup of water and regularly drink this in the same way the English drink their black tea. In fact, my Medical Doctor drinks this, as he is originally from Bolivia. He is a devout Catholic, had been married for around 20 years, works very hard with patients and in his laboratory, and lives in a nice suburb with 3 children. Doesn't sound like your average illegal-drug user, does he? Most people who do illegal drugs are not addicts, in the same way most people who drink alcohol are not alcoholics.
If people were to extract pure caffeine and take it, the health effects and neurosis inflicted would be similar to taking cocaine. Legalizing coca plants would be harmless if American's could get past the whole stigma of "cocaine". It isn't the plant or drug that causes the harm, it is what people choose to do with it. If Coca leaves/plants grew here in the US, and were used the way they have been TRADITIONALLY used for centuries we would treat it the same way we treat English Breakfast tea, because that is what Coca tea is to people in South America, and it is sad that Americans cannot respect it or understand it.
Not only are coca leaves harmless in their natural form, but to starving, nutrient deprived children in South America, coca leaves are a source of nutrition, and are eaten like a vegetable, such as spinach. Because while caffeine ABSORBS nutrients in the body, especially calcium (which is why it is so common to put cream or milk in your coffee and even tea) , coca leaves will ADD nutrients and cocaine does not absorb them: Coca leaves are a good source of calcium and nutrients.
This may only sound outrageous because we Americans, have been conditioned to be un-accepting of other culture's common drugs, but yet, do not subject our own common drugs to the same rigorous tests. Giving children coca leaves in South America can be paralleled to giving children chocolate, here in the US (chocolate, coming from cocoa beans, hascaffeine and small traces of THC isomer in it, which is why eating chocolate makes you feel good).
If anyone were to extract caffeine from tea/coffee or nicotine from tobacco leaves, we may find the same "violent" or "dangerous" behavior. But the fact the people can learn to extract caffeine or nicotine and take it in pure form to induce "crazy" behavior is not viewed as a good reason to criminalize usage here in America.
How inconsistent and illogical of us.
Why don't we criminalize some common over-the-counter products that children us to create Meth as well?
The problem with regulation is that if people want to engage in self-inflicting, harmful activity, they will, it is not the governments job to stop them. That is what freedom and free will are for. You can just as dangerously be addicted to an abusive relationship or video game as you can a substance. That is why Asia now has clinics set up for video game addicts, run in a similar fashion that drug rehab clinics are, and we here in America have something called "therapy". People kill themselves over relationships, and there are people who have starved themselves to death playing video games.
But that doesn't mean they are altogether bad.
Besides, how can we argue that we are trying to "help" society and the few drug addicts who actually DO exists out there, when we slap felonies on them for drug possession and lock them up in prison? Do you think their life will then be easier when they get out, just because they don't do illegal drugs? Selling drugs will probably be one of the few jobs they can hold now to support themselves at that point! And given their incredbly limited options with "FELONY" on their record now, wouldn't that just make them want to do drugs even more? How backwards and incredibly cruel !
I was aware that coca leaves are a traditional "food" (for lack of a better word) consumed by natives. But the stuff going around on our streets is NOT anywhere close to the form of coca used by these farmers. How can anyone claim that just because something is made from something harmless, it too must not be dangerous? Cocaine and coca, though one is derived from the other, are not the same, and cocaine is the far more dangerous substance. Did you know apple seeds contain cyanide? But there's no law against selling apples for consumption. It would be silly- that cyanide is not a health hazard because it occurs in such small doses. But if someone concentrated this cyanide to dangerous levels and sold it for human consumption, is it also acceptable? Of course not! And yet that is exactly what you're advocating by (correctly) saying that cocaine comes from a fairly harmless leaf.
jackbenimble made a comment that opium and forms of other drugs used to be legal, and yet the government suddenly prohibited them. I find this to be just as disingenuous and misguided as your coca-cocaine comparison. The drugs that people consumed 100 years ago are nothing like today's stuff, even though they come from the same sources. Advancements in refining have turned formerly not-so-harmful substances into home-wrecking, community-poisoning public health hazards.
The drugs that people consumed 100 years ago are nothing like today's stuff
This from Wikipedia on heroin:
From 1898 through to 1910, under the name heroin, diacetylmorphine was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute and cough suppressant. Bayer marketed heroin as a cure for morphine addiction before it was discovered that it is rapidly metabolized into morphine, and as such, heroin was essentially a quicker acting form of morphine. The company was embarrassed by this new finding and it became a historic blunder for Bayer.[5]
As with aspirin, Bayer lost some of its trademark rights to "heroin" under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles following the German defeat in World War I.[6]
In the U.S.A. the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was passed in 1914 to control the sale and distribution of "heroin" and other opioids. This law did allow the drug to be prescribed and sold for medical purposes.
I guess there is a difference. Back then it was PURE and legal and now that it illegal it is cut to a much weaker and dangerously impure form.
And here is a little blurb on cocaine:
In 1885 the U.S. manufacturer Parke-Davis sold cocaine in various forms, including cigarettes, powder, and even a cocaine mixture that could be injected directly into the user’s veins with the included needle. The company promised that its cocaine products would “supply the place of food, make the coward brave, the silent eloquent and ... render the sufferer insensitive to pain.”
By the late Victorian era cocaine use had appeared as a vice in literature, for example it was injected by Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional Sherlock Holmes.
In early 20th-century Memphis, Tennessee, cocaine was sold in neighborhood drugstores on Beale Street, costing five or ten cents for a small boxful. Stevedores along the Mississippi River used the drug as a stimulant, and white employers encouraged its use by black laborers
Again the cocaine was probably much purer and could be injected or smoked which makes it sound like "free-base" or crack cocaine.
So generally the drugs available back then were stronger then they are now and my statement WAS NOT disingenuous. But prohibition and the enormous blackmarket profit potential has caused many new drugs to be invented and many medically useful drugs to become popular for abuse.
There is one drug that has gotten far stronger then it was before the prohibition. That is marijuana. When I was a kid we could smoke half an ounce of the typical Mexican commercial grade pot that we bought for $5 or $10 an ounce and get a mild buzz and a serious case of paranoia and the munchies. Now, I'm told. one hit of the really good high grade "BC Bud" that costs $200+ per ounce out of Canada will knock you down for the count. Huge blackmarket profits have driven that market. It is just as difficult, expensive and risky to smuggle a ton of bad pot as it is to smuggle a ton of good pot and there is tremendously more profit in the good stuff.
Prohibition is the CAUSE of the strong drugs that you are worried about.
"But there's no law against selling apples for consumption. It would be silly- that cyanide is not a health hazard because it occurs in such small doses. But if someone concentrated this cyanide to dangerous levels and sold it for human consumption, is it also acceptable? Of course not!"
You and me seem to have the same point yet different conclusion. That is EXACTLY my point...
Apples are not dangerous in natural form therefore they are not illegal, so why are coca plants?
Possessing coca plants is illegal ....assuming they aren't "de-cocainized". That is like saying you can't buy apples unless the seeds are taken out, or you can't buy coffee unless the caffeine is extracted. Laws like this would be extremely petty and inefficient so why are coca leaves treated different? Making these laws force people to extract the natural drug from a plant in order to export it...making me wonder what they would do with the extracted drug, which is now in its pure form??? Throw it in a dumpster somewhere, or burn it? Most likey, they will now sell the extracted drug in pure form, to the underground market, now that they have been forced to undergo a more costly process in order to export their crop (which was originally harmless).
Americans drink coca cola (of which the leaves used to flavor it now supposedly "de-cocainized" even though there is evidence otherwise). I wonder where all that pure cocaine extracted from the leaves now goes....
Most adults are intelligent enough to decide or eventually learn "for their own good." Usually, when someone does it for them (ex: government) it ends up being for worse.
I really like what you are saying and it would be nice if the public held this view with just a small revision...
there IS a drug war. By the definition of "WAR":
"a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism b: a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end (a class war)(a war against disease)"
---copy/pasted from Webster's dictionary
People are fighting and DIEING for the right to something that is perfectly logical and on par with many other "legal" things.
This is WAR, as long as there remains two parties that are fighting on this issues in the manner that most of us only hear about stories. (the ones that aren't locked up in jail.)
I don't understand what you are trying to say by stating that there is NOT a drug war. Perhaps this should be revised to stating that the general consensus of the drug war is greatly misunderstood, and the drug war lies on a different level from popular belief.
But the war still exists: The war on drugs is a sad way of oppressing poor people, I am glad you wrote that because it saves me the trouble of posting something similar I was planning on.
Nice post! But I still don't understand why you would say there is no war on drugs when you mention bombing Columbia and Bolivia /killing poor farmers for growing a plant that when used properly, is no more addicting than a cup of Coffee! Let me repeat this: A CUP OF COCA TEA IS NO MORE ADDICTING THAN A CUP OF COFFEE.
Anyone who's mind has been too brainwashed to accept that can do the research themselves, but I would like to note that some of the biggest supporters of the decriminalization of drugs are Medical Doctors and Surgeons.
The way the natives use it in South America is perfectly reasonable. Coca leaves (unlike caffeine) ADD nutrients to your body (caffiene absorbs vitamins) and Coca tea aids in depression. I have a bolivian doctor (who is now an American citizen and practices up here) who recommended Coca tea, and I switch off between that and Coffee and English Black Tea so that I don't become "addicted" to any one thing...to me that sounds smart.
I am in no way addicted to Coca tea, as I can and have easily went without it: I would just replace it with a cup of Coffee. In fact, Coca-Cola STILL uses coca leaves to flavor their beverage, and rest assured, the cocaine is not all extracted : )
Note that if people extracted pure caffeine and started taking it, your heart could explode just the same as many other stimulants and extracting cocaine form Coca leaves is not much different. It is sad that these ignorant, petty fractions of truth remain a way of oppressing the lower class and poorer countries...by tricking the masses in America to believe they are "helping" people by locking innocent people away (or even killing them).
I believe the United States has the highest or second highest percentage of our population in jail at this current moment in time. Can someone tell me how we manage to believe we are top of the list for "freedom" given how high a percentage we lock away in jail (where 8 out of every 10 prisoners are only there for drugs)?
We have college kids locked away with serial killers/murderers. You don't believe me? Go visit a prison. I have.
We have police officers SELLING drugs they convenscate from victims, and when they get caught doing it, they throw it off on some poor guy in his 20's just learning the ropes of life, I've been through a drug raid. I know.
Search warrants are no longer awarded constitutionally. Maybe they never were.
And who do you think it is easier to catch? A robber, murderer, or a hit and run....or a college kid dealing weed?
The TRUELY dangerous people end free, while the harmless ones continue to be oppressed (only if they are poor, though, because everyone knows money will buy you out of jail sooner or later).
And for anyone who wants to argue the drugs induce people to act out on violence....have you ever wondered if maybe the drug dealers/users are FORCED to be harsh and unforgiving to traitors, given the ridiculous punishments the law has layed on them if they get caught.
If more people are harmed and die from the WAR on drugs, than from the actual drugs themselves (despite many people not being able to even CONSIDER this a possibility) then I will definitely be on the side that fights for freedom.
Another fact: Most drug users are not addicts, in the same way that most drinkers are not Alcoholics.
I am not a criminal, or drug addict. I hold professional jobs, go to school and have seen first hand, the damage the war on drugs have caused my friends. Does that make me think drugs are bad? No. That makes me think the laws that aid the WAR on drugs are very bad.
Never live your life in fear!
Thats the reason why my title was there is no REAL war on drugs. There is a war on the lives of poor Columbian peasants, minorities, and the soverignty of other nations. The war is not about drugs, it is about economic benefit and social control. I see what you are saying but I disagree with your terminology. It is as about as accurate as calling the so-called "war on terrorism" the "war on terrorism."
haha, I finally see the meaning of your title. : ) I guess changing the terminology makes a nice point. Sorry for my long drawn out rant.
Hm, we did change your blog into a debate about Prohibition rather than the effect of the War on Drugs on the other side- how it affects peasants in South America. As someone mentioned above, the coca that South American farmers grow is not harmful. So destroying it doesn't seem right. But when that coca is the source of some of America's most dangerous drugs, does that change things? You could argue that those peasants don't want to fuel drug problems in America, they just want to feed their families. And they should have that right. But on the other hand, if one believes hard drugs to be dangerous enough, is it our right to defend ourselves and prevent these drugs from entering our country and poisoning our people? Good questions, I don't have answers for them.
And calling the War on Drugs in Colombia an invasion of that country's sovereignty might be inaccurate. It's not like US agents and their affiliates sneak in and destroy coca crops- the government of Colombia, the representative of the sovereign people of Colombia, gives us permission to do it (whether they give that permission tacitly or overtly).
Perhaps, rather than destroying coca crops, the US government should encourage peasants to grow other crops, if a profitable substitute can be found. That way, everybody gets what they want- the US can dent the flow of cocaine into America and the peasants can make a living.
Prohibition and the (class) war on drugs overlap and are part of the same thing.
I believe the war on drugs and laws we have against it makes smuggling cocaine in a more pure form more appealing to the REAL criminals, while the one we attack are the farmers growing a harmless plant.
Example:
Al Capone, (Chicago mobster who made virtually all his money selling alcohol during prohibition), was actually in favor of prohibition. That seems to make no sense to anyone making a living off of Alcohol. But he knew he wouldn't have accumulated the power or wealth he had if it weren't for prohibition. Al Capone, in a clear sense made his money directly off of prohibition, of which he supported the laws for it.
Your solution to force other countries to grow another crop to replace coca leaves doesn't seem plausible, and secondly, they already grow other crops, like coffee. Why should they be forced to change in the first place, when the farmers aren't necessarily the ones abusing the plant? And I have never heard of another country forcing another one to grow something..Produce works off of supply and demand, environment and soil, and should not be interfered with by class wars...otherwise it works similar to monopolies.
I am pretty sure, in order to preserve soil and economy, the more plants farmers switch off between, the more efficient it makes the yield. And, personally, switching off between coffee and coca tea, I can say it is actually healthier then drinking coffee every day because of the body's build towards caffeine tolerance (or cocaine).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt-BAaPpq-E
You couldn't be more correct. the laws concering crack and cocaine have always perplexed me. The thing that makes it even harder to change people's oppinion is that the laws have been around for so long, that even the lawmakers don't necessarily realize that these laws are designed to keep lower class citiczens in jail.
This whole blog is absolute nonsense spawning for the same-old government conspiracy theories. Of course there are reasons behind the political and economic reasons behind prohibition of certain drugs; because there are different economic and political effects of the sale of different types of drugs.
The worst, outright liberal misinformation I have seen so far has been about the nation of Colombia. Do any of you watch the news? President Uribe, a true hero in an age of fallen morals and ideologies has led a new conservative movement in Colombia to bring a third world nation out of the oppression it has suffered. This oppression is not the blatant killing of "peasants" who grow coca but the oprression of FARC, the communist terrorist group fighting for the "liberation" of Colombia for over 50 years now. FARC has employed brutal methods of assassination, kidnapping, and the lucrative use of coca to oppress the people of Colombia. "Peasants" as you like to refer to them have been forced into producing coca crops by FARC under the threat of death. Yes there are instances where crops are grown under their own accord, however the majority of these crops are sold to the radical fascist cartel recently led by Don Mario or to FARC.
It is for these reasons that Colombia is the prime example of the the existence of the war on drugs. FARC represents the true oppression of the people of Colombia, not conspiracy theories of bombings of innocent peasants and unjustified razing of coca crops. Thanks to the efforts of President Uribe, the War on Drugs, certainly in existence to the 45 million citizens of Colombia, is on its way to a victory for those committed to fighting the adverse effects of illegal drugs and the drug trade. The previous president of Colombia, Alvero Samper, a liberal party member, opened up over 200,000 acres for disarnment to FARC in an effort for diplomacy. This failed miserably however as FARC opened up a massive new recruiting ground and enslaved the people to grow coca and fight for FARC. Under excellent leadership of Uribe and the bravery of the Colombian military however, an all-out offensive against FARC has killed or captured six of FARC's nine top leaders and virtually destroyed FARC's operations in Colombia. For those that fought in this bloody war, I'm sure they would tell that there is a war on drugs considering the main funder of FARC is its illegal coca trafficking.
Further testimony to the existence of the war on drugs was the recent cpature of Don Mario, the number one most wanted on drug lord in Colombia. Over the last 18 months it is believed that Don Mario's cartel was responsible for over 3,000 murders. That is oppression and an existence of a drug war, not the attacking of peasants in the jungle. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,516583,00.html
My point is that a war on drugs certainly exists, as any Colombian citizens oppressed by drug cartels or FARC would tell you. Fortunately, U.S. foreign policy has been instrumental in fighting this real war on drugs, not some economic/politcal conspiracy, as the U.S funding and training of Colombian military forces has been instrumental in freeing millions of Colombians.
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. - John Locke
Putting aside the right or left wing conspiracy theories, the prohibition of drugs creates an artificially high price and pays outlaws enough wages to fill the demand.
Legalization would lower prices, drug addicts would thereby become less likely to commit crime to feed their habit.
Legalization would cause most gangsters in the world to become unemployed and force them to seek jobs and perhaps even pay taxes.
Legalization would allow regulation AT LEAST to the extent that illegal drugs would no longer be more available to minors than legal ones as they are now.
Legalization would allow nearly 2 million people imprisoned at taxpayer expense to be freed to work and pay taxes.
Legalization would free our police and courts to focus on crimes that actually have victims.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw