The war on drugs

[Wolferz]

The governments war on drugs is and has always been a pathetic excuse to incarcerate people into what has become a for profit prison system and it's cottage industries within the walls that need slave labor to fill the workforce.
When you get ten years for two joints something just ain't right.
Then there's a darker side to the whole mess. A side that I doubt the documentary even mentions. Legal drug dealers called big Pharma and a shadow government within the legitimate one, controlled by the worst drug pushers on the planet. Skull and Bones.
The old guard is finally beginning to wane and be replaced by those with more open minds.

[Armistead]

Yep, it's amazing our last 3 presidents admit to drug use, they win the highest office in the world, why millions doing the same go to jail.

[Skybird]

what stunned me was the link between ethnic minorities becoming a competitor on the job market, and tackling them by not discriminating them - formally - for being that ethnicity, what would have translated into unhidden racist arguments, but by criminalising them by criminalising previously legal consummation of typical drugs. To get rid of Chinese workers, smoking Opium was criminalised. To get rid of Mexicans, smoking cannabis was criminalised and called Marihuana. To get rid of Blacks, cocains negative effect was blown beyond proportion by raising a hysteria over "crack". The weight of the empirical links and evidences stunned me, I did not know that it all was SO MUCH pushed off balance.

reminds a bit of how beer producers demonised a threatening rival to their profits when it emerged - the "green fairy", absynth. Even the original unfiltered drink never was that great a health danger to the public, as the horror stories implied and that got started by beer producers when they had already lost 15 percent of their market to the producers of this new drink.

Frightening path the US society has embarked on. The monetarian business model of changed police rules of operation, due to declaring a policy of war on drugs, only detoriates things.

The problems are so very much homemade. Haplo, you shoot not far enough - wellfare is not the root of this evil, but the simple fact that at various points of US industrial history masses of employees suddenly were not needed anymore and thus threatened the privileged majority of workers still having jobs, which corresponded with skin coloer very much. See that film in full. There are some things to see and learn that you will not like to hear about - nevertheless are true.

[Armistead]

I haven't watched it, but seen some close. I dont think they get rid of job competition by criminalising previously legal drugs. All races get arrested for drugs. I think the bigger problem was discrimination that led to poverty which cause more crime and drug use.

I know some black leaders complain pot remains illegal, because the black man would get rich selling it, which is silly. It becomes legal, white corporate America would find a way to get the market and get rich off it.

Anyway, the prision system has become a profit system over these minor drug offenses.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Armistead

I haven't watched it, but seen some close. I dont think they get rid of job competition by criminalising previously legal drugs. All races get arrested for drugs.

Think again. Somewhere in the film they count that up to 90% of a certain drug mentioned got consumed by whites, but at that time almost 90% of all drug addicts and traders arrested in relation with that drug were blacks.

As I said, the film makes it clear that what seems to be obvious and self-offering to reason - is not reasonable and obvious at all. There are some serious things going terribly wrong. Politicians calling for even more law and order and draconic penalties just makes it worse - but they accept that since such populistic slogans get them elected.

Watch that film. For me, it is just interesting. For you, assuming you are living in America, it becomes or already is an issue of vital self-interest. Somebody in that film says at the end that the war on drugs compares to a holocaust running in slow motion. After having seen all the film I understood the truth in that apparently rhetoric phrase. And when judges, policemen and prison staff voice their criticism and resignation that openly as in that film, then this should make every American think about his own fate, where I am just listening in for reasons of curiosity. The fallout from the distorted system no longer just raisn down on the ethnic minority groups. It now has started to rain down on the white mainstream as well.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Think again. Somewhere in the film they count that up to 90% of a certain drug mentioned got consumed by whites, but at that time almost 90% of all drug addicts and traders arrested in relation with that drug were blacks...

Interesting. I made lots of drug arrests during my career, and not one of them was "black".

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by WernherVonTrapp

Interesting. I made lots of drug arrests during my career, and not one of them was "black".

It was a scene before I think a senate committee, a hearing, something like that, and the considered state was I think California. The issue discussed was the impact of one certain drug, over a certain period of time when it became a problem some time in the 80s, I think I recall they talked about Crack. The scene is in the movie somewhere. It was not just a claim by the film maker, but info voiced by I think an official in public, before such a committee.

Also, check your national statistics on arrests and skin colour, and how they changed, or not changed over the past 50 years, regarding drugs, and skin colour. Most drug consumers are whites, it thus should be whites leading the arrest numbers. But for some reason it is not like that. Says the police representatives in that film. Blacks consume drugs less than whites, but are overrepresented in arrest over consummation by several factors. That needs to be explained.

Another interview they included - from a police guy, mind you - reflected on how the priority put on war on drugs changed arrest behaviors and shifted the focus of police work from generally more harmful crime like robbery and murder, to bagatelle crimes regarding consummation or possession of even smallest amount of drugs, even such harmless stuff like Marihuana. That officer asked the interviewer this: when an officer gets payed by numbers of arrests per month, and focus is politically wanted on drugs, then this has two effects. The one officer may spend many hours and days for investigating a case of murder or robbery , and at the end of the month gets two or three arrests scored. The other officers knows he gets payed by arrests, so he goes onto the street and starts to arrest suspects over minor drug offences that the law has blown out of proportion, and thta way he scores let'S say 60 arrests by the end of the month. Guess what the police is focussing on, robbery and murder, or arresting persons who consume drugs, may it be Crack, may it be Marihuana? This officer worried about the quality of police investigation work suffering from this, because police now tends to not care for patient, long investment of time, but just sees the street as a fish pond where they take a big fork ionce a day and catch out what they get, without caring anymore for the severity of the offender's "crime" or any contexts leading beyond the letter of the paragraph that calls it an offence.

There seem to be quite some police officers and judges who are seriously worried by how things have turned, and they question both the effic iency and the morality of the rules and paradigms currently being acted by. Many seem to have resigned and do not care anymore. What wil not help to reinstall the trust that the civilian population already has lost.

Anyhow, I'm telling some info from the film by memory only. If somebody has doubts, he better goes out and watches that movie somewhere. I refer to that film only, and by memory. But the real important witnesses are not me, but those people they interview in that film, and who are prison wards, judges, activists, police officers, offenders, family members.

[Wolferz]

Originally Posted by WernherVonTrapp

Interesting. I made lots of drug arrests during my career, and not one of them was "black".

What was the most common drug you made arrests for?