The war on drugs

[Wolferz]

I don't fault any officer of the law for doing his duty in enforcing drug laws. Laws that are for all intents and purposes black and white in their interpretations. But then you have to question the motives behind some of these laws. I'll use Cannabis as an example. It's not really a drug. It's a naturally occurring plant that needs no manipulation by man, other than cutting and drying to make it useful. Unlike the harder, more addictive drugs like Cocaine and amphetamines. Both of which are chemically processed into their addictive forms. Cannabis, no matter what some government paid lab rat says, is NOT physically addictive. You can imbibe Cannabis every day for years and not suffer any physical withdrawal symptoms if you suddenly stop using it,
unlike other substances. Even the oh so legal alcohol has a nasty set of withdrawal symptoms and we've all seen the effects of impairment that alcohol provides.

Cannabis was originally demonized by a director of the USDA doing his imitation of Napoleon, just to appease the big influential commodity growers in the southwestern US. Their main beef stemmed from the migrant farm workers bringing their Cannabis up from Mexico with them when they came to pick fruits and vegetables. Not so much because they were getting stoned and acting lazy but, more because the seeds made their way into the grower's dirt and grew like the weeds they were.
On the other side of the coin was Hemp. A more fibrous form of Cannabis that made strong durable products like clothing and rope. The budding petrochemical industry of the day saw it as a direct threat to their livelihood after they discovered the formulas for making nylon, rayon and other artificial fibers. So they lobbied to kill the competition that Hemp threatened. The Cotton growers weren't real happy about Hemp either. Hemp had been cultivated in the states from the time before we were a sovereign nation.
So technically, the war on Cannabis has been waged by big money interests seeking profit. The elected have long since been bought and paid for by these lobbies and have seen no reason to interrupt their cash and perk flows. Then came their realization that enforcing these unfair laws carried a side benefit of prison industries ripe for profit taking by all involved.

The way I see it, Cannabis isn't for everyone but, it has certain medicinal benefits for many ailments. This threatens big pharmaceutical companies. It's a naturally occurring analgesic and Bayer will fight against it tooth and nail, along with every other maker of pain killers.
Well, God put Cannabis here for a reason and I trust him far more than I trust Squibb Pharmaceuticals.
Attitudes are starting to change more rapidly now as the brainwashing lies and propaganda of big government loses it's grip on people's minds.
They can keep showing Reefer Madness in school health classes if they want. It's at least good for a laugh.

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Wolferz

The way I see it, Cannabis isn't for everyone but, it has certain medicinal benefits for many ailments.

Tell me about it. the one I smoked in may made so sick I havent touched since and I doubt I will
oh well, I'm running out of vices

[Wolferz]

Originally Posted by Betonov

Tell me about it. the one I smoked in may made so sick I havent touched since and I doubt I will
oh well, I'm running out of vices

Must have been some good shtuff.
Or you were already ripped on booze. The two do not mix well.

I very rarely drink alcohol because it makes me sick.

[August]

I think "Reefer Madness" did more to promote drug use in this country than just about anything else. The problem with over the top, easily discounted propaganda like that is that it causes doubt in the veracity of other anti-drug messages.

After all if pot doesn't drive you insane then maybe meth won't either.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Originally Posted by August

I think "Reefer Madness" did more to promote drug use in this country than just about anything else. The problem with over the top, easily discounted propaganda like that is that it causes doubt in the veracity of other anti-drug messages.

After all if pot doesn't drive you insane then maybe meth won't either.

The first time I saw that film (without going into my life history) I thought to myself; "These people have got to be kidding me. They expect viewers to take this seriously?"

There were many times when I was making an arrest (and not just for drugs either) where I quietly advised the arrestee that I didn't necessarily agree with the laws, but was bound by law to enforce them.

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Wolferz

Or you were already ripped on booze. The two do not mix well.

Nope, sober as a judge. Something didn't agree with me that day and I stopped completely. So much for pot making you addicted

[Wolferz]

Originally Posted by Betonov

Nope, sober as a judge. Something didn't agree with me that day and I stopped completely. So much for pot making you addicted

Fair enough. You had an allergic reaction. Like I said, it's not for everybody. Just like penicillin isn't for everybody. My wife, for example, would die if she took a drug containing penicillin. But that doesn't stop them from producing it.

The government is hypocritical in their application of the drug laws for all of the reasons I mentioned previously and then some. They tell you that you can't use pot to ease your aches and pains. Here, take this vicodin instead. But it's OK to imbibe alcohol and tobacco. Even though both of those substances have a far greater negative impact on those who become addicted to them.
Why? Tax money.
Cannabis also opens the mind to their BS and they definitely don't want too many people waking up. It's far too late for that and they refuse to see it.
So they leave the majority to become victims of a shady black market system instead of creating a legal control framework.

Here's a little known fact... Do you know who holds the patent on medical marijuana? The Federal government of the United States.
Can you say "conflict of interest?

[Skybird]

German Focus magazine reports on how the industry in the US has discovered prison labour as a way to produce cheap, and for private capital interest, which helps to boost the private prison sector, and motivates for legislation to encourage high imprisonment rates by drqaconic penalty for even marginal offences, to ensure that prisons stay profitable and always enough slave workers are in the production line.

http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/ti...d_1037691.html

A depressing, dangerous and disgracing business model that in my opinion equals slave labour. I am not against forcing prisoners to work for the costs of their "lodging", but I am against motivating to boost imprisonment rates and turning prisons into an attractive business model. The TV docu already showed how marginal offences have become for which you can earn long slave work sentences, and how real important focusing on really major crime cases gets neglected by a system that sees its focus now in serving the profit interests of private contractors and private business leasing the prisons as de facto slaves. The whole system is not only depressingly but also very dangerously derailed.

IMO this becomes dangerously comparable with slave labour in KZs.

[Ducimus]

The War on drugs, it failed.

[TarJak]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

The War on drugs, it failed.

Like most forms of prohibition.

[Skybird]

One must ask whether it is about drugs in the first at all these days. It seems it is about increasing the flow of slave workers into the work camps where their working power is used to make profits for private businesses. To reach that, draconian penalties are called out for drug abuses so minor that they do not justify years or life in prison.

It is as if one does surgery on patient snot needing surgery at all, to tune the financial balances of the hospital. Could be that there comes a solidarity lottery for winning a free surgery session comes next next where even healthy people must participate in order to generate income for hospitals.

The dangerous step beyond the red line is when prisoners in prisons must not work to generate the money spend for their food, clothing, electricity and prison maintenance costs (I am all for that!), but could be leased as slave workers to private people and businesses. It is here where I do not see major differences anymore between this system, and KZ workers in the third Reich, in a system where it was common that the Wehrmacht or the industry asked in a KZ whether they could deliver more workers for this, more workers to there, and the security apparatus making sure that the supply in KZ prisoners was such that it could meet these business interests. The dorr for abuse of such a system is wide open in the US, and obviously the abuse already is immense, and is growing.

It also has as a consequence, that policework'S focus - as the documentary illustrates - shifts from criminal investigation to catching easy fish: to collect financial boni (kind of head bounties) and to keep the growing number of prisons full of "workers".

Something goes dramatically wrong with that system there. What'S next? Enforced organ donor, maybe? Wait, in China they already have that.

If one sees all this together, and keeps in mind that racism against ethnic groups via criminalization of previously legal drug consummation serves a purpose that has nothing to do with fighting drugs, then it is easy to conclude that if the system would not be about the claimed war on drugs, then it would be about something else. This war is about something very different than just drugs.