Reality Intrudes on the Drug War

[dcannady]

If the public had access to 5 and 10 milligram Dexedrine tablets that they could purchase legally, they wouldn't need or want meth. Apparently, though, our keepers prefer to see lives devastated by a terrible drug that either kills or causes one to go to prison.

I wonder how much money is "donated" by drug cartels to legislators so they will keep drugs illegal?

[Irish flu]

Originally Posted by evan316

Making laws that no one enforces or at best does it half hearted, tolerating tyrants, making nice with them as zero does with iran and all the rest, both guarantees more of the same.

At least the ruskies are happy with zero, they see him for as looser and they will capitalize on it. I guess all the two bit tyrants out there are also happy with zero.

Whoa, more charm offensive. Yeah, the tough line stance with Iran has born so much fruit over the years, I don't know why we don't just stick with that. Maybe we could come up with a new Shah who would get us to train his secret police. Worked really well the first time.

[Irish flu]

Originally Posted by dcannady

If the public had access to 5 and 10 milligram Dexedrine tablets that they could purchase legally, they wouldn't need or want meth. Apparently, though, our keepers prefer to see lives devastated by a terrible drug that either kills or causes one to go to prison.

I wonder how much money is "donated" by drug cartels to legislators so they will keep drugs illegal?

That might be a stretch.

I think you're probably right on the legal speed thing but I understand that meth is a pretty potent high for them that like it. Could be some of that lure will remain.

[NightMgr]

Originally Posted by dcannady

I wonder how much money is "donated" by drug cartels to legislators so they will keep drugs illegal?

You mean the DEA, private prison groups, and other members of the police-industrial complex? Or those other drug cartels?

[Irish flu]

Special interest groups.

[dcannady]

Originally Posted by NightMgr

You mean the DEA, private prison groups, and other members of the police-industrial complex? Or those other drug cartels?

All of them. They all benefit, but none like the guys that sell the drugs. DEA agents, prison guards and such draw a salary(except for the petty corruption). The drug cartels bring down billions. They can easily afford a suave character in a suit who truly believes that prohibition is the way to go and who will slither around Washington handing out green goodies.

[David]

This column is another in the George Will "renaissance. This is must reading.

A reality check on drug use

By George F. Will
Thursday, October 29, 2009

During his immersion in his new job, Gil Kerlikowske attended a focus group of 7-year-old girls and was mystified by their talk about "farm parties." Then he realized they meant "pharm parties" -- sampling pharmaceuticals from their parents' medicine cabinets. What he learned -- besides that young humans have less native sense than young dachshunds -- is that his job has wrinkles unanticipated when he became director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"People," he says, "want a different conversation" about drug policies. With his first report to the president early next year, he could increase the quotient of realism.

Law enforcement has a "can-do culture," but it also instructs its practitioners about what cannot be done, at least by law enforcement alone. Kerlikowske, who was top cop in Buffalo and then Seattle, knows that officers sweeping drug users from cities' streets feel as though they are "regurgitating perps through the system."

He dryly notes that "not many people think the drug war is a success." Furthermore, the recession's toll on state budgets has concentrated minds on the costs of drug offense incarcerations -- costs that in some states are larger than expenditures on secondary education. Fortunately, the first drug courts were established two decades ago, and today there are 2,300 nationwide, pointing drug policy away from punishment and toward treatment.

Kerlikowske is familiar with Portugal's experience since 2001 with the decriminalization of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. Nature made Kerlikowske laconic and experience has made him prudent, so he steers clear of the "L" word, legalization, even regarding marijuana.

Asked whether he thinks that it is a "gateway" drug leading to worse substances, he answers obliquely: "You don't find many heroin users who didn't start with marijuana." And he warns that more intense cultivation of marijuana is yielding a product with notably high THC content -- the potent ingredient.

In 1998, the United Nations, with its penchant for empty grandstanding, committed its members to "eliminating or significantly reducing" opium, cocaine and marijuana production by 2008, en route to a "drug-free world." Nowadays the United Nations is pleased that the drug trade has "stabilized."

The Economist magazine says this means that more than 200 million people -- almost 5 percent of the world's adult population -- take illegal drugs, the same proportion as a decade ago. The annual U.S. bill for attempting to diminish the supply of drugs is $40 billion. Of the 1.5 million Americans arrested each year on drug offenses, half a million are incarcerated. "[T]ougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars," the Economist said in March.

"There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer." Do cultural differences explain this? Evidently not: "Even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates."

The good news is the progress America has made against tobacco, which is more addictive than most illegal drugs. And then there is alcohol.

In "Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson," historian David S. Reynolds writes that in 1820, Americans spent on liquor a sum larger than the federal government's budget. By the mid-1820s, annual per capita consumption of absolute alcohol reached seven gallons, more than three times today's rate. "Most employers," Reynolds reports, "assumed that their workers needed strong drink for stimulation: a typical workday included two bells, one rung at 11 a.m. and the other at 4 p.m., that summoned employees for alcoholic drinks."

The elderly Walt Whitman said, "It is very hard for the present generation anyhow to understand the drinkingness of those years. . . . it is quite incommunicable." In 1842, a Springfield, Ill., teetotaler named Lincoln said that liquor was "like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to slay, if not the first, the fairest born in every family." Which helps explain why the nation sobered up (somewhat -- these things are relative). One reason crack cocaine use has declined is that a generation of inner-city young people saw what it did to their parents and older siblings.

Kerlikowske can hope that social learning, although slow and intermittent, is on his side. But perhaps he knows the axiom that experience is a great teacher but submits steep bills.

SOURCE

[evan316]

Originally Posted by Irish flu

Whoa, more charm offensive. Yeah, the tough line stance with Iran has born so much fruit over the years, I don't know why we don't just stick with that. Maybe we could come up with a new Shah who would get us to train his secret police. Worked really well the first time.

Gee, guess we should just surrender, after all zero is up to speed on that topic.

What, I ain't charming? Shucks, have to work on that.

I could bring up President Reagan, but that would just get you started on a new rant.

[David]

Watch this video. Then watch it again

SOURCE

This is Your War on Drugs

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by David

Watch this video. Then watch it again

SOURCE

This is Your War on Drugs

You're getting pathetic in your defense of drugs. Any such raid will hurt somebody. You want all criminals to go free? Some police are incompetent. But it is their actions, not what they are trying to enforce. But like Obama, don't let a disaster go to waste.

[David]

Another high point (pun intended) in the war on drugs.

Elderly Woman Hospitalized After Botched Drug Raid at her Home







Posted By: Doug Richards
Last Modified: 5/12/2010 6:04:32 PM

To police investigators, the double-wide in rural Polk County was the hiding place of a drug trafficker. But to her family, it was merely the longtime home of a 76 year old widow named Helen Pruett.


"All she did was go to church, go to Walmart, go to the beauty shop, and that's it," said Machelle Holl, Pruett's daughter.




Tuesday morning, police dressed in black paramilitary fatigues, armed with weapons and an arrest warrant surrounded Pruett's home, knocked on the door and demanded to be let in. Helen Pruett's family says she saw them through the window, was frightened, and didn't believe they were really police.




"She didn't know what to do. There was banging on the windows, men saying let me in," said daughter Diana Merrick.


Pruett opened the door - and police almost instantly realized their warrant had the wrong address.


"She told me she was having chest pains," said Polk County police chief Kenny Dodd. "I immediately called for an ambulance." Dodd said Polk County police assisted the DEA-led drug investigation.


Pruett was taken to the cardiac unit of a Rome hospital, where family members say doctors confirmed she'd had a heart attack. Family members were grateful Pruett wasn't killed -- like Kathryn Johnston, the elderly woman in a botched Atlanta police drug raid four years ago.


"She was the first person I thought of," said Merrick.


Pruett's daughters have spent the last two days at the hospital, where the Polk County police chief paid a midday visit.


"I feel sorry for the family," said Dodd.


Pruett's family wants police to investigate the misinformation that led to the mistaken raid. A DEA spokesman says that the agency is examining that as it continues its investigation.

SOURCE

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by David

Another high point (pun intended) in the war on drugs.

Probably the cop who wrote out the warrant was high!

[evan316]

The alphabet soup crowd are always good for a little keystone cop humor, as long as one is not the object of their fun and games.

ATF raided an apartment in CA, kicked in the door, flash bangs thrown in, charge in, guy came out of his bedroom with a pistol, probably should have came out with a lollipop or some such, results would have probably been the same, anyway, they shoot him. To bad they can't shoot very well, he lived, he was well off, he sued them for a lot and won.

They had the wrong address, he was not some impoverished drug runner. Oh well, win some, loose some.

Happening more and more. zero will probably add to that as they dial in justice on whitey.

[Irish flu]

jtdc and evan: you can tell your doc to skip the little hammer on the knee thingy at your next checkup - cuzzin' your knees are jerkin' just fine, cousins.

Somehow this is a good vehicle to hate on Obama? Are you kidding me?! The drug war debacle has been going on for a long time and less than a year and a half into the O admin, the failed war on drugs is now his fault?

Even with the hard drugs in their repertoire, best evidence indicates that the Mexican cartels make some 70% of their profits on weed. It's gone way past asinine. The money that bankrolls the crime that AZ is up in arms about comes 70% from pot. Oh boy.

My neighbor at my warehouse work site runs his own fabrication biz. The guy can throw some stuff together, IMO tell you what. Self employed and doing well and the guy puffs strong reefer every day. Not Mexican, he knows some growers, as do I. He tells me that's one reason he's self employed - so he doesn't have to pass piss tests, or whatever improved test they might be using.

Somehow, in spite of the ravages of ganja, he's paying his mortgage with his own business.

[Irish flu]

Originally Posted by evan316

The alphabet soup crowd are always good for a little keystone cop humor, as long as one is not the object of their fun and games.

ATF raided an apartment in CA, kicked in the door, flash bangs thrown in, charge in, guy came out of his bedroom with a pistol, probably should have came out with a lollipop or some such, results would have probably been the same, anyway, they shoot him. To bad they can't shoot very well, he lived, he was well off, he sued them for a lot and won.

They had the wrong address, he was not some impoverished drug runner. Oh well, win some, loose some.

Happening more and more. zero will probably add to that as they dial in justice on whitey.

Too bad the wrong guy, an INNOCENT guy wasn't shot and killed?

Hoo-kay.

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by Irish flu

Somehow this is a good vehicle to hate on Obama? Are you kidding me?! The drug war debacle has been going on for a long time and less than a year and a half into the O admin, the failed war on drugs is now his fault?

Do you have a command of the English language? I don't see where Zero was blamed for this. I was comparing the tactics he uses, which David has now adopted in regards to the drug war. Remember another dimocrat named Clinton who invoked "for the children" in order to push some unpopular policy?

Originally Posted by Irish flu

My neighbor at my warehouse work site runs his own fabrication biz. The guy can throw some stuff together, IMO tell you what. Self employed and doing well and the guy puffs strong reefer every day. Not Mexican, he knows some growers, as do I. He tells me that's one reason he's self employed - so he doesn't have to pass piss tests, or whatever improved test they might be using.

Somehow, in spite of the ravages of ganja, he's paying his mortgage with his own business.

So you knowingly associate with criminals?

[Irish flu]

Welcome to cognitive thinking. I not only associate with a known criminal, I am one. And that's what you can't get here: it is asinine to keep it as a crime. The sort of paranoia featured years ago in "Reefer Madness" has been thoroughly debunked by the personal experience of millions of people.

Coca Cola is more of a gateway drug to cocaine than marijahooga. It's whack beyond whack. The Mexican cartels are getting rich off of pot while we look for ways to raise revenue for govt.

On Obama, whatever. Just that you would be in a hurry to raise his name in this thread is weak. Knee jerk obsession.

[jtdc]

Originally Posted by Irish flu

Coca Cola is more of a gateway drug to cocaine than marijahooga.

Are you saying drinking Coca Cola will make you want cocaine more than it will make you want marijuana? Also, I think you may be behind the times as the cocaine hasn't been in Coca Cola for many years.

Originally Posted by Irish flu

It's whack beyond whack. The Mexican cartels are getting rich off of pot while we look for ways to raise revenue for govt.

And they are doing wonders for the country of Mexico. We should give in to drug cartels and be more like Mexico, right?

Originally Posted by Irish flu

On Obama, whatever. Just that you would be in a hurry to raise his name in this thread is weak. Knee jerk obsession.

Every opportunity to show what a failure he is!

[evan316]

Irish,

Subject change you say.

[David]

The war on drugs is really hurting the supply of pot. Supply is shrinking. Prices skyrocketing. Ooops. Wrong narrative. Black market continues to thrive despite the silliest policy since prohibition. It's a simple weed. Hiring thousands to keep people from growing the stuff is insane.

Pot prices plummet in state, putting growers in a bind

SOURCE