The Drug War

GRtak

Forum Addict
Joined
Sep 6, 2008
Messages
26,323
Location
Michigan USA
I think everyone here knows how I feel about this War, but I don't think many understand that the Drug War is worse than the substances being fought. Cenk Uyger lays out the effects, past and present, of Prohibition. It doesn't matter if it is alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, or any other thing that is made illegal. There is always going to be a demand for mind altering substances. And when people can make some money from it, they will do terrible things to get it through to those that want it.

 
Last edited:
In the 1960s we had a very sensible system - for reasons that may be not what they seem or was told to people, they changed the law, stupid, stupid, stupid.

"The most important drugs laws in the UK are the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the Misuse of Drugs regulations made under the Act (1985), and the Medicines Act 1968. The Misuse of Drugs Act divides controlled drugs into three categories, classified according to their perceived degree of harmfulness or danger to the individual and society, with penalties varying accordingly."

http://www.urban75.com/Drugs/druglaws.html

"The Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act 1964 controlled amphetamines in the United Kingdom in advance of international agreements and was later used to control LSD.
Before 1971, the UK had a relatively liberal drugs policy and it was not until United States influence had been brought to bear, particularly in United Nations circles,
that controlling incidental drug activities was employed to effectively criminalise drugs use. However, it is important to note that, bar the smoking of opium and cannabis; Section 8, part d, under the 1971 Act was not an offence (relating to the prosecution of the owner of a premises/building inside of which controlled drugs were being used). However section 8 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 [1] was amended by Regulation 13 of Misuse of Drugs Regulations 1985 [2] and Section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 [3]. These amendments were however repealed in 2005 by Schedule 1 (part 6) of the Drugs Act 2005 [4], [5].

The Current Section 8 covers:-
people knowingly allowing premises they own, manage, or have responsibility for, to be used by any other person for:
administration or use of any controlled drug
supply of any controlled drug the production or cultivation of controlled drugs, (such as growing cannabis, making Crystal meth, preparing Magic mushrooms). [6]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_1971
 
Last edited:
It may sound simplistic, but wouldn't it be easier, having known for years that the majority of opium comes from Afghanistan, simply bomb those fields with chems, making the soil completely infertile for 100 years, and use some of 'the Drug War' money to buy those farmers a lifetime supply of vegetables or anything else they need.

I'm pretty sure those fields can be seen on satellites or even google map. Similar 'operation' can be performed in any major 'supplier' country.

I know for a fact, that similar plan was developed within USSR Afghan military command during the Afghan campaign, but it was scrapped for the opportunity to use cartels as a possible global intelligence network of sorts, which if course never happened.
 
Last edited:
Some ideas:

0. Use the Ukania method from the 1960s where the only addicts we had were ones that picked up the habit from being overseas and when they came back their local GP helped them get through it or even wrote prescriptions for the drugs = no crime or criminality - hold down jobs and have reasons so to do
1. Buy all the stuff from the farmers and destroy it.
2. Pay farmers not to grow anything - works for the EU and US with normal crops
3. Nationalise all the land - pay farmers involved in the trade a fair recompense and retrain them to do something else - have a Government Agency under UN inspection a la Nuclear Inspectorate to check what is being done - can use satellites. ...
4. Spend humgous amounts of money on Police and Para Military organisations to catch small time drug pushers. The practical effect being to keep the profit margins up of the drug lords, and then make sure that the users have no recourse other than crime to fund their habit. They get themselves a criminal record so they can not become employed even if they do get off drugs, sending them back to crime and back into the clutches of the pushes etc.

Tick the one above that is now the norm?
 
It may sound simplistic, but wouldn't it be easier, having known for years that the majority of opium comes from Afghanistan, simply bomb those fields with chems, making the soil completely infertile for 100 years, and use some of 'the Drug War' money to buy those farmers a lifetime supply of vegetables or anything else they need.

I'm pretty sure those fields can be seen on satellites or even google map. Similar 'operation' can be performed in any major 'supplier' country.

I'm not sure if you're being serious, but the obvious drawback is that chemicals are incredibly hard to contain once they've been dispersed like that. Anything that could make land infertile for 100 years (does such a thing even exist?) would have 100 years to seep into the water supply, poison nearby crops, farmland, grazing areas, forests, etc., and wouldn't even stop opium production, as growers would just move somewhere else. Plus, you're wasting valuable potential farmland.
 
According to the DEA website, they had a 2.6 Billion dollar budget for 2009. I wonder what they acomplished for 2.6 billion. Did they scratch the illegal drug trade? Since that is the largest budget they had (2010 not posted), did they have the greatest amount of seizures and convictions? I wonder what the combined budgets for the 10 countries with the largest economies was.
 
According to the DEA website, they had a 2.6 Billion dollar budget for 2009. I wonder what they acomplished for 2.6 billion. Did they scratch the illegal drug trade? Since that is the largest budget they had (2010 not posted), did they have the greatest amount of seizures and convictions? I wonder what the combined budgets for the 10 countries with the largest economies was.

Here's an interesting statistic. In 2009 in Russia a little over 130.000 people age 15-35(!!!) died from Drug-abuse (or it's post-effects), this doesn't include pot, tobacco or alcohol, and an estimated 80-85% of these drugs came from Afghanistan. In the same year over 51.000 people age 16-74 died in road/car accidents. I'm pretty sure a lot of other countries could produce similar numbers, so could we please stop spending trillions on fighting Bin-Laden, and use the money to buy everyone a safer, more reliable car, two weeks worth of advanced driving lessons, a bunch of free drug rehabs and simply nuke the countries producing all that drug crap.
 
Last edited:
If we're talking about Russia I think Vodka is really a bigger problem, so we'll have to nuke all the vodka producers.
 
If we're talking about Russia I think Vodka is really a bigger problem, so we'll have to nuke all the vodka producers.

Nah, they are dealing with it by steadily raising prices, the excise tax will quintuple this year on Vodka and triple on Tobacco products. Unfortunately alcoholism in this country has been a major problem for centuries.
 
Last edited:
Vodka is easily made in the bath! Make it too expensive and this is what happens.

Why do governments only want rich people to drink alcohol I wonder? We have the same stupid approach.
 
Ahhh, sin taxes (taxes applied to things that are socially accepted yet not used by all). That deserves another thread.
 
It may sound simplistic, but wouldn't it be easier, having known for years that the majority of opium comes from Afghanistan, simply bomb those fields with chems, making the soil completely infertile for 100 years, and use some of 'the Drug War' money to buy those farmers a lifetime supply of vegetables or anything else they need.
A year or two ago I remember there being talk of having US forces buy up Afghan opium. Just going to the farms and paying them more per bushel than the militants would/could. This keeps the farmers happy, deprives the militants of the bulk of their income, and would mean a significant cut in the opium supply. And while it would be expensive, stopping the drugs at the source is far cheaper than combating them later on.

But then again, the war on drugs has never truly been about stopping drug production.

According to the DEA website, they had a 2.6 Billion dollar budget for 2009. I wonder what they acomplished for 2.6 billion. Did they scratch the illegal drug trade? Since that is the largest budget they had (2010 not posted), did they have the greatest amount of seizures and convictions? I wonder what the combined budgets for the 10 countries with the largest economies was.
The DEA is massive. IIRC they've got offices almost 50 countries. They, as a single agency, probably have greater intelligence-gathering capability than most countries. But are we "getting what we pay for"? In terms of drug trafficking stopped, I doubt it. Though I bet the Pentagon sees 2.6 billion as nothing for what they get out of the DEA.
 
The money doen't stop there though. According to this article (page 3) the US government gives Mexico 1.4 billion for thier efforts(?).
 
simply nuke the countries producing all that drug crap.

That's right, fuck all the innocent people in those areas trying to live a normal life, because there are a handful of drug lords nearby.

There is a guy in my town selling meth, better drop an atomic bomb on the entire city so that we are sure he's dead. Don't worry about the blast destroying the city, or the radiation and poisonous clouds drifting in the wind, killing everybody for hundreds of miles, we gotta get that filthy drug dealer at all costs.

You fucking moron.
 
That's right, fuck all the innocent people in those areas trying to live a normal life, because there are a handful of drug lords nearby.

There is a guy in my town selling meth, better drop an atomic bomb on the entire city so that we are sure he's dead. Don't worry about the blast destroying the city, or the radiation and poisonous clouds drifting in the wind, killing everybody for hundreds of miles, we gotta get that filthy drug dealer at all costs.

You fucking moron.

Yeah, all of that, because, obviously, that's what I meant, literally, down to the last poisonous cloud and zombies, lots of zombies.
 
Last edited:
To sum up - make pushing and using proscribed drugs punishable by Death having followed due process - problem solved (Hyperbole).
 
Last edited:
Here's my feelings towards the whole situation:

Although Mr. Tosh is singing about one illegal substance in particular, I feel it applies to all of them.
 
http://blog.norml.org/2011/01/06/weed-the-people-cannabis-and-the-constitution/

Weed The People: Cannabis and The Constitution


Today, as first act for the Republican led 112th Congress, the new majority is going to read the United States Constitution out loud. **

Oh, the irony.

If there is real reverence for the document (notably the original copies of the document in the late 1700s were scribed onto paper made from hemp?a staple commercial crop during America?s Revolutionary period cultivated by many of the US Constitution?s original signers?an agricultural product banned by US federal governments for the last 74 years) by those who read the document and sit in rapture listening to the words, then it should be clear to all in the Congress this morning that Cannabis Prohibition is unconstitutional.

Why?

Where in the Constitution does the federal government derive the power and authority to ban and criminalize such a utilitarian and life-enhancing plant species as cannabis?

The oft-lamented by conservatives Commerce Clause? This is where the liberals in Franklin Roosevelt?s administration justified the federal government?s prohibition of cannabis in 1937. Both liberal and conservative governments have argued strenuously, and successfully, in federal courts that Cannabis Prohibition is lawful and sanctioned under the US Constitution?s Commerce Clause.

Further, and most importantly, today?s Congress, notably the new Constitution-loving majority, should listen carefully today when the reading turns to the 1919 18th Amendment (which created Alcohol Prohibition) and the 1933 21st Amendment (which, of course, repealed Alcohol Prohibition, which, like Cannabis Prohibition, was a complete failure that created more problems than it solved and unnecessarily conveyed policing powers from the states and cities to the federal government).

Unless the new majority supports the continued use of the Commerce Clause to justify federal intervention into state sovereignty, for them to adhere and respect the U.S. Constitution (which each member of Congress swears to uphold), they need to pass a constitutional amendment post haste that prohibits the cannabis plant and criminalizes its use, rather than rely on what many Americans consider a legislative fiat by the Congress that created and has fostered Cannabis Prohibition for over eight decades.

Indeed new majority (and minority) in Congress, read and respect the U.S. Constitution!


** It appears that they have chosen to not read the entire Constitution and Amendments. They have skipped over the parts that were made obsolete by Amendments.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/06/constitutional-reading-sparks-debate-omitted-parts/


Facepalm
 
Last edited:
Oops, sorry about the above post being in here, I meant to put it into the Random section.


The summation of an article that I read today. The whole article is worth a read, but the end is poignant.

http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/legal-marijuana-is-maines-future-crop_2011-01-09.html

Only when our denial is out of the closet can parents, educators, media, government and churches openly discuss responsible use the same way they are (finally) discussing fast-food addiction and childhood obesity.

Sadly, we no longer have resources to squander by jailing cannabis users, even if it were smart to do so, which it isn't. We've already capsized Mexico due to our inability to regulate this market, and the sooner we deal with it the better -- and not through law enforcement agencies or public policy, because it doesn't work. It can't work. Policemen were never meant to regulate an economic market that has morphed into a staple product for an estimated 10 percent of all Americans.

Like it or not, cannabis is here to stay. It must be regulated and taxed to produce new revenues for government, no different than alcohol and tobacco, and the sector has to learn how to properly manage legal assets. Good or bad, it is the best, most valid solution we have as a society.


And I think that the word "cannabis" could be changed to "illegal drugs" and it would still be right.


And here is a link to a Drug War "clock", it keeps track of money spent , arrests made and people jailed. When I linked it, the US federal and state governments spent 1.15 BILLION and 47,000 arrests(24,000 for marijuana).

I am not sure how accurate that is, but it really makes you think.

EDIT: I was tired when I first looked at the site and did not get the numbers right, corrected trillions to billions, and it appears to be based on a claender year too.


http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock
 
Last edited:
An interesting discussion with loud audio.



http://stopthedrugwar.org/speakeasy/2011/jan/18/brutal_drug_raid_killing_caught

Brutal Drug Raid Killing Caught on Video

The drug czar has gone to great rhetorical lengths to convince the American people that our drug policy isn?t a war any longer, but you don't have to look very hard to see the violence that still erupts daily, not only in Mexico, but right here in our own communities. If you can handle it, I'd like you to take a look at just one example of the incredible violence police use when enforcing our drug laws.

That is how quickly lives are lost in the war on drugs. When police invade private homes in search of drugs, anything and everything can go wrong, and even the slightest misunderstanding becomes a matter of life and death. The victim in this case, Todd Blair, brandished a golf club in terror as armed men stormed his home in the night. We'll never know for sure if he realized they were police. But we do know that only a small amount of drugs were found in the raid that took his life.

That drugs and violence often go hand in hand isn't a mystery to many among us ? the bloodshed gripping Mexico is old news by now ? but this is a very different kind of drug war violence than the infamous turf wars of the cartels. This is a rare glimpse into the unbelievable level of force our own public servants unleash routinely in order to protect us from ourselves. This man was just a drug user. Whether he ever sold drugs is in dispute, but there's no question that he lived and died in poverty, and not from drugs, but from police who gunned him down in his own home.

So long as we rely on police to lead the fight against drug abuse, the consequences will unfold brutally all around us and people who could have been helped ? not to mention innocent bystanders ? will be lost to us forever. Mistakes and misunderstandings will continue to occur with deadly frequency, but to a very large extent, the tragic events that take place daily in the war on drugs are not mistakes at all; they are the real and inevitable results of the laws our police enforce and the orders they receive. If heavily-armed pre-dawn drug raids are standard protocol, then people getting shot dead in the dark obviously can't be considered a crime, and it shouldn't be called an accident either.

The movement to end the war on drugs isn't just about making drugs legal. It's also about making it illegal for police to kill our friends and family over small bags of contraband.

Warning: the video shows a man get killed.

 
Last edited:
Top